Lukasz' Head

Images of a Bare Skull

CT Scan

We went in on Monday (Nov. 5) for the sedated CT scan with 3d reconstruction.  However, they told us that there had been an error in scheduling because they only do sedated CTs on Tuesdays.  They said that they had already talked to our Family Doctor for another "more clear" CT order and scheduled us for their only opening on Tues. But we needed to be warned that the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) doctor may not be comfortable sedated a child with "complicated" issues like Lukasz, in which case they would "try" to get an MRI anesthetist to put him under general.  And Lukasz could come in at 2:00 p.m. but could not eat after 6:00 a.m.  That's crazy for this eating machine!  Especially since he's learned how to sign "eat" and is VERY demanding about it.

On Nov. 6, I woke Lukasz up at 5:45 a.m. and fed him.   All day I was faced with insistent "eat" signing and pulling on my arms and legs with with pointing to the kitchen.  He was "starving"! At 1:30 we arrived for the CT.  As expected, the doctor listened to his cute little-engine-that-could breathing while he played with the exam room toys and said he thought with his breathing and history of sleep obstruction that sedation was not worth the risk and he would talk to the MRI anesthesia people but we should really think about it because surgery isn't scheduled yet and it is an elective CT (meaning "it's not as if he was in a car accident and the CT is an emergency necessity").  As our Family Doctor, who is also a dear family friend, said, "They were trying to gently talk you out of doing it at all because they were uncomfortable, but they didn't know they were talking to Susan Kane."

I told them I was fine with whatever anesthesia they needed to do because the surgeon needed the CT scan to look at on Monday, Nov. 12, and would schedule the surgery ASAP after he saw the CT and Lukasz.  Then, I had a brilliant idea.  I asked how long the scan would take.  "About 5 minutes."  And I said, "Well, he had an ear tube put in a few months ago while being "papoosed" because we did not want to wait for his major surgery to put the ear tube in to clear up his hearing and we knew he would have a local anesthesia and the procedure would only take 10 minutes.  If you want to "papoose" him, we are open to that since it would only be a few minutes."  The doctor, the nurse and the CT tech gave me such a look of appreciation and relief, you would not believe.  The doctor said, "That is a brilliant idea and such a wonderful option for Lukasz.  Sedation or general would just be such a risk for him, if "papoosing"him can keep him still enough, it removes all risk for him."

So that's what we (me, nurse and CT tech) did while he talked to the MRI anesthetist in case it didn't work.  We were done with the scan in under five minutes and before he was even done discussing options with the anesthetist!

Lukasz didn't like it, but it was over super fast and as soon as I picked him up, and showed him the jar of baby food I brought, he was laughing and happy.  Poor kid, couldn't understand why I wouldn't feed him all day after he worked so hard to learn how to sign it.

The nurse said it was the easiest CT all day. She and the Dr both said they wished more parents were open to the idea of "papoosing" as it removes the risk of repeated sedation or any sedation for kids with sleep/breathing issues.  Personally, Matt and I both think that if a procedure is going to take under 5 minutes, what is the point of putting your child through the risk of sedation/general anethesia?  Trust me, when Lukasz is a teenager and tries to guilt me over being "papoosed", I will not feel guilty AT ALL.  "One, it was safer, and, two, I knew you were tough enough to take it."

Here's what the five minute process looked like:

As you see, above, his CT scans were available immediately.  Kudos to OU Children's Hospital.  I opened the disc today for the first time to send images to the surgeon in St. Louis (Dr. Jeffery Marsh--another highly recommended surgeon who also happens to be in our insurance plan).  The first image at the top was the first I saw and I have to say that it really depressed me.  I am used to seeing his happy face and there is a stark contrast with the image of his bare skull. 

Halloween

On a happier note, lots of exciting things happening in our house with Halloween just past and the holidays coming.  We had a great Halloween, the kids trick-or-treated and went to bed fast and exhausted.  Even though Lukasz is almost two, this was probably his first "real" Halloween since most countries do not celebrate it like Americans do.  He tolerate the costume pretty well and really loved the candy his siblings were happy to share.

He got his Certificate of Citizenship in mid-October (a couple weeks past the USCIS estimated 6 weeks) so he has proof of the citizenship he got entering the US.  And we took that certificate to the Social Security office to apply for his SSN right away.  A week later he got his social security number--what's an American without a social security number?

All of Our Kids

I have been asked many times about our other adoptions, so I thought I would post a summary of how each of our other kids came to us.  I have written about it in our county bar publications but I felt I should put it here, too.  And I have been meaning to do it for so long but have been too tired to write any posts.  So, here is the history of our adoptions.

When I was 29 (end of 2005), after years of swearing I didn't want kids, the biological clock kicked in.  Wow!  I didn't even believe in the "biological clock" but I tell you experiencing it is BELIEVING it.  Overnight I became a baby/kid crazy wannabe momma.  I didn't care if I had a baby biologically or adopted a baby up through 12 years old.  I wanted kids in my house and it NEEDED to happen ASAP anyway we could make it happen!

In Oct 2005, we started the adoption process with DHS.  We didn't want to foster because we had both represented kids in the system and seen how the state lets them down by giving bio parents chance after chance for years before sending them home to their bio parents only for them to end up back in the system not long after.  We knew we could not handle the emotions of returning a child to their bio parents if we did not think the bio parents had mended their ways.  So we did straight adoption--just kids that have already had parental rights terminated.  They told us we would not get a baby, that that never happens when you go straight adoption instead of foster to adopt.  That was fine--I just needed a child!

