"Growing Beautifully"

This morning, I took William back into Philadelphia for his appointment with the International Adoption Clinic at CHOP. In light of all of our recent, rushed doctors' visits, today's encounter was a breath of fresh air. We met with three professionals: two pediatricians and an occupational therapist. They spent a luxurious amount of time with us, asking and answering questions and evaluating William.

We started off by taking some basic measurements. According to their figures, William still remains in the 90th percentile for height and is in the 90th for weight (the local pediatrician's figure put him in the 75th percentile. Go figure. Our boy must have done a ton of growing in the last 7 days.)

Next came the OT evaluation. The therapist let William crawl around on a colorful gymnastics mat and observed his gross and fine motor skills. She pulled various toys out of her traveling box and subtly tested his ability to manipulate them. She even enticed him with Cheerios - his first! - to test his manual dexterity.

At the end of that round, she determined that his gross motor skills are in the range of the average 7 month-old, not too far off since he just turned 8 months-old. He has already made a good deal of progress in the three weeks that he has been with us. (You can see that in the picture below, he is starting to get more comfortable on all-fours, a position he has recently begun assuming every now and then.)

The OT also noted that his fine motor skills are right on track for his age and that his visual motor integration is in the range of an 8 to 9 month-old. When all was said and done, she glowed with praise at how easy and fun it was to work with William. I guess she must see a lot of tough cookies.

Next came the physical evaluation. Overall, everything looked fine. There are a few things that we need to follow up on, including William's clogged tear duct. This may require intervention if it doesn't improve over the next several months. However, on the whole, the pediatricians were very impressed with William's health and remarked that he was "growing beautifully." They also gave kudos to Taiwan's adoption programs for supplying such a relative wealth of information about their adoptive children.

Unfortunately, we ended the day on a sour note. Blood work. Poor William had to have 5 vials and one syringe of blood collected. It's hard to imagine that such a little guy could have so much blood in his body! Thankfully, he didn't even notice when the first needle went into his arm; so busy was he munching on his surfboard rice cracker that I conveniently whipped out just as the needle went into his arm (these crackers are priceless!).

Then the technician began moving the needle to get a better blood flow. That's when William's clogged tear duct magically unclogged itself and unleashed a torrent of tears. Our poor baby sobbed inconsolably as the technician wiggled and jiggled that needle numerous times. Then, to make matters worse, she stuck his other arm to try to get more blood. William probably thought I was evil for restraining him while some stranger tortured him with needles, sucking the lifeblood out of him. It didn't help that all of this took place during what should have been his naptime.

In the end, all was forgiven. William fell asleep in the car on the way to pick Andrew up from school. After tearing through his bottle feeding after waking, he rewarded me with some oh-so-cute smiles.

Whew. I'm happy to report that we are all done with our marathon of doctors' visits, at least for the next three weeks. I can only imagine that William feels the same way.