The Refusnik…

or, as R. has become fond of saying, “our little dissident.” It is Thursday morning (see other post below for info on Tuesday and Wednesday), and The Bee is still refusing to drink. She is clearly hungry–she perks up and signs “yes” when I ask her if she wants (rice) milk; I take her arm splints off, she grabs the bottle and takes a swig–only to burst into violent tears and thrashes. She is having trouble accepting her new mouth, I’m sure it feels very scary to her, and she has dug in in her stubborn way and refuses to acknowledge it. So, nothing shall pass those lips.

Did I mention my girl had opinions?

I don’t know what will happen if she continues to refuse…she signs that she wants to go home, but the doctor won’t let her go until she’s drinking well. She has no fever, no blood, her vitals are all great–the healing is progressing in her mouth without her. She is obviously enraged that we made the decision to change her mouth and has decided to deny it.

We thought we had a breakthrough this morning, when we played the “Cheers!” game with her–(thanks be to God, J., and E., for teaching The Bee about “cheers!”)–and insisted that after you do “cheers!”, you have to drink. She took a swig and promptly burst into tears and full body lunges.

So, that’s all I’ve got. I may be looking at yet another night on the cot unless we figure out a way to break the spell.

The Hospital Room

The post below was written Wednesday afternoon, but the servers in this hospital wouldn’t let me post…so when I refer to “yesterday” throughout, it really means Tuesday…

Sorry I haven’t updated. I tried. But there’s no wi-fi in the rooms, only in the waiting room and the cafeteria, and when I went down there to post, the servers were all down. I could read email, but I couldn’t blog. I’m sitting in front of the vending machines, and it’s a bit like Vegas around here since I haven’t been outside in two days—I have no idea what time it is…thank you all for your supportive messages. The Bee seems to be perking up, even since I wrote the post below…

“She won the lottery.” That’s what the very nice anesthesiologist said yesterday when we went back to Recovery to see The Bee after surgery. Some kids who have cleft palates end up not having enough tissue on either side of their mouths to fold over into the open space and suture together for a new roof…but The Bee did. Relief, relief, relief. His lordship also managed to close the alveolar cleft (the cleft in her right front gum), which we weren’t sure was going to happen today or not—this saves us a future surgery. So, she had her gum, her hard palate, and her soft palate all completely closed…basically, her entire mouth, front to back—now, comes the hard part: the first 10 days. No solid foods, no prodding toys, no fingers, no pacifiers, no sippy cups, no elbows.

And I have to say she’s my girl: her sense of rank injustice is finely honed. She is refusing to eat, refusing to drink, doesn’t want anything or anyone near her mouth. She is denying us. She is pissed off. We are probably here another night (unless she wakes up from her current nap requesting hamburgers out of the blue) because she is guarding her wound with a fierce mama-bear ‘tude. And the girl who never showed a sign of grieving in China? Yesterday afternoon and evening, she was refusing to make eye contact with me…she had her little spot on the ceiling that she would disappear into, and her eyes stuck to it as if…as if…as if she had just been handed to us by an ayi at Metcha. And she shut down, withdrew inside herself, glazed over. The nurse was waving her hand in front of The Bee’s eyes this morning and getting…nothing. I imagine Nurse was a bit worried. I just wondered in that AP wonderment way where The Bee was, where she had disappeared to. I knew she’d be back. It took a Coke bottle to bring her around to a small smile this afternoon. She loves twisting the top off and on, off and on.

Most of yesterday and this morning she spent in my arms. She is asking for comfort, wanting to be held. Just not fed. Not medicated. Not fussed over. I had heard to wear an old shirt, and it’s a good thing. Yesterday there was quite a lot of blood, viscous blood. Today there isn’t any, but her lip area remains quite swollen. At first, she was as scared about the arm splints as anything else, but today she is playing with some toys they brought her from the playroom, and she has already adapted to the Frankenstein-creature sort of arm motions she has to make. She did sleep in her bed last night, and at 3:15 in the morning, I woke up to find her playing with her stuffed panda bear—and her IV fallen out from the foot catheter where it’s supposed to be keeping her hydrated. Instead, it had spent three hours emptying itself onto her blankets. Her bedding was soaked.

