Day 161

Our dossier arrived in Ethiopia on June 4, 2009 and 161 days later, on Veteran's Day, which would have also been my mother-in-law's 75th birthday, we received pictures of a beautiful baby girl with a note telling us that if we say yes, she will one day become Naomi Aster Weeks. We said yes without hesitation, but also wanted feedback from an adoption doc so we could prepare ourselves if they saw anything that was of concern. I sent all her information and photos to the U of MN Adoption Clinic and here is the report we received from the doctor who reviewed her information.

We use the CDC growth charts to assess growth. She is small but not far off the normal growth chart and it would be nice to see updates as they come to make sure that she continues to grow well.

Her developmental milestones as reported sound fine, though babies this age do not do much. It would be good to get updates as they come. I’d like to see her rolling over and doing some vocalizing by the next update.

Her lab results were negative for HIV, syphilis and Hepatitis. We need the Hep B testing to have been done after 4-6 mo of age to be reliable so this will need to be repeated at sometime now. The prevalence of HepB in the general population there is about 5%. She tested positive for salmonella in her stool. This was treated.

We screen all referrals for signs of alcohol exposure. There can be brain changes associated with prenatal alcohol use without changes in facial features and we have missed the diagnosis in the past, but we like to get an idea of risk. Her facial features are lovely and not consistent with significant exposure.

Everything looks and sounds good so far and did you notice what the doctor said? "Her facial features are lovely." We now have confirmation that not only does she appear to be doing well health-wise, but we're not biased in our opinion that she's beautiful. As far as I'm concerned lovely and beautiful are the same :-) and it doesn't matter that this comment was made in reference to FAS. She really does have lovely facial features.

I felt as if we were being really patient during the wait for her referral. Okay, in comparison to some, our wait to referral really wasn't long and if you've been following my blog for the last several months, you know we've had a lot on our plates and our minds have been occupied with other pressing matters. However, as I expected, now that we have our referral I'm becoming more and more anxious about the following steps.

How long will it take for us to get a court date?

How soon will our court date be?

Will we have any problems passing court?

How quickly will we travel after court?

If I had to guess the best case scenario I would say that our court date will be sometime in the next six weeks and we will be traveling six weeks later to bring Naomi home. But if there is one thing I've learned, IA is unpredictable.

So what do you think? Any predictions on a court date and/or travel?