The Perfect Mother's Day Gift

My goodness. I just checked our blog and noticed I haven't written in nearly a month. Time sure does fly when you're waiting!

Anyway, we have good news to report! Tom and I are the proud parents of a 2 month old daughter! I can't believe it. I've been wanting a baby girl for as long as I can remember and am so happy!

We got THE phone call from the adoption agency on Tuesday night- two days after Mother's Day - saying to check our email because we had our referral. I was in Rehoboth Beach for a mini-retreat and Tom and Max were at Linda's house having dinner. I called Tom immediately on the cell phone and suggested that we each get in front of a computer so that we could open the email together and see our daughter at the same time. After some fumbling around with different computers, we were finally in sync, so I thought, to open at just the right moment when Tom's opened immediately and mine took 2 minutes to dowload. Harumph!

When Max heard the good news, he said "I'm just so happy and I cannot talk." Seems like that's how we all feel as we digest this long awaited milestone in our journey. It's sort of like, okay, great. Now what? Well, in the world of international adoption, the answer is easy: more paperwork and more checks. And the adopton agency predicts we will travel within the next 2 to 3 months for our Giving and Receiving Ceremony in Vietnam. So we wait on pins and needles.

Anyway, our daughter is a cutie pie - big brown eyes and brown hair. Oddly enough, she looks quite similar to Max when he was a wee infant. Huge chunky cheeks. I used to call Max "Chunky Monkey" but I think Gopala may be earning that term of endearment. Ironically, the person she looks like the most is my late Uncle Pin, a former professor at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. She has his round head and lack of hair even though there's no relation. I wonder if she can make popping sounds like he did when he would pluck his fingers in his cheek.

In the photos we were sent of her - the same ones we're not quite ready to share with the world yet - she is sporting a long-sleeved pink tee shirt with a photo of a rather generic-looking super hero on it. It says in English "Supe Man - 25th anniversary." I guess they didn't realize that the "R" fell off.

Her medical records look good to us. Of course, because we're not physicians, we're having our pediatrician look them over as well as consulting with a pediatrician who specializes in international adoption. As Leslee from Catholic Charities says, she recommends that with any country other than Korea.

Gopala's slightly anemic and covered in scabies which just breaks our hearts. But both problems are easily remedied with appropriate treatment and iron-fortified formula. I just wish the orphanage would treat the children for the scabies. Knowing that these little defenseless babies who have already gone through so much in their short lives have to suffer some completely unnecessary and treatable sickness makes me really bummed out and sad.. (Can you tell I'm trying to be polite for diplomatic reasons?) Tom and I want to go to Vietnam yesterday (not a typo) to get our daughter out of the orphanage and spend the summer living in a hotel in Hanoi til the paperwork gets done but that's not part of the process and we bow to that with gratitude. (Diplomacy again.) And once again, I'm reminded of just how little control - if any - we have over this entire process.

Gopala, as Max still insists on calling her and what we call her til we figure out her new name, lives in an orphanage in Thai Nguyen which is reportedly a 2 hour drive north of Hanoi. It's a university city of about a million people and many of the babies in the orphanage are believed to come from the college students. Gopala was abandoned and found at the clinic several days after her birth on March 13, 2007 which is the closest thing we will have to knowing her birthday. We have no history on her birth or birthparents at all. That to makes me sad and again the mother's instinct wants to rush over to Vietnam to protect her and love her, sheltering her from any more harm or misfortune in her lives. Unrealistic I know but that's what's going on in my heart and my head.

While it seems like we've been waiting forever, really, considering that we had our homestudy completed in Jan. we really are chugging right along. I've become rather addicted to reading other adoptive parent's blogs and I'm amazed at how slow the process is for some. I'm also surprised at the number of people who were intitially planning to adopt from China and had been waiting already a year or two - and have switched to Vietnam. Anyway, dear family and friends, it's late and I'm going to bed. While I dream of being with our new baby, I have to be up early in the morning to host playgroup for my existing baby who turns 4 next Wednesday. I'll write more when I have more news to write.