Martha's Adoption Blog

We are Home

2008-09-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

Lucie and I are home safe and sound. It is great to be home but we both miss our Voietnam buddies and it is yet another transistion. She is doing beautifully - definitely "attached" to her mommy, taking everything in and being her sweet happy self. I will try to update with our last pictures from Vietnam in a few days!!

The Home Stretch

2008-09-19T08:08:00.001-07:00

OK, it is for real - we are leaving tomorrow at 12pm Hanoi time, going through Taipei, then LAX for 7 hours (ugh) and flying into Boston, arriving at 6:55 am on Monday, Sept 22nd. I am a bit wistful about all that we didnt do, but this wasnt a vacation, anyhow, it was a trip to pick up the baby girl I have dreamed of for so many years. I am head over heels in love with her and will work very hard to remember that during our 30 hour trek home. (Yikes!) We had a lovely PLAN dinner in the dining area of our hotel tonight - OK, lovely might be a strong word with something like 8 babies squirming around, but I feel blessed and lucky to have met such a wonderful group of people during this, the most important trip of my life.

I am so excited to bring Miss Lucie Hong home and start our real life together. Thank you to one and all for your support. I will update with pictures and further info when we get settled.

Martha

We are Coming Home Soon

2008-09-19T08:08:00.000-07:00

Lucie, Annie, Madison, and Zoe, the fabulous "Phu Tho Four", finally got their Visas today!!!!! A year later and a few months lost in an orphanage, but the misery is already beginning to fade into a memory. It feels a bit surreal. I was just looking at the little book of pictures that got me through the past year and then I went and kissed my sleeping baby....amazing to think we are here in this place, getting ready to come home.

The dilemma of the day is when to leave...I found out tonight (it is now 10:10pm Fri) that we can fly home on Sunday (12noon). They cant promise me the "deluxe" class (very mini upgrade (poor woman;s business class) that I planned for to save on the expense of a ticket for Lucie). And it is only 36 hours away. It also nixes my plans to go to beautiful Halong Bay. HOWEVER, Friday feels like forever away. I wish I could spend the week and enjoy vacationing, but it is hard to imagine it feeling like a vacation, trying to continue to entertain and contain my ever-blossoming daughter in a small hotel room and resaurants...I will see if my travel agent can pull any rabbits out of his hat by tomorrow am.

I cant wait to show Lucie off to everyone back home!!

Random Pictures and Information

2008-09-18T07:42:00.000-07:00

random pictures and, by the way, we have our Visa appt tomorrow morning at 10:00 am. We can try to change our flights when we get the visas in hand. I am hoping for Tues or so....
Loreen, Madison and Lucie

baby in a Bathtub

Water puppets show

Where is that buddha baby? But how we love a deliriously happy baby!

A throw/quilt for Lucie

Thats all she wrote. Off I go to organize paperwork. I am now feeling sad about leaving our wonderful group of friends. We will miss everybody but will be happy that we can spend lots of time with Alexi and her mama right down the road from us. YAY.

pictures

2008-09-16T07:34:00.002-07:00

There is nothing like a little sleep and a passport

2008-09-16T07:34:00.001-07:00

I think I feel much better today. We had a MUCH better night's sleep last night. I gave Lucie a tiny amount of cold medicine (I know, I know - it's very not politically correct, but she has been coughing/choking while she sleeps). All around much better night (just awake a handful of times and easy to get back to sleep). I had to wake her up this am to go to breakfast so we could get ready to go get her PASSPORT. YAY!! We have a scheduled/required doctor's appt this afternoon (also yay!) and they MIGHT be able to move our Visa Interview at the Embassy up to Friday (that would be the best yay ever!!!)