His lordship had left instructions (“orders” in hospital-speak, doncha know) to feed her only breast milk or formula. WTF? So, even though he met us a couple times, including yesterday after the surgery, and had just spent two hours working on her, he fails to realize that (a) she is 2 years (and one month) old and hasn’t been on formula for months now, and (b) she is adopted, so chances are pretty effing good that I’m not breastfeeding. Most of the literature I’ve been given about the procedure is written with a much younger patient in mind, the 6-9-month-old, homegrown patient—the assumption being that the prescribed liquid diet is no big accommodation since the patient is only consuming breast milk or formula anyway. Ha. The Bee had lasagna on Monday night, thank you very much. And carrots and zucchini and cucumbers and french fries and a bite of bbq ribs. I had the same problem with the literature at the pediatrician’s, written for the homegrown, bio kids only, when I first brought The Bee in to that office…all sorts of genetics questions, for instance. I get my ire up at the sight of exclusivity. It’s time there was inclusive language for the experience of adoption, and I dare say, for the experience of special needs. Isn’t this an accessibility issue?

And then the peds resident came in last night on her rounds, and the conversation goes something like this:

Dr.-To-Be: So, was his cleft palate congenital?…er…has he had it since the day he was born?

SBird: [Let the seething commence.] Her. She. She’s a she. And, yes, it was congenital.

DTB: Sorry. She. It’s her name that made me think…er, so, who’s your pediatrician? I mean, why did they wait so long to fix the defect?

SBird: [JFC, am I really having this conversation? Did this yahole read her chart? Bother to talk to a nurse? Are they this effing insensitive on Gray’s Anatomy?] We’ve only had her four months. She’s adopted. We got in as soon as we could.

DTB: Oh. She’s from another country, you mean?

SBird: She’s from China.

DTB: Oh! Wow. She is soooo lucky. [Beaming brightly at me.]

SBird: [Past the point of wanting to blow DTB’s brains out…moved on to wanting to blow my brains out…] We’re lucky, actually.

So, I am assuming we will have another night here. So I can hone my sarcasm further and The Bee can practice her Grand Gesture of Denial.

The Waiting Room

So, here I am (with R.) in the room in the hospital filled with waiting families where they have free wi-fi but no coffee trying hard not to think about the accordion-like device a few rooms away, going up and down, up and down, with my daughter’s breathing.

The nurse just came in the waiting room to ask us (from the doctor) whether we wanted him to pull her top right incisor. It is rotten (this is usually, by the way, NOT a cleft thing, but rather a poor dental care in China thing), which I knew, having seen it, but we were waiting to go to the dentist until after the surgery. So, there we were, making our first semi-big decision…we had him pull it. It was gray, which indicates a dead tooth, so I am assuming that the dentist would have pulled it. It’s a baby tooth anyway, right?

We met with the head nurse, the assisting surgeon, and the anesthesiologist pre-surgery, but NOT the all-herald-his-lordship-he’s-expensive-but-oh-so-good plastic surgeon, who didn’t show up. The nurse came out of the operating room to apologize for that too–she’s made two trips out to see us so far. Well, Dr. Lordship DID just return from his month of vacation yesterday, so perhaps he was…er…running late. R. said he’s just hoping he wasn’t hung over. I’m not sure whether being the first surgery post-holiday is a good thing or a bad thing…he might be refreshed and raring to go, or he could have gone rusty while lying in the sands of some idyllic resort, his surgery hands being splashed gently by a turquoise tide.

I don’t usually employ sarcasm as a response to stress. I usually just order a dirty martini and pop a xanax. Or blog. If y’all found any comments from me this morning, it’s because I’m reading everything you’ve written for the past week and then some. I can’t always seem to see pictures, however. Must be some homeland security invisi-wall in this here hospital.

The Bee is dressed in a tiger hospital gown, BTW. She signed tiger a lot, as they were injecting cherry Versed down her throat. Then she got all loopy and happy-like. Giggled a lot. Versed is supposed to erase her memory of the surgery completely, the nurses told us, thus allowing her to continue her groovy feelings for the hospital experience. Um, yeah. Good luck with that happy pill.

Here is our view from our hotel window:

That would be the hospital itself, a shining beacon on the hill. Oooops, more sarcasm.

Okay, try again: that’s the hospital, a mere 0.3 miles away from the hotel, according to the Google search I did on ‘hospital hotels’ a few weeks ago. We were golden. R. even did a dry run last night, just to time the drive.

