Kaiden's Health

Kaiden won't get his medical examination until we go to Guangzhou which is not for another week. At best, that is just to make sure there is nothing major wrong with him. He has an appointment with our pediatrician for the first Wednesday after we return. We'll have to take him to a pediatric ophthalmologist for his eye condition. From what I can tell, his eyes appear fine. I would never have expected anything was wrong with them. Pete says he can tell. He doesn't appear to be death nor blind nor have anything major or unexpected wrong with him. He does have some health concerns. Those are all normal for orphanage children and I was prepared for them. One on hand, he is healthier than I expected. On the other hand, he is worse off than I expected. We were well prepared to expect to worst and hope for the best. That has truly turned out to be case.

He has an incredible laugh. He laughed constantly for the first few hours that we had him. If you watched the video I posted yesterday, then you got a glimpse of it.

He is 17 months old. I knew he would developmentally be around a 10 month old child. I knew he probably wouldn't talk nor walk and he does not. I did for some reason expect him to be able to sit up. I don't know why. It makes perfect sense that he can't and doesn't. He also seems to have poor head/neck control. He can control it but when you hold him, he often lays his head backwards, like to look up at the sky. His head is also flat on the back. I hadn't thought about this ahead of time but it makes perfect sense. It's why in the USA, we are constantly told the importance of tummy time. It's flat though, more on the side/slash back of his head. Our theory is that he spent most of his day in a crib and his caregiver was probably on his left hand side. So, he'd always lay on his back and look left at her. And for his neck, he probably craned that backwards to watch her as she walked away from him. Nothing that PT won't be able to help him over-come.

At 17 months old, I did think that he'd be off of bottles and formula. But I did know that he probably wouldn't be. But I still kind of thought he would be. Does that make sense? I did all of the reading to prepare myself ahead of time of what he would be like. But even reading as much as I did, it doesn't completely prepare you. I still, in the back of my head, thought that maybe he would not be like what I read he would probably be like. We were told that he feeds himself. There is no way that he can do that. He can't hold a bottle nor a spoon. I brought a bottle, just in case, but he doesn't like it. I brought sippy cups too but he doesn't like those either. We'll have to go shopping today to find a bottle that he likes. We'll work on weaning him off of it once we have him home. We tried to feed him a baby jar of carrots and rice cereal. He didn't like either one of those. We tried goldfish crackers and those he was getting used to eating. It takes him awhile to bit it and suck on it. I don't think he's had any solid food, only formula and congee. Congee is a type of Chinese hot cereal. We'll be able to get him congee today at the breakfast bar. I also brought him some honey graham cracker sticks. Those he'll really loved! His orphanage told us that he likes all sweet things. I was surprised that they give babies sweet foods but they do.

Even knowing all of this ahead of time, it's still sad. It's sad to think that all of his pain could have been avoided. I'm thankful God has given him us to care for and love and protect for the rest of his life.