China Adventure: Day 6

 I apologize that this post is out of order. I'm going to go back to writing about our Gotcha Day while I can, but the Internet is so spotty here that adding the photos is very difficult. Today has been one of the hardest parenting days Dan and I have ever had. After a very smooth gotcha day, we didn’t expect the morning to start out as it did. Selah slept through the night well and woke up around 7 am. She started vomiting, and at first we thought she maybe choked on a rice puff. But, it kept happening throughout the morning. We took her temperature and she had a fever. We called our guide and told him that Selah was sick and needed to see a doctor. He came up to our room, said it was no big deal, and took us off to our Civil Affairs appointment to finalize the adoption. Unfortunately, the vomiting kept happening in the van, but thankfully stopped as we got to the Civil Affairs office in Guiyang. We decided to hold off on more than a sip of water at a time to get through that appointment, but poor little Selah kept crying “shui, shui” (water, water in Chinese). It was rough watching the staff there think I was withholding water from my new daughter. I tried to mime to them that she was sick, and they pulled her shirt down and pointed to her feet (no socks) and told our guide she was sick because she needed to be more bundled. It was hard to get through that appointment!

I got ahold of our pedicatrician after the appointment (who is an angel for calling me back at midnight her time), and she said to withhold food for the day and only give sips of pedialyte every 15-20 minutes. Selah slept while I held her for awhile, but when she woke up she was hungry and thirsty. It is impossibly hard to withhold those things from a sweet little girl who you are trying to get to trust you. There were a lot of tears from all of us today. Not only is Selah sick right now, but she is also grieving the loss of her foster mother. It’s a hard day, and I can’t help but think that no little girl should ever have to go through all of this. We would really appreciate your prayers that Selah would feel much, much better in the morning and that Dan and I wouldn’t catch what she has so that we can continue to travel to our appointments and fly home without any problems. The Internet doesn’t work well here, and we are really, really missing our boys back home. We leave for Guangzhou on Friday, so pray that we make it!

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