I thought I would share an excerpt of an email from our social worker with you. This was part of her response to some of my questions about feeding and food for infants at the orphanage in Ethiopia. Our baby will be very well fed!! And so clean! We are going to have to radically change our lifestyle to keep up with this precedent. :)
Daily Schedule:
6-6:30 AM: Wakes up, this is followed by a bottle
6:30 AM: Bath
8 AM: Bottle
8--9 AM: Nap
9 -11:40 AM: Outside playing/laying in the sun, massage, etc.
11:40 AM: The babies go inside for a nap and bottles in the living room/nursery
4:30 PM: Upstairs for a bath until 5:30 PM and pajamas.
6:30 PM: Bottle after bath and bedtime
10-11 PM: Wake up and bottle, diaper change, etc.
Wakes up 3-4 times per night for diaper changes and for bottles.
6.) How many infants are fed at a time? Only one with each Special Mother at a time.
As we've learned about orphanages and institutional homes for kids, that last sentence is unbelievable. What a blessing to be working with this organization! Thank you Frasiers!
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Homework
Dodd and I live in a corporate world. This we realized after the first conference call with social worker, Julie, from the international agency this week. She is so supportive, so transparent, so NICE, it's almost a shock to our slightly calloused business sensibilities! She and the agency continue to exceed our expectations. We have regularly scheduled calls with our assigned social workers all the way until we bring our kids home as well as after we're home. They are totally on top of the process.
While we work on gathering legal documents for the dossier, we also started some of our homework. The international agency and the state of Wisconsin require about 25 hours of education for adoptive parents. This weekend we had to draw our child and imagine what he or she will be like. We had to imagine counting his fingers and toes. Such indulgences I have not allowed myself until now. The activities made a child seem real, and forced us to face deep seeded assumptions and the possible difficulties ahead. We had to acknowledge how we, our child, and our child's biological parents have experienced grief and loss. We had to identify the sounds, smells, and foods our child may be accustomed to, and be aware of how foreign the sounds, smells, and food in our house will be to her. You know us, we dig learning and education so this is right up our alley and our Saturday afternoon of homework flew by. We had some good good conversations. It was so good, we wish all parents, bio or adoptive, got to do this!
While we work on gathering legal documents for the dossier, we also started some of our homework. The international agency and the state of Wisconsin require about 25 hours of education for adoptive parents. This weekend we had to draw our child and imagine what he or she will be like. We had to imagine counting his fingers and toes. Such indulgences I have not allowed myself until now. The activities made a child seem real, and forced us to face deep seeded assumptions and the possible difficulties ahead. We had to acknowledge how we, our child, and our child's biological parents have experienced grief and loss. We had to identify the sounds, smells, and foods our child may be accustomed to, and be aware of how foreign the sounds, smells, and food in our house will be to her. You know us, we dig learning and education so this is right up our alley and our Saturday afternoon of homework flew by. We had some good good conversations. It was so good, we wish all parents, bio or adoptive, got to do this!
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