Bill and I give Will all the credit in the world. What a trouper he turned out to be. I think he was numb for a while, completely dumbfounded that he was in this new life with this house full of toys and balloons. After our little party, Bill and I took him up to his new room and showed him his bed and his stuff. We stayed in there with him the first night. We put him in his bed, and then we slept on the trundle that went underneath it.
For his first night, we were all in there with him, and it was just the greatest feeling new parents could have. We were together as a family and we were home.
• • •
ALTHOUGH IT SEEMED destined to be, adopting a child from India wasn’t easy. Will’s adoption process had taken just under a year from start to finish, so we hoped for a similar experience with our daughter. Unfortunately, different countries work at different paces. And the delays we experienced with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Department and the Indian government, which were very common, pushed back our trip to India to get our daughter. In the end, we left for India after sixteen months of waiting.
As our travel date approached, we received one of our very infrequent updates about little Nidhi. She was very small. Even for a Little Person, she was small, and I was becoming more and more alarmed that she might be severely malnourished. At two years old, she measured only twenty-three and three-quarter inches in length and weighed just fifteen pounds. She was well under the third percentile from a “failure to thrive” perspective, which meant that she was in the lowest 3 percent of the population in terms of growth.
It could have been a combination of genetics and her dwarfism that exacerbated her diminutive stature. My Indian friends tell me it is typical of girls from India to be extremely petite, but I also was concerned that being in an orphanage with limited resources, malnourishment might have been a large component. She had been brought to the orphanage when she was only a week old, we knew very little of her environment or orphanage, and we had been warned that often infants and children in orphanages have very poor nutrition, which can contribute to growth delays. In fact, the rule of thumb for international adoption is to expect developmental and growth delays. Of course, multiple factors other than nutrition can influence this, but in any case, time was of the essence.
Will was going with us. He had arrived on March 14, 2013, seven months earlier, and he was now a seasoned traveler. So, on October 12, Bill, Will, our nanny, Kate, five members of our television crew, and I boarded a flight for Mumbai via Newark International Airport.
We landed in Mumbai the night before Bill’s birthday, Sunday, October 13. He was about to receive his gift, a brand-new daughter. We had been in Guangzhou, China, for my birthday, and now we were in India for Bill’s birthday. Birthday gifts didn’t get better than this. Unfortunately, we couldn’t actually see our daughter until Monday, as visitation was not allowed over the weekend. On that Sunday, we did just a bit of sightseeing, including a trip to Juhu Beach, a popular tourist spot about twelve miles north of Mumbai on the shores of the Arabian Sea, and had dinner at the hotel the night before our big day. We went to bed exhausted from our trip, but Monday couldn’t come fast enough.
Monday morning found us boarding the large van we had hired with room for everyone who was going with us. We had two cameramen, two executive producers, a field producer for the filming, and three people we had hired in Mumbai—a driver and two security personnel. Bill and I decided Will would stay behind at the hotel with Kate when we went to get Nidhi. He would have his own private meeting as soon as we had his sister with us.
The trip to the orphanage took over an hour, even though it was only seven miles from our hotel. No sooner had we crossed our first bridge, which was almost in sight of the hotel, than we had to pay money to people with guns who wouldn’t let us pass unless we gave them something. The traffic and driving conditions in Mumbai were horrific. Imagine thousands of cars and no traffic rules, and drivers who had little regard for each other, pedestrians, or the livestock that meandered through the streets. Cows received some respect, but everything else was fair game, to be bumped, nudged, scraped, or cut off.
We didn’t spend the entire hour worrying about all the accidents we saw, but we easily could have, as there were so many. We were both nervous and excited about meeting our daughter, whom we would name Zoey Nidhi. We chose the name Zoey as it was one that I loved and was the name that my mother had wanted to give me. Even though that was what I was supposed to be named, my grandma had thought it wasn’t a proper name and insisted my mother name me Jennifer Lynn. Just like with Will, we kept Zoey’s Indian first name as her middle name.