Except for the fact that we couldn’t find our way out of the hotel parking garage this morning. Think: Seinfeld episode. Think: SBird getting short and snippy. In sore need of a Starbucks, which is about the only decent thing in the lobby of this hospital. Have I mentioned there’s a lot of waiting involved in your child having surgery? Um, yeah. And pagers. They give you a pager for everything, like you’re waiting for a table at The Cheesecake Factory. That was The Bee’s favorite toy this morning, pre-Versed. After Versed, she liked the blinking toy that played “Rockin’ Robin.” She swayed.

Okay, in all seriousness and genuineity, thank you to my peeps for sending loving thoughts along to us and The Bee. Me’s appreciates it more than you know. More later.

We’re off…

down to the Valley of Death this morning, to settle in a bit before The Bee’s surgery tomorrow morning. I am feeling a bit of zen at the moment…zen before the storm, I guess. The surgery tomorrow is at 10, we have to be there at 8, then I’ll be staying overnight in the hospital on a cot, and then we leave for home again on Wednesday.

We are staying here. I think I had some silly notion of using the bar. Frequently. I suppose they have room service, no?

I promised to post a picture of The Bee’s arm splints (not really restraints, she won’t ever be tied down…the splints are used to immobilize her elbows, so she can’t bend her arms and poke her fingers through her new ceiling). I ordered Snuggle Wraps, which are supposed to be much better than the older kinds of arm splints that were big and puffy and hot and sweaty. These are light and have holes for air circulation and can fit under long sleeves. So, that’s what we went with.

Last night, I went around collecting all of The Bee’s long pointy toys–xylophone mallets; Mr. Potato Head arms; sand shovels; crayons; lincoln logs–that she can’t have for the next 10 days. We have recipes for all sorts of meat smoothies (now, doesn’t that sound yummy?), and a humidifier in her room (which helps with swollen tissues…), and Tylenol on hand. I think we are ready on the practical end of things.

Of course, it will be horrible for a few hours tomorrow (I hate anesthesia with a white-hot, fear-full passion), and then it will be hard for a few days after that, but there is also a strange sense of excitement mixed in…excitement for The Bee. Excitement for the opportunity to revise her cleft and allow her to make words with her mouth, as well as her hands.

And, in a weird coincidence…the first time I ever saw The Bee’s face was a year ago tomorrow. I woke up on Labor Day last year, decided I was Done (with a capital D) with not being a mommy, contacted a dozen agencies by email even though I knew they were on holiday that day, and got sent a list of waiting children with The Bee’s picture on it the next day. I am so glad I saw the writing on the proverbial CCAA wall and got fed up. I found my daughter that way, by aggressively trusting my instincts, by using anger to prompt me into action, and so I can only call it a nearly providential moment (a tricky word, that providential). Who knows why I got to be the lucky one? But I definitely did.

Circles.

In American Sign Language, the sign for “family” is created by making two letter “F’s”–one with each hand–and then drawing them around in a circle to meet again on the opposite shore. It’s about creating an enclosed space in air, a visual representation of an emotional reality.

When I think of the circles of emotion that resonate in my life, I certainly do include the circle of bloggers that I have come to know during the past two years or so through the written word, over the computer screen, as their narratives have unfolded piece by piece, without much pretense, in that way that is unique to blogging. The bloggers I read are united by a common thread, a community, which is the world of international adoption. That is the online neighborhood of which I am a part. Within that neighborhood, there are particular houses I visit, more specific reasons why I follow who I follow, read who I read, and I’ve been trying to pin that down lately, in my own mind.

For me, the bloggers I follow are of three or so ilks. No–scratch that. It’s ME that’s really being defined here, not the blogs. But, rather, ME, as the audience of the blogs. So, here are the reasons why I read:

First, the blog-candy. Or, more precisely, the baby-candy. Blogs I look at, more than read. Many of my fellow bloggers are guilty of this indulgence come referral time, but a few candy blogs have indeed stuck to the roof of my virtual mouth. I also find my own blog teetering in the direction of baby-candy, now that The Bee is home. I’m not sure why. I suppose it’s easy enough to throw up a photo or two and be satisfied with a post created. Perhaps, too, it’s a self-protective move, despite the loss of privacy that results from posting photos to the web in the first place. If I concentrate on the daughter’s lovely smile, I don’t have to try and explain myself on the controversial subject of the day, which I have found is almost always a losing battle on the faceless internets anyway. There is more than a little to be said for face-to-face discussion, especially when an argument is brewing. Newborns learn to read faces for a reason. Survival.

