Is Your Mama a Llama?

Saturday, July 2nd

I am sure this popular children’s book will ring familiar to your ears. Remember the llama that searches for his mama and asks other animal friends along his journey? I have been thinking a lot about the moment that you actually feel like a child’s mama.

It’s been nearly a week of this new little person being my child. After last night’s horrific travel adventure by plane, I have decided that the one major difference between becoming a mama by birth and becoming a mama through adoption are the flights. When you are discharged from the hospital with your newborn, you don’t have to then get on a plane (in a foreign country). Jet lag, however, does feel awfully similar to the sleep deprivation experienced when parenting a newborn that needs to eat every 2 hours.

Right now I can’t really discuss this flight. I am trying to block it out of my head so I don’t have a panic attack when I have to get on 3 more flights with Cameron next week. I will just say that our flight was very delayed and we got in at 1 am (Cameron’s bedtime is 7 pm). I don’t speak Chinese, but I am pretty sure that what people were screaming at me were definitely in the 4 letter word, expletive category of vocabulary.

After a few hours of sleep, we had to have Cameron’s physical. At least it was at a clinic that was walking distance from our hotel. Thank God I didn’t have to wait in line at a Chinese hospital. I visited one in Xi’an where Cameron was found and said a prayer right then thanking God for our health care system. I don’t want this to turn into a political column or anything, but I really do recommend that you visit health care facilities in foreign countries before you complain about ours in the USA. We really do have the best medical care in the world.

Anyway, the moment we walked into the clinic and Cameron saw some people in white lab coats, he started freaking out. Hmmm, I pondered, he seems to remember his previous medical experiences. I have a really good guide and I am traveling alone, so my wait time to see all the docs in the medical team was very short compared to the rest of the families. The first few stations were as I suspected- complete physical comparing their findings to the medical report I have from the orphanage, basic height and weight and head circumference stations and an ENT. Obviously Cameron has had one too many wooden tongue depressors shoved down his throat because he totally lost it for this part of the exam. I was feeling pretty bad for him at this point.

The final room was the inoculation room. Because Cameron is over the age of 2, he has to be tested for TB. This requires a shot in his forearm. I was not expecting the long needle that they pulled out. For some reason I remember this test being a circle shaped prickly thing on the fatty part of your upper arm. Well, this was far from that. It was a long needle that they attempted to put in the soft underside of his forearm, like where you would get an IV line. I was holding him down, not an easy task, and the medical personnel jammed it into his arm so hard and then realized it wasn’t deep enough and the liquid was spewing everywhere, so she took it out and jammed it in again.

That was the first moment where this llama actually felt like Cameron’s mama. Up until now, I really have been wearing my professional hat with Cameron. I am constantly assessing him, teaching him sign language, informally going through developmental checklists, looking at his medical diagnosis from a professional distance, emailing Boston Children’s Hospital with questions, and formally playing with him in a way that will promote attachment.

Many parents feel when their child is going through a painful medical procedure that they would jump into that place for their child. They would rather experience the pain themselves than watch their child suffer. Perhaps there is something wrong with me or perhaps I have seen too many episodes of ALIAS and 24, but my overall feeling was a very strong desire to strap that idiot to a chair and jam that needle into her arm as hard as she did it into Cameron’s arm. And then, oh do it again, because I didn’t quite go deep enough the first time.

They then offered him a piece of candy from their jar. Cameron responded as all Murrays do, and he promptly grabbed the entire jar and started to run away with it. I thought it was so funny. They were less than thrilled, so I dumped a bunch of candy in his hands and handed them back their empty jar. I am currently praying and having others pray as well that his TB test is negative. I really don’t want to have to jump through any more hoops to get my son home. I can’t bear to sit through chest x-rays or whatever else they force you to do to be allowed into the States.

Thankfully, that is the only thing on our schedule for today. I need to check out this fancy hotel where we will be living this week because I was too bleary-eyed to notice anything at 1 am. I am definitely looking forward to this leg of the journey as it makes me that much closer to coming home. Skyping is getting harder and harder for me as well as for the girls. Madelyn is perfecting several words this week and seems so much older when she is talking. Gretchen seems to cry and ask me when I am coming home with every phone call now.