I was more worried about what condition we would find her in. Was she well nourished? Would she be too sick to travel home with us for any reason? Was she walking and talking? How well was she achieving her developmental milestones? She had just had her second birthday a few weeks before we got there. But she had been in this orphanage for quite a long time, and we didn’t know what kind of care she had received. The long months of waiting that we had to endure before this trip weighed on my mind. All I wanted was to get her and take care of her.
The orphanage was on Jail Road, which was no coincidence. The place had been a prison and was still surrounded by the eighteen-foot walls that had protected it then. It was probably in the worst part of town. There was stinky, rotting garbage piled up all along Jail Road. The homelessness was beyond anything I had ever imagined. On the sidewalks right near the orphanage, babies were lying on bedsheets spread right on the sidewalk. Probably every two feet, there was another man, woman, or child, seemingly with nowhere to go.
When we finally got to the orphanage, the van backed into a designated spot. No one but Bill and I got out, thinking the best way to meet the folks at the orphanage, including the head of the facility, was privately. Oddly, the staff there wanted to know where the film crew was! It seemed the adoption agency in the United States might have purposely disclosed that we had a television show, hoping it would motivate the Indian government and the local management of the orphanage to be as diligent as possible with our case, and perhaps hoping, moreover, that the documentary-style filming of our adoption story would benefit other families in the midst of their adoption story if we shined a positive light on the hard-working people within the Indian government helping children find their forever families. So, with the orphanage’s encouragement and approval, we brought some of the crew inside.
The orphanage housed about 150 kids, about two-thirds under the age of seven. For those over the age of seven, the facility served as a rescue home for girls and women who came from situations of abuse. For those seven and under, the facility was a co-ed orphanage. Kids could arrive there within days of being born.
We went into a meeting room where we were introduced to most of the senior staff at the orphanage. It wasn’t long before Zoey was brought in. It was a moment that we will never forget. She was beautiful and much tinier than we had imagined, even though we knew her measurements. This little meeting was supposed to be a first chance to say hello and hold her, but as it turned out, it was pretty high drama. No sooner had she gotten into the room than she started screaming furiously! We took some time trying to soothe her, but nothing was working. I knew this was expected, but it was still so hard to meet our daughter for the first time and feel that there was nothing we could do to comfort her.
Zoey’s caregiver quickly scooped her up and took her to get cleaned up and dressed for her departure, while we went on a tour of the facility, which had its own surprises. It was a compound of old prison buildings, and most of the buildings didn’t even have windows. The buildings had an oppressive and dank feel. The walls were actually moist due to the humidity and no air-conditioning. The facility was understaffed and poorly funded, and it was a miracle that the staff managed to do what they did with the limited resources they had. All the staff except for the teachers were volunteers with Asha Sadan, the women’s charity that started the orphanage. The
play yard seemed okay, and the few rooms for arts and crafts had some supplies. The older kids made handbags here that were sold to visitors to raise money for the orphanage.
We were disappointed to find that because Zoey was so small, she was lumped in with all the infants even though she was two. Her nursery had twenty or so cribs and was overseen by three rotating caregivers. Zoey was still being treated like a baby, probably bottle fed and then put back into her crib. Because she was in with this age group, she didn’t get to participate in any toddler activities, such as running around playing with the children her age. She just wasn’t being engaged with in the same way that the other two-year-olds were, due to her small size.
In a way, Bill and I recognized this was probably safer for her, seeing she was so small and underweight, but it was still extremely sad. In Will’s foster facility, he had been with a much smaller group of people. He had also been with other children with special needs, so the level of care had been a lot better. They had a staff physician who addressed issues in the foster facility that didn’t demand emergent care. He had even gotten speech therapy in Mandarin.