We also started trying to conceive at the same time.  We went through a miscarriage and two failed adoptive matches--one in which a relative decided they wanted the four toddler siblings after our match and one in which the file revealed extreme psychological/emotional issues that we could not handle because we knew we would have more kids and would be afraid to bring in more kids with these particular issues.  All three situations were heart breaking and took place all in one year.  Plus, our beloved dog died.  I still call 2006 "the horrible year."  But it ended with pretty great with the placement of our oldest son.  What I  have learned is that every adoptive parent has heartache on his or her journey.

Iain-First Adoption, DHS

In Aug 2006, our worker called my husband on a Wednesday to tell us there was a baby in the NICU at Mercy Hospital who had been abandoned by his bio mom (she gave birth to him, said she wanted him adopted and then left the hospital without signing TPR).  Our worker asked my husband if we would be interested in adopting him.  He told her he had to talk to me first.  Crazy!  As if he didn't know what I would say.  I told him he needed to call her back ASAP before they gave that baby to anyone else.  He laughed at me.  I called our worker and explained that I was about 3 months pregnant (I believe it was actually 3 months the day she called!) and that due to the previous miscarriage we had been waiting until the 3 month mark to tell everyone, but we still wanted him, "could we still have him?"  She told us yes, that they had picked us.  

He was 3 mos premature and drug exposed.  Weighed 2 pounds at birth and had been in the NICU for 6 weeks.  The hospital staff was so in love with him that they had insisted DHS place him with an adoptive family, NOT foster, as termination was definitely going to be sought based on verbal statement of abandonment and lack of contact for over 30 days.  We met him the next day, Thursday, and roomed in with him overnight and brought him home on Friday.  He weighed 4.5 lbs when we brought him home.  We had breathing, sleeping and feeding issues for the first two years including 2 hospitalizations.  I had to perform CPR and call an ambulance for the first time in my life when he had been home 6 weeks because he developed a virus, stopped breathing and literally turned blue.  But he's healthy now except for requiring daily growth hormone shots to grow.

The adoption was finalized about 8 months after he had been home (6 months after termination of all birth parents rights).

Learned-Our only Bio

In Jan 2007, we had Learned.  Not only did we have Iain with his feeding, sleeping, breathing issues, but Learned somehow dissolved or otherwise disposed of all of his amniotic fluid three weeks early and necessitated an immediate c-section--in an ice storm!  But he was healthy.  He and Iain are the best of friends and in the same grade at school.

Millie, Domestic Private, and Padraig, "Embryo Adoption"

In April of 2008, we decided we wanted another child and we had not gotten pregnant.  We knew adoption would take awhile (getting Iain took a year), so we went back to DHS and they updated our home study.  But our social worker had been promoted to a different area. For six months, I tried to call, email and show up at the worker's office to no response or contact.  Turned out that she had gone on emergency medical leave almost as soon as we were assigned to her and they had not informed any of her families as they were not going to work any parent files that did not already have an adoptive placement--meaning a child placed in the family for adoption but before finalization.  The other workers had too many files, which I totally believe.  We were so upset.  All that wasted time AND all those waiting kids that wouldn't be matched to parents waiting for kids.

So, in December we transferred all of our home study info and documents to Deaconess.  In January 2009 they came to visit the home and make an addendum.

We were convinced a birth mom would never pick us since we already had two kids, even though Deaconess assured us that birth moms choose families for all kinds of reasons.  Sometimes they grew up in a large family and want that for their baby or they grew up in small families and wanted their baby to have siblings.  We were not so sure.  And when I decide I want a baby/child, I don't mean "Oh, after a few years of waiting is fine."  I mean, the minute that I feel it, it is full force and I am on a mission.

While we had been frustratingly waiting for DHS to come through during, we had learned that it would be likely impossible to conceive another child on our own.  And now, I was pretty unconvinced a birth mom would want to give a baby to a family who had two kids already.  I was convinced every birth mom who looked at our book would think just like the the pregnant teen in "Juno" who is looking at an ad for a family with three kids and says, "And besides they already have three kids. They're just like greedy little b#%@&es."

During our wait through DHS, our fertility doctor told us pretty quickly that he thought the only way we'd conceive another biological child would be through IVF.  After taking the information class at the clinic we decided it was not for us. However, we were told during that class that couples who do IVF at our clinic have three choices as to what to do with their unused embryos:  1) freeze them indefinitely for future use, 2) transfer them elsewhere for destruction (our clinic would not destroy) or 3) donate them to the clinic which would allow other infertile couples to choose them to attempt a pregnancy.  We could not believe people actually would give up their fertilized eggs (their kids!) to unknown couples.  But it was perfect for us, as we were ready to adopt anyway and did not care if we had any biological relationship to our children.

We made an appointment to talk to the nurse in charge of embryo donation at the clinic and found that, indeed, many couples donate their leftover embryos.  And there is no real process to match you up.  The nurse just gave us nameless info on the biological parents including some health history of the bio parents, race, how old, or when the embryos were created, etc, and then the recipient family simply decides which group they want. We chose a group of four embryos (they do not split up donated embryos--all related embryos go together).  After a few months of injections, on January 26, 2009, during another ice storm, we went to the clinic for the embryo transfer.  They told us only one of the four embryos survived the thaw and that we only had a 10% chance of pregnancy.

On January 30, 2009, four days after the transfer and only three or four weeks after completing all of Deaconess' requirements, Deaconess called to tell us that a birth mother had just given birth and had just chosen us to be her daughter's parents.  We were elated! And my husband joked that it was clear I would be pregnant as well because that's "how we roll" at the Kane house.  :-)

Nine months later, our son, Padraig was born five weeks early.  I know the math seems weird but 40 weeks of pregnancy is actually 10 months.

And here we are on the other side of our adoption journey to bring home our fifth child!  Just shows that if you want a large family, you really shouldn't let infertility stop you.  Single minded determination.,