Adoption 42: Noa to Alabama

There are some babies that will stand out for some sad reasons.  Noa is one of those babies.  When she came to me she looked so close to death. I remember thinking to myself that we were going to lose her because they did not know what was wrong and she looked so severely malnourished.  You would think that when you encounter a child like this the first thing you would need to do is feed the baby.  It is actually the very worst thing.  You have to give very small amounts often and in some cases supplement with ReSoMal.  This is a mixture of ORS that is high in potassium chloride and not your average Pedialyte.  This helps to prevent the organs from seizing because of overuse due to the huge quantities of milk.  I have read that after the concentration camps of the WWII that some people died because they ate so much after being released.  It is a science to reintroduce the milk and I am so grateful for the doctors that have done research to help me learn about this, because not everyone is aware of what to do in cases like this and often babies die because this knowledge is not very common.

Noa's saving grace was Lila.  Her grandma volunteer who was here and dropper fed her and watched over her right from the beginning to make sure that she gained strength and got bigger.  It took a long few months and a lot of hard work.  One day I looked at her and it was hard to even believe she was the same child that had arrived on April 1st with seven other babies.  You might want to know that seven of those kids are gone and James will be the last one out of this group.

I had a friend here from England and she thought we should have Noa's hearing tested, since she suspected that she was hard of hearing.  Well the testing showed that Noa was deaf in one ear and had partial hearing in the other.  When we send her adoption papers to Beijing we included these testing result so she got adopted as a baby who is practically deaf.  We were looking at getting hearing aids and doing some cochlear implants and in the meantime we waited for the matching to be made and soon we heard that Noa was matched with family from Birmingham Alabama and that she would have two brothers and so gotcha day arrived. Nothing much happened with getting help for the hearing aid.

Well, in one of the first emails that we got after Noa's adoption, the great news arrived.  The testing had been redone in the US and Noa hearing test NORMAL.  I was so happy to hear this.  I am so glad that this little girl would basically be a non special needs child and would not struggle with the challenges that would come from not hearing well.  So all is well for Miss Noa who is now a 'Bama girl and from all counts is doing really well with her new family.

Life, love and laughter,
Amanda

At Starfish, we have taken care of 124 children to date, arranged more than 100 surgeries and had 51 international adoptions, so our little starfishes live all over the globe: the US, Netherlands, Norway, France, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Canada and in China.  Our latest adoptions are to Washington State and New Mexico, Georgia and to Southern California.  We currently have 45 babies under the age of 3 and three foster homes.  Preparing to move to our new "castle" hopefully before the end of the year.

Starfish Children's Services
US Tax Number:  20-4682916
Xian China

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