I will upload some random photos of our day yesterday, etc. I need to go boil water for her bottle and get ready for lunch and our next appt. Ok, maybe not - something is up with blogspot.com

Sleep Deprivation and Hotel Rooms

2008-09-16T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am not trying to say that my first week of motherhood hasnt been absolutely amazing, however...I am starting to get tired of the living out of the small hotel room with a 14+ month old buddha baby who has now decided to express some of the less contemplative sides of her personality. We have to eat every meal out, except I feed her lunch in the room a lot. I have been having a "cafe vanilla freeze" for lunch every couple of days and then we go out for dinner by 5:30pm...another "wow, I cant believe it moment"...dinner at 5:30. I am very much looking forward to being at home and having a high chair. A stroller is a great substitute for a lot of things, but certainly not ideal.

My wonderful friends Joy and Loreen have been great supports and we usually go out together, but it occurred to us yesterday that our recent Hanoi burn out might be related to the fact that all 3 of us are traveling alone. Joy's picture was in my last post with her adorable daughter, Miss Personality, Annie. I will post Loreen tomorrow. We have also made other friends AND my PLAN friend from Roslindale MA (my town!!) just arrived on Sunday and picked up her baby girl yesterday.

Not that it isnt great fun to test one's pedestrian vs motorbike skills every day, but after our cab driver got lost today and just stopped the cab in the middle of who knows where and dumped the folded up strollers on the street, demanded his money and pointed us to follow some random woman on the street back toward our hotel. Very funny in retrospect and actually pretty funny in the moment, but we had just returned from out cultural excursion to the Temple of Literature, which by the way is not a museum with books...its a beautiful old (like 1070AD) academic institution that housed the likes of Confucious. Interesting and simple in its ancient elegance.

OK, I am off to bed...sorry no pics until tomorrow. Lucie has been fussing every couple of hours each of he past 5 nights - she has been sick (and gassy, I think) and maybe a bit freaked out, so I 'd best go catch some sleep while I can.

Tomorrow we pick up the passports for the babies, then they have a required medical exam, then our Visa interview at teh Embassy Monday. We are hoping taht we will be able to request earlier flights and get out of here a day or two before next Friday 09/26, my original leave date. Cross your fingers for us. Until we meet again.

politics and illness

2008-09-13T21:18:00.000-07:00

well, I think the blogging thing might be slowing down a bit here. I have a sick baby with a temp, upper respiratory cough and disturbed sleep, so, needless to say I have had less down time. She is also on the go a lot these days and the hotel room offers it fair share of danger zones. happy or sad, Lucie is still an angel child - when I first saw her, I felt as though I had come home and somehow I believe that she had a similar feeling. The sickness thing has brought up some untravelled parenting challenges, but we are both getting through it.

Politics, you ask? well, 2 days ago, Lucie was saying "bama" which I took to mean "Obama for president" - a little democrat right in my midst - how cool for me! I also think she will be walking b the time we get home -or close to it! Ok, I am going to go play with my baby and get her lunch ready. I dont have time to organize pictures so here they are, likely at the top of this post!

It Only Gets Better

2008-09-11T02:33:00.000-07:00

well, I have yet to get a consult on how to find my G&R pics that were downloaded with a flicker drive - they are not in i-photo and I cant locate them..When I do, I will post them and a little bit about that wonderful day. So, in the meantime, I will write a bit about the evolution of mother and daughterhood. It is everything I ever dreamed of and more. I dont feel like I have had her forever, but I do feel like it has been a lot more than 50 hours!!! A lot more. Lucie Hong Bitsberger is unbelievable - definitely an old soul. ( I'm still calling her Hong 75% of the time or Lucie Hong to introduce the connection - I feel like I have known her as Hong for so long and she has had so much ripped away in the past two days, I want to keep some consistency).

The highlight of my day was after playing on the bed for a while, when the baby was ready for her nap, she wiggled around a bit and then nestled in my arm, grabbed my finger, starting sucking her thumb (yes, she is a thumb sucker) and went to sleep. She hasnt been pulling away from direct physical contact at all, nor demanding it all the time, but it was the first time that I felt like she snuggled up to me with the intent of going to sleep. Even when we were playing on the bed together in a variety of touching and non-touching positions, she would just jump onto my lap every once a while for a giggle and a hug. The moral of the story is that we continue to get more and more connected every hour of every day and we are both ( I think she enjoyed discovering rasberries a little bit more, but who is to say).