Second, the blogs not put off by controversy. The intellectual bloggers. The Ones Who Have Something To Say. I like to read people who are engaged with ideas, mostly because I’m not anymore. I wish I could say I had enough time to read all the links, look at all the videos, that accompany Engaged Bloggers, but clicking on links was one of the first things that went when I came home with The Bee. I read the main posts now, but nearly never click over to read links anymore. Despite that admission, I still enjoy a person who has something to say. I admire it. I sometimes wish more people said More, myself included. And I wish more people listened when the More is said.

Third, and by far the most urgent reason of the bunch, is that I read blogs to follow A Story. Interestingly, this more important reason didn’t exist for me when I first began blogging. It takes time. It takes time to know another blogger’s backstory–the details, the personal gripes, the tragedies, the job(s), the pets, the kids, the vacation destinations, the unfoldings of a day. And then a week. A month. A year. And soon, soon…I have to know. I have to know what’s going on over that blogger’s morning cup of joe. Not really what’s going on, of course. But what they want to tell me. The Story they’re weaving of themselves.

I’ve also, of course, stopped reading some blogs over the course of the past year. Deleted some from my Bloglines (and, yes, I’ve been converted to Bloglines post-mommyhood, if any of MY diehard readers remember that perverse rant against it I posted last winter). Partly, I think, your experiences shape your interests…new experiences, new interests, new blogs. Or, maybe I should say that your new experiences tend to edit your life for you. Certainly, I read more blogs now that include children adopted with special needs than I used to. I never read blogs focused on infertility anymore–unless, by default, they’re also part of the world of adoption.

In the course of following these Stories, a handful of bloggers have also become email buddies and snail mail buddies and even–fewer still–I have exchanged facial expressions with. I am the first to admit to the limitations of the internets, to the insanity, to the cruelty, to the drama, to the tedium that can develop–in fact, that can be nurtured–in an online medium. Snark is fun, satire is priceless, but edginess is, by definition, capable of cutting. And so it goes. People also change, move into and out of circles, become a different audience. I accept the vagaries and the risks of interacting this way, even when I want to scream and run and pull each hair out of my head individually with a tweezers. Families are like that sometimes. And there are times I don’t accept those vagaries and risks and drama and tedium. I like circles both for what they keep in and for what they keep out. And I love watching the ways in which other people draw them for themselves.

Free To Be The Bee…

Did anyone else listen to this album growing up like I did? I discovered reading the description over there that I am one of that demographic called ’70s Children (although I was four when that decade rolled around). Who knew?

My sister gave The Bee the CD for her birthday, so we were rocking out to it in her room the other day…(I took this vid with my regular camera, so I can’t control when it decides to end things. It has something to do with the memory card.)

On the song, “You Can Be Almost Anything You Want To Be,” I just realized that the first part of their list is “some moms are ranchers, or poetry makers…” Okay, then. I’m hoping I didn’t internalize Marlo to that extent…

And a BONUS! in the TMI chronicles of The Nest: The Bee successfully used the potty chair for the first time this morning! Sweet! She was so proud…

No video of that. Ahem.

So, I finally wrote a poem…

I haven’t written a poem in a year and a half. It turned out that this one’s about the adoption (surprise, surprise). In fact, it’s the one I promised to write on the travel blog, in Guangzhou, about the wind. It isn’t sentimental, so if you’re expecting the warm and fuzzies in verse, look elsewhere. It also isn’t that great a piece, but I’m just content to get my poet legs back under me some time in this century. So I’m sharing it…

It resonates with what a lot of my kind of blogger aparents have said, like here for starters, about the challenge of falling in love with your child. That it isn’t automatic. That it’s hard work, even if you’ve been waiting for her for nigh-on 13 years of your adult life. It’s humbling. It isn’t like being an aunt, and it isn’t rainbows and ladybugs and cloudbursts. Not for a long time.