We tried to find out as much as we could about Zoey’s health, personality, and background from the staff who had been caring for her for so long. They gave us her medical records, but not a whole lot of other details. We longed for any information about her that would help us to understand and know this lovely little girl, but we were able to find out very little. The staff was very nice, though. All the female caregivers were called “Auntie” by the children. They were responsible for everything: the food, the cleaning, the education, and the general care.
While we were doing the paperwork, we were treated to little sweet dessert balls and a cup of tea. We finished signing the last of the logbooks and left the orphanage with Zoey in Bill’s arms to climb into the van. She yelled all the way to the van, where things actually got worse. We didn’t think she could actually scream any louder, but she proved us wrong. Once inside the vehicle, she got so upset that first she tried to bite Bill, then tried to bite me. Her rage was so intense that she was soaked with sweat. We were happy to be bringing her home with us and at the same time extremely worried about her. Luckily, she finally calmed down and slept the last couple of miles back to the hotel.
When we got back to the hotel suite, we wanted to get Zoey ready to meet Will, but before that, we wanted to give her a quick bath, a change of clothes, and a bedbug inspection. We had had a bedbug scare when we brought Will home from China and didn’t want to make that mistake again. It was a “do not pass go, go straight to the bath” process. Her cries were finally quelled as I became a bit familiar to her. By the time we finished giving her a bath, she was rather attached to me, and she wouldn’t let me put her down.
Next, we brought her into the living area where Will and Kate were playing and waiting for us to return. Will was sitting at the coffee table playing with a toy, ready to meet his sister. At first, he kept a bit of distance so as not to crowd her too quickly. Zoey looked like a deer in headlights, but who wouldn’t? She was surrounded by strangers and had been taken from all she knew. Will hopped off the couch and crouched below her. He leaned in and kissed her foot as he said, “Hi, Ozoy,” his pronunciation of Zoey. It was one of the most endearing things I had ever seen, and in that instant, I knew that our new family was complete. Will was obviously ready to be a big brother!
• • •
DURING ALL THE joy and excitement of bringing a new daughter into our family, I started having a frightening medical issue. I was experiencing very heavy vaginal bleeding. I assumed it was related to a medical procedure I had undergone the previous month, a dilatation & curettage (D&C) for a molar pregnancy, a nonviable pregnancy, which needed medical intervention. A molar pregnancy begins the way a normal pregnancy does, but instead of a fetus forming in the uterus, a ball of cells begins to grow. It was the first time we had ever gotten pregnant, but it wasn’t viable, it wasn’t expected, and it required a medical intervention in the form of a D&C.
After the D&C, I was told by the doctors that they believed they had removed all the tissue, and I was good to go. After the pathology report came back as a complete molar pregnancy, we were informed that I would still need to be monitored to make sure my hormones returned to normal levels, and by the time we left for India, I seemed to be problem free and my hormone levels were coming down nicely. Now, with this bleeding, I wasn’t sure what was going on, but obviously I was concerned. It started slowly and then while we were in Mumbai would increase, then decrease, making it difficult to make a decision about whether I should be really alarmed. Given my short stature, any significant loss of blood can affect me greatly.
When I told Bill about it, he was quite upset and worried about me. I tried to put his mind at ease, but the truth was that I was frightened. The bleeding was increasing, and we were in a remote city with poor health-care access should something more serious develop. I knew better than anyone that the last thing any of us wanted was for me to get a blood transfusion in India, where the screening process is not as extensive as it is in the United States. We were only in Mumbai a few days when this all began.
During our flight to New Delhi to complete the adoption process for Zoey, I really started to feel as if I was hemorrhaging. It was almost as if moving around more caused the bleeding to get worse. We were already overwhelmed with the process of meeting Zoey and getting her settled, as well as traversing this new country to get her documents. It seemed almost unreal that I might have a real health crisis on top of everything else that was going on. And yet the bleeding persisted and then started to get more serious.