Now I have an awake baby ready for dinner - here are a few pictures of her in the room today. Can you say teething? I actually gave her a tiny amount of tylenol because she was a little too quiet and constantly rubbing her fingers in her mouth. She is the non-complaining, non crying child, but really seemed like she wasnt feeling great. Much better now but maybe another small dose before bed if she keeps rubbing. (20 minutes later...I clearly have a child who doesnt feel very well...The cold teething toys havent been a big hit - I just put a wet wash cloth in the "freezer". Any other ideas from the pros would be appreciated. I do think she is running a bit of a temp, but havent taken it yet....OK, here is my adorable child. The pictures dont begin to capture it.

Miss Lucie Hong Bitsberger

2008-09-09T21:40:00.000-07:00

Introducing Miss Lucie Hong! Her mother is likely to continue calling her Hong, but when asked if she liked the name Lucie, she instantly smiled...so there it is many years later, I have started a family and actually decided on a name!!

No time to write just now, but I will post some pictures. I cant wait to share the story of her Giving and Receiving Day, so maybe when she is sleeping tonight! At any rate, here is a preview! She is now cracking herself and me up and totally coming into her own!! Still no crying! The G&R pictures were taken by someone and i need to figure out how to retrieve them off the computer!!

Sleeping Angel

Smiley Girl!

I am in heaven

2008-09-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

My daughter really is the buddha baby! She is great - hasnt cried at all yet..is sleeping as we speak. I am exhausted after a long day and am going to get in bed and see how the night goes for sleeping....Hong (name to be announced tomorrow) is too big for the crib they gave me, so we are going to bunk up tonight. here is a so-so pic I snapped off between our first tub and her nighttime bottle. More on the day at a later time. I feel so blessed and so lucky!!

A Taste of Hanoi

2008-09-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, the time has come. I am within hours of meeting my daughter. Who woulda thunk? And, of course, I had the worst night sleep ever. Awake every couple of hours and pretty much up after 3am. But, as my friend Terry pointed out in an email, I wouldnt have slept during labor either!! I have a lot of organizing to finish, so enjoy a couple of pictures of Hanoi and I will check in when I am holding that baby girl. YAY.

And have no fear, I am going to get a better picture and description of the wacky moped traffic that is not well depicted here. I also dont have a video camera, so the sound part (honking, beeping, beeping, honking) is totally missing.

Twas the night before baby..

2008-09-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I am here in Hanoi - YAY - it has been a couple of days now. So far, so good, but I am ready to move forward to the real purpose of the trip - that baby girl. The trip over was fine - long, but quite bearable. I kept thinking that the trip home is going to be a whole different story with a 15 month old on my lap. I arrived on Sat 11am and leave to go to the baby's orphanage to pick her up and complete the Vietnamese part of the adoption(the Giving and Receiving Ceremony) tomorrow afternoon! Wild, huh?

To start with, here are a few highlights of the trip over:

1) San Francisco airport, where the traveling to Asia concept really hit.

2)Taipei Airport was amazing - all these cool nooks and crannies and art...the flowers are real!

3) The view entering Hanoi by plane!

It feels surreal to think that I am going to become a mother tomorrow and start my own family and a whole new world. I feel scared but so excited.

This uploading pictures (and getting the text and photo layout to match!) are taking more time than I had planned. I think I will end here for tonight and write a bit more in the morning before I leave for Phu Tho Province.

My "Baby Girl" in July, 2008

2008-09-03T08:23:00.001-07:00

Here are the most recent pics I have of Hong (soon to have an American name as well, but I am waiting until I meet her!

The Virtue of Patience

2008-09-03T05:51:00.000-07:00

OK, so this is my first post since Oct, 2007. I don't know that I will continue to post while in Vietnam, but I will give it the old college try. I created this blog originally as a means of communicating with people while in Vietnam and have not chosen to use it as a means of documenting the "adventures" of the last 10 months. Hopefully, one day all those distateful and incredibly stressful experiences will fade out into a distant bad memory.

For now, I am in the mad rush to get ready to travel in TWO (and a half) days! It is a very different kind of stress, mostly about what, and more importantly, how to fit everything into a suitcase (or two - that has yet to be determined) and a 15 lb carry on (plus free extra poundage for my laptop - yippee). Until we meet again, I am back to packing and re-packing and organizing!!!

Quick Check In

2007-10-19T20:16:00.000-07:00

Well, clearly I am not going to get the new blogger of the year award. ...I am absolutely entranced with my new daughter and am waiting very impatiently to get travel approval so that I can bring her home. She was such a tiny, young thing at the time of referral, I want to see her when she is still some version of a young infant. I know that anytime I see her and hold her will be heaven, but it sure would be wonderful to get her home by Christmas. Could I ask for a better Christmas present? The baby accoutrements are piling up - very exciting, although I am waiting to move into my new apt downstairs from this one and the process is taking a LOT longer than expected. I just want to start working on her nursery and washing and sorting clothes and sheets, etc. Patience is a virtue and amazing baby girl will come to this woman that can wait!! That's all for tonight. I am a very happy woman.

The Best News Ever!

2007-09-15T05:47:00.000-07:00

I am still not sure that I am going to make the blogger of the year list!! I'm 2 days late in posting the best news I can ever remember!! I received my referral on Thursday, Sept 13, 2007 at 12:55pm. A phone call from the wonderful Judy Tokstad at PLAN and my life has been transformed! I was driving, pulled over, started crying and could barely think of what I wanted to ask Judy, except her name, birthday, weight and orphanage. I then rushed home, turned on my computer and doenloaded her pictures. I called my father and his wife and my closest friendsand family, who have all been waiting with bated breath to hear the news. Needless to say, we were all expecting it in Oct or early November!!

Hong Thi Nyugen (Nyugen Thi Hong in perfect Vietnamese order) was born on 07/08/07 (I love that date). I dont yet know her American name, but my friend Terry has been calling her Eva Heidi for a while since her first choice has been Eva (my wonderful mother's name) and last choice Heidi (which I wrote on a list once(!) and was never really considering..On Sept 5th she weighed 9 lbs. And on her referral pictures were taken on 09/04 - my mother's birthday - I love that! On Sept 5th she weighed 9 lbs!! Pretty good for a little peanut baby. She is beautiful and has such a peaceful energy about her (although looking atthe referral pictures timeline, it looks asthough they poked her, woke her up, snapped a few shots and when she'd done her job, she went right off to sleep!). I went out a bought little baby Eva Heidi Hong Thi a pink "referral day" rose that I am going to press and keep in her baby book. I had to go back to work for a couple of hours, but then celebrated with my friends the Windhorsts, drinking Pink champagne (I saw somewhere that Hong means pink), setting up her brand new bedding set on the floor, and proceeding to take pictures of her referral picture all tucked in bed!! Pretty funny for anyone who knows about Flat Stanley....I need to figure out how to download those pictures, if I can, from the Kodak Easy Share album my friend made of the evening...I came home, wrote my baby girl a letter (also to save) and attempted to sleep!

I have been exhausted and unable to sleep really well ever since (a sign of times to come??) but am in baby girl heaven and feel like the fun has really begun!!

I did it!

2007-08-04T13:25:00.001-07:00

The challenges remain. I think I have finally overcome the technological roadblocks that have kept me from starting this documentation of my adoption journey. If you are reading this, I have overcome my technological troubles. Pretty cool, but nothing compared to the fact that I think I will be holding my baby girl in my arms by the end of the year!!