It is an eventual interweaving. An exercise in faith, which is to say, an exercise in something you can’t see, can’t prove exists. I now have some understanding of why repetition plays such a role in the way we humans learn, remember, play, talk, worship, and find pleasure (yes, that sort of pleasure). Repetition may in fact be key to love. That’s humbling to admit on some level–that it isn’t crashing cymbals and a trombone flourish or even the soft glow of a sunrise. It’s an act of coming back.

My Daughter and I Speak of the Wind

She collects the stars through her window,
pointing to them and the moon, white sparks
that register on the bare margins of her life.
Free for the taking. She signs moon to me,
a kissed sickle of fingers rising in air.
One day I appeared on a low bench in China,
mustard upholstery holding us up, and announced
my new status—I’m your Mommy—and her
(new) name. She furrowed her brow. I wasn’t
regular. Amid pulls of congee and sour plums
and the orphanage shoes two sizes too big,
I blew in like a storm.

What were you expecting me to say? Like a gentle
breeze? Like a dream?

In the tropical province where we go to make her
legal, the wind kicks up each night at dusk.
It peels off the river, a whirling husk of heat
and leaves and road. She feels it hit
and looks up at me for the word. I don’t have it,
so I run my fingers through her hair, calling
whoosh. I am making this up as I go, of course.
The language we share is piecemeal, ad hoc.
And yet we come back to it each day
as quilters return to the circle, out of something
more than boredom, less than yearning. We come
because we cannot undo what’s been done
to our hearts. We come and wind
the thread over and over around our fingers
in a knot that keeps it all from unraveling.

You do the math.

Time The Bee was collected by the anesthesiologist in her arms (!) to go back to the surgery room to be put under: 10:11 AM

Time that R., myself, and The Bee were walking back to the car in the parking lot, ready to go to lunch: 10:44 AM

That’s correct, folks: the administering of gas, the ear tubes surgery itself, and the recovery period in toto took all of 33 minutes.

Boooooinnnnggg! Amazing.

When we went back to the recovery area, The Bee was laid out on her surgery table*–which is really a scary-ass-looking, metal crib. Now R. wants one. The anesthesiologist was shaking her head–but in a good way.

(Please now allow me to brag…)

She said in all her years of working with children, she’s never seen a 2-year-old as smart as The Bee. Apparently, they had some interaction pre-mask. The Bee showed the assembled surgical team how to use the stethoscope (unaided), was pointing to the correct colored button on the monitors when one of the staff named one of the colors, and was planting pieces of surgical tape where they wanted her to on her own body. And, so, apparently, the anesthesiologist says, “I think she’s going to be an anesthesiologist when she grows up…” And the surgeon retorts, “I think she’s going to be a rocket scientist.” Ahem.

(End of annoying parental pride part.)

And then, upon leaving, The Bee signed “restaurant” because one of her favorite restaurants is nearby the hospital–and she knew it through some infallible gourmet-french-fry internal sensing device that she must possess…

And, so, there we were, a mere hour after she had been completely out on a table having surgery, munching on french fries and creme brulee. Warnings about vomit and clear fluids be damned. The woman at the next table praised The Bee’s good behavior at the end of our meal, and I had to bite my tongue not to say, “yeah, and she was in surgery an hour ago…” Probably not making me look like mother of the year, eh?

*By the way, it is never a good thing to see your child laid out on a table, under a mask. It’s scary as shit. Much later that evening, R. said what I had been thinking when we first went back to the recovery room, and she wasn’t yet awake (I had asked them to make sure and get us back there ASAP because of abandonment issues, etc.)…you have this flash when you see your child like that…as if you’re staring at them in the morgue. It’s godawful scary. It’s strange. It’s beyond the pale. You have to seriously shake it off. Enuf said…

Cheers!

We had the great good fortune last weekend to host at the ranch two of our most esteemed bloggy colleagues: Atomic Mama and Somewhere Else’s J. and her little one E.!!

I have permission to post some photos from the grand event, which culminated in E. teaching The Bee how to do “cheers!” at the table with our glasses. Now, The Bee is fanatic about it–no water, wine, milk, juice, tea, coffee, or other obdurate beverage shall pass our lips without the ritualized clanking of glasses. What took us so long to show her this little wonder of mealtime?

J. and the girls:

E. swoops in for a hug, and The Bee stings in response!

A.M. looks on to the pool shenanigans:

What’s so funny?

E. is like, WTF is she doing?

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