The two-hour flight was Zoey’s first airplane ride, and amazingly she did great. She didn’t want to be in anybody’s lap, she just wanted to be alone in her seat. I was still bleeding, starting to feel more lightheaded and nauseated. Coincidentally, my boss, Dr. Stephen Welty, the head of neonatology at Texas Children’s Hospital, happened to be in New Delhi at this very same time on a two-week trip for medical work he was doing with a local governmental hospital. We were supposed to meet for fun when we got to New Delhi, but instead I ended up calling him for a recommendation on an OB/GYN he might be working with at the hospital whom I could see. He was unbelievably helpful and connected me with a gynecologist, who gave me something to stop the bleeding. It was a clotting agent that slowed the bleeding down, but it didn’t arrest it completely.
I got in touch with my gynecologist in Houston, who told me to get home immediately. When I explained that I needed to stay and finish Zoey’s adoption and then return home, she insisted that it was urgent for me to return to Houston on the next possible flight. We estimated that my blood loss was already significant. Of course, my brain went to the worst-case scenario at this point, and I became worried that if for some reason I became unconscious due to more blood loss and shock, the people treating me would not know how to care for me—providing medications and fluids, and more important, securing an airway and intubating me, because I have a truly difficult airway due to my cervical spine structural issues and anatomy.
This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was. For the last few days, I had been managing to convince myself that the bleeding would be fine during the times when it slowed down, but then out of nowhere, it would pick back up again. But it was after I spoke to my doctor in the States that the serious nature of the situation really hit me.
The juxtaposition of a major health scare and a joyful bonding experience with Zoey was making my head spin. The thought of leaving my newly united little family to head home without them was heartbreaking and almost unimaginable. Because it was so uncertain what was going on and whether the bleeding would continue, I really struggled with the decision. I truly couldn’t imagine leaving them on the other side of the world. Bill couldn’t leave, as Zoey still had to finish up her adoption and secure her visa. If I left, I wanted to take Will with me so that Bill would only need to concentrate on one child, but
again, he pointed out that, heaven forbid, if something happened to me en route back to the U.S., who would take care of Will? He was right. So, after much deliberation, we agreed I needed to go home and seek medical attention.
I gave Bill my power of attorney, so he could finish up Zoey’s adoption, and arranged my flight home as soon as possible, trying to keep my panic level in check.
Meanwhile, that same Wednesday, Bill took Zoey for her medical clearance exam, which was required by the U.S. government for entrance into the United States. Everything was good, but final clearance would still take another two days, the amount of time it took for the TB test results.
Saying good-bye to Will, Zoey, and Bill was not at all easy. I felt some ease knowing Bill had our nanny, Kate, with him to help out and also the support of the film crew. At the airport in New Delhi, it was a difficult good-bye, but we both knew it was time to get into survival mode and get through this. We had to for our children and for each other.
The whole situation was nothing I had expected to be dealing with, and was almost surreal. I was leaving my husband and two kids, one of whom I had only had for two days, in a third world country for a medical emergency. But, I think both of us knew there was nothing we could do to change the situation, and now we had to focus all our energy on getting through this as quickly as possible.
I was very appreciative that at least I wasn’t traveling completely alone. Because we were filming this trip, we had two security personnel with us, and one of them accompanied me back to the U.S. We discussed a plan for him to carry out if indeed the worst happened, and I lost consciousness during the flight. I actually had a note in my pocket, telling the flight crew what to do to secure my airway and prevent further injury to my spine, as my neck fusion made things more complicated.
Bill told me months later that he had tracked my entire journey on his phone, never sleeping the entire night and making sure any plane I was on was not diverted, which could mean a medical emergency for me. It still brings tears to my eyes when I think of him in India with our children, staying up all night to track my flights to be sure I wasn’t in danger. I can’t exactly explain in words what his love means to me. It is actions like these, gestures that I might not even know about at the time, that make Bill the incredible partner that he is, and I love him for it.
Life Is Short (No Pun Intended) Page 23