Heidi the Brave

For too long, Heidi has had to be brave on her own.

We thought we were prepared to walk an unknown path with Heidi. We had smatterings of details about the first 22 months of her life. 

Born premature, weighing 2 pounds. Abandoned at 3 months, weighing 3.5 pounds. A 56 day hospital stay. A month in the orphanage. Another 32 day hospital stay. A short time in Beijing. Back to the orphanage. Moved to a group home. 

Heidi has several self-soothing techniques that break my heart. She sometimes rocks, sometimes hits her head, occasionally flaps her arms, and often, often stares at her hands. These were things I had seen in some of her videos and came prepared to help her look to us to comfort her rather than withdraw and self-soothe. 

But in between she loves people. She loves Trent especially. She loves to be held. She makes great eye contact. She loves interactive games like peek-a-boo. She loves when we clap her hands or when Trent does a little hand game with her. She has started giving kisses to Trent. 

She can now crawl, stand for short times unassisted, she took one step alone in the hotel, and she walks holding hands. 

She cannot really pick up or hold anything in her hands. We don’t know if this is a neurological disorder or just a lack of opportunity. Definitely will need therapy for this, but again, not unexpected due to videos we had prior to adopting her. 

What we were unprepared for was her food trauma. Whenever we feed her she screams. If she sees us preparing food, she screams. If we eat, she screams. 

So much crying. :( Side note: I’m so thankful for my husband. He is so patient and calm through all of this; praying for Heidi, praying for me, giving us comfort.

This morning, breakfast was the worst yet. We felt like we were force feeding her and it was just so hard to do and to watch. We began to think that she is genuinely in pain when she swallows. We could tell she liked the taste of the yogurt we were giving her but as soon as she swallowed she screamed. 

I reached out to our guide to ask for help. I’ve had 5 other kids, babysat a ton, and fostered. I have never seen a child do what she does when eating. 

Our guide asked if we mind if the group home mother would bring food she normally eats and shows us how she feeds her. We debated whether it would be more traumatic to have her see her again or not. 

In the end we felt that we needed to see first hand what she was doing. She brought a thick rice/noodle soup. The first 10 minutes she did exactly what she did for us. She screamed and cried. The group home mother said she sometimes just does that and you feed her anyway. She continually shoved large spoons of soup into her mouth. Heidi would reflexively swallow, scream, then more soup was shoveled into her mouth. 

 I think even our guide was shocked by this and agreed with us that maybe her throat hurt or she had another problem. The group mom insisted this is normal and that she sometimes cries a long time. The group home mother gave her a break from feeding and when she calmed down she spooned milk into her mouth. Heidi did stop crying then and accepted the spoons of milk without screaming. 

She fed her very, very fast. I do understand the necessity of this in an orphanage setting but I’ve just never personally seen a baby eat like that. She also doesn’t sit her up to eat. She lays her in the crook of her arm like you would feed a baby a bottle or nurse. The group home mother told us you can hold her if you want or you can just lay her on the floor to feed her. As you can imagine this isn’t a conducive way to feed a baby in a public setting in a hotel breakfast buffet. Language is also a big barrier. On our last trip the hotel staff seemed to all speak English really well. That is definitely not the case here so it’s not like we could even ask for what we want to be sent to our room. 

We definitely will have lots and lots of feeding therapy, dental work, and doctor appointments in our future. 

The best thing is that from here on out Heidi doesn’t have to be brave on her own. She has sisters, parents, grandparents, a church family, and all of you to cheer her on to greatness. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your love and prayers. 

I’m not a typically emotional, crying type of mom but Heidi just may turn me into one. My heart is breaking for all she has endured in her life. I know she will flourish in time and I will be grateful I have documented these hard moments so we can celebrate together her success. 

But just right now. It’s hard. 

She’s wiped out. 

We took a walk in the afternoon to get out of our room for awhile. Heidi seemed to like her bonnet. :) 

This picture is for my mom! Mission tortillas in China!! Who knew?

In the evening we tried to give her more of the soup that the group mom left for us. She was screaming and I was spooning into her mouth. I felt like I was only adding to her trauma. We tried instead to give her a bottle. She doesn’t know how to even suck a bottle. I sang “Grace, Grace, God’s Grace” over and over. She calmed down and let the bottle drip milk into her mouth. I would gently try to get her to open her mouth to accept the nipple into her mouth. It was very, very slow, but she was calm. I felt like a better human by being extraordinarily patient with her than I did spooning food down a screaming child’s throat. 

I feel like we’re starting from the beginning with a newborn but I’m not sure what else to do. Force feeding her isn’t right or helpful for anyone. Thank you to so many of you who reached out privately, who have commented, who have prayed. I have felt much more at peace since this morning. 

I’ve put in a call to our doctor at home and hope to hear from him soon. We already have an appointment set up for when we get back but I’m hoping to have some reassurance that Heidi can exist on so little food. I’m thinking we’ll give her a bottle several times a day and offer spoonfuls of yogurt/baby cereal in between. I will not be force feeding her and hope that she can feel our love and patience through it all. 

We ate out with our group and tried to get foods from Nanchang and Jiangxi. 

We ate a lot of different types of pork. One was similar to sweet and sour pork with pineapple, an order of dumplings, some pork balls covered in sticky rice, a pork soup, an egg dish that looked like flan but was just egg without the yummy sweet stuff that flan has- and this had little shrimps on top, and another pork dish with a savory sauce that had onions and rice patties. I liked everything but the egg was my least favorite. 

Heidi actually did well at the restaurant. 

Heidi had a good bath and lotion and played some peek-a-boo with daddy. I got her to drink some more milk and now she’s sleeping peacefully.

Thank you all for your continued prayers! We leave Nanchang tomorrow around 10 am and head to Guangzhou, Guangdong for the rest of our trip.