So much has happened since I last wrote. It has been a whirlwind, and the internet connection at the apartment is non-existent. So, we got here on Saturday. We settled into the apartment. It is a two bedroom apartment. Nicely furnished. One bedroom has two twin beds. The other has a queen sized bed. There is a wrap around couch in the family room. Newly updated throughout. Full kitchen with stove and oven, no microwave, dishwasher, or garbage disposal. There is AC and fans in each room. Very comfortable space. One pot, one pan. We have added a strainer, a spatula, a spoon, a broom, and a dustpan. Nice comfy bath towels. Intermittent room cleaning. It is about a 15 minute taxi ride from the downtown area and the internet connection is awful, except between 6am-7am on the weekends. There is a laundry mat in the parking lot and a grocery store too. Beware of expiration dates! There is a bigger, nicer grocery store closer to downtown where things aren't as expired.
We settled in and met the birth family and our baby on Saturday afternoon. She is just so beautiful! We got to keep her overnight and for much of the next day. Birth mom came back on Sunday afternoon and took her home.
Monday morning, we all met at court. Court went pretty smoothly. There was an issue with birth mom not knowing her real age. Turns out that she is 14 months older than she thought that she was. After court, birth mom took our baby to go get passport photos while we signed paperwork.
Two days later, we went to the Embassy and applied for our visa. Now the wait began for our return trip home. We have been exploring the island. We rented a car and drove out to Laura Beach. The car rental cost $70 plus gas. Laura Beach is pretty, but really not a swimming beach. Only swimming beach that we've really located was Delap Beach Park. We went there once and got SWARMED by local kids. Made us a little nervous having our 4 and 6 year olds in the water where the kids were just trying to crawl all over them. Neither is a strong swimmer and our 4 year old wears water wings. The kids had fun but we have been reluctant to return.
We have seen the birth family several times. Really nice people. They came over on Father's Day and sang songs to Mike. (= It was really sweet.
The only real problem that we've had is that our new daughter appears to be deaf. She was marked as having passed her newborn screening exam. We noticed that she wasn't responding to sounds at all. No startle to loud noises. Didn't track sound. We took her back to the hospital yesterday and had her retested. She has almost 100% hearing loss (100% in one ear, 80% loss in the other). We don't know if the first test was wrong, done incorrectly, or if she has some sort of rapidly progressive process causing her to go deaf. Regardless, there is no further testing that they can do here. We are now trying to get our visa expedited so that we can get home and have her tested appropriately. She is beautiful, and perfect, and wonderful and we will do all we can to get her the best medical care possible.
This will probably be our last update as our visa processing time will not reflect actual times for others, based on our need to get home for medical reasons. We hope to explore as much as we can between now and the end of this week. After we get settled, I will write one last post with our recommended packing lists and things to see and do.
For those of you who are still on this road, it is challenging in so many ways, but is also a blessing as well. We wish you all luck with the paper chase, the wait, etc. If you are looking for an agency, I cannot say enough good things about Adopt International. They have been very supportive throughout this whole process and really receptive to our concerns about our daughter's hearing. Their local contacts and staff are wonderful as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment