Battle Scars

Today was the worst.day.imaginable. At least part of it. We went to our first appointment at Vanderbilt Children's International Adoption Clinic. It started off great as we played with some toys in the waiting room. We get called back and the nurse does his weight, height, head circumference, blood pressure. All is good. Our boy is 27.5 inches and 17 pounds. On the lower end of the scale but all good. We go back to the exam room and the doc comes in. She's great. She won't be our primary pediatrician as this was just the first check-in at the adoption clinic. She first starts out asking us what OUR questions are. Very cool. We go through a few that we had and she answers everything for us. She checks him out and he's GREAT. We had a little concern on his cough but it has gotten better since he's been home. She gives the thumbs up and says the nurse will be in to do the TB test and then for us to go to the lab to get blood drawn.

Crap. We know what that means.

Nurse comes in and apologizes in advance. Nice lady. Terrible job she has to do.

She has me hold him in my lap. Put his legs between my legs so I could squeeze and hold them down. Had one my arm wrapped around his body. Had the other hand holding on to his free hand. Amber holds onto the hand/arm where the nurse is doing the TB test. Boy is SCREAMING. ALLIGATOR TEARS. We had not seen anything close to this from him. He looks up at me and the pain in his eyes. Like I thought you loved me, why are you allowing this to happen!? It was the longest 15 seconds of my life. Or so I thought. Once it was over, Amber whisked him up and he calmed down quickly. Such a trooper.

We take a couple minutes to regain all our composures and then head down to the lab on the 6th floor for the blood draw. They had a fishtank in there and Amber took him over to check out the fish ... he was intrigued by them. A good distraction. Soon enough though, they call us back. We go to this little room and the nurse sits us down again. She ties off his little bicep and the boy starts SCREAMING. He has already been through this once ... he's not being tricked again. She really can't find a vein in his right arm so she unties his arm and over to the left one where he had his TB test. WAILING again ... our boy knows. She's up to no good. And she can't find one there either. By that time, she knew he needed a break. He's sweating rockets. I stand up with him and look out the window and he calms down quickly. He doesn't like being confined and doesn't like pain. Can't blame the lil guy.

So she has us sit back down, does the right arm again. Boy is screaming like I've never heard. She finds a vein. She sticks him ... I don't know if I have ever felt the pain I felt then. Being our first child, I have never experienced seeing my child go through something like that. Others have told me how difficult it is, but words can't describe the heartache and how terrible it was. I just had to close my eyes, kiss him on his forehead, tell him I love him, and that it would be over soon. It sucked. Seriously. And to top it off, she drew like 100 viles of blood from him. Didn't know if he was going to have any left in him. It took F.O.R.E.V.E.R. As she got the last one done, Mommy whisked him up again and he calmed down quickly. Serious trooper. As you sit there, you wonder, 'what is this doing to our bonding and attachment?' ... well, it appears nothing. Praise God! Boy had a fun afternoon with us.

My boy's a tough kid.

His battle scars...

His TB test bandaid


His blood test battle wound


He bounced back quickly. We got home and he was back to his old self...


Grabbing the baseball ... he seemed to really like watching it on TV tonight too ... sweet. We gotta get to Wrigley soon!

Playing on top of mommy...

How cute is he?

So he figured out that if we stand him up to our coffee table, it's the perfect height for mouth to meet table. Imagine that.

My parents got in from Illinois tonight and Silas loved meeting his Grandma and Grandpa...

She's a proud grandma!

HI GRANDMA!!

HI GRANDPA!!!

Tomorrow will be a fun day hanging out and then we plan to go to the zoo on Wednesday with Grandma and Grandpa. Then to our primary pediatrician Wednesday afternoon for the TB reading, stool sample, have our pediatrician meet Silas, etc. Much better days planned than today.