Sorry for the lack of pictures yesterday. We went to AIT to apply for Christian's visa; everything went relatively well. However, poor Christian was not a happy camper because we had to wake him up at 8am (his 'normal' schedule is to go to bed at midnight, wake up for a bottle around 6am, and then sleep until 1pm). We decided to cancel our sightseeing with Mr. Yeh and Alex and go back to the room to try and get him to nap (and let us nap as well - I think I got about 3 hours of sleep the last two nights).
Once back at the room, things went rapidly downhill. I think the combination of lack of sleep plus strange and incompetent people was just too much for him, and he spent the majority of time either upset or really upset - to the point where he was not eating. We found that the only way to calm him down was to walk outside carrying him; unfortunately, as a long term strategy, this has some obvious disadvantages for us. Finally, towards the evening, we managed to get him to nap and eat, and that helped a bit. He went down at his usual bed time (around 11:30pm), and he's still sleeping at 4:30am. We hope he can get more sleep today!
We are slowly learning to help him (sometimes he looks at us like, "You dummies! Why aren't you doing XXX?"), and I'm hoping that today will be a better day. We've already gotten more sleep last night than in the previous days, so that's a good sign. We have some sightseeing planned with Mr. Yeh today again, and we pick up his visa.
Anyway, here are some pictures we took of him when he was not crying. It's hard to believe someone so cute can get so loud! :-)
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Welcome to parenthood!
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4 comments:
It's so great to hear from you, Jeff and Amy! I was praying today that God would give you peace despite the challenges that you are certainly facing. :) I've never heard of an international adoption without big bumps, usually in the form of tears and sleeplessness. Had I forgotten to tell you that? :) But you are already demonstrating your flexibilty and ingenuity as parents to figure out a way to calm Christian down. So is it "normal" in Taiwan to put an infant down at midnight? Maybe jet lag won't affect him at all. He could fall into the perfect schedule immediately. :) Love, Cheryl and family
Amy and Jeff,
Loved your post and your pictures! You had me giggling when you quoted Christian calling you "dummies." You're too funny. The first few days are always tough since both of you are going through major transitions. He's a good loud crier? :) So was Katie!
I can't wait to hear more about your journey... and to see more pictures. Christian is an absolute doll!!
Love,
Libby
Oh he IS so cute and that is the exact same crib that our little guy was sleeping in just over a week ago :)
Hang in there, your not giving yourselves enough credit, newbies and old hands alike all come up against this tricky adjustment time. Its actually a really good sign that he is hard to comfort right now because it shows how well he was attached to his foster mum which means he knows how to bond and attach to someone and will soon do that with you.
It is really hard when you can't find the magic "fix" or at least you can but you can't keep it up 24/7. Do you have a stroller? Maybe that would satisfy his need to be walked around? We used our baby carrier a LOT which made it easier to hold our guy and he loved it as long as we didn't stand still for more than 5 seconds ;)
Have you tried playing music, you can download Chinese songs on the computer or having the TV on as background noise? Sometimes the babies are thrown by everything being so much quieter than they are used to.
The only other thing I can think of to mention is that we found with both our daughter from China and our baby boy from TW that in the early weeks they both needed much more sleep than was their usual schedule (according to the caregiver/foster mum notes). I learnt to put them down for naps much more often than I had thought they needed and that really helped them, it was like they needed the extra sleep to process all the changes. Sorry, that piece of info is of absolutely no help to you if your having trouble getting him to sleep, just wanted to mention that being over tired can bring on the grumps, once he gets his sleep rhythm back it will be much easier.
Oh and back patting (quite firmly) that can be really, really soothing.
Your doing great AND keeping your sense of humor, I guess when faced with that much cuteness you can't help but smile even when your exhausted :)
I can only imagine how exhausted you must be feeling with the lack of sleep. I'm sure it will feel good to be back home. Hopefully he can get back into his sleep pattern soon. We'll pray that he sleeps well on the plane too!
Love,
Amy
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