One Week Old!

Emily is ONE WEEK OLD and doing well! Monday (11/8) when we went to visit her her nasal gastric feeding tube was removed and so was the IV in her hand. She is feeding orally! And today, Tuesday, the doctor says we will try a feeding or two ourselves.

The sisters at Lotus Hospital are really amazing. They take excellent care of all the babies in their care. One of the other parents with premie twins has a job associated with improving premie care. She says (and we agree!) that the care our babies receive here is fantastic. Most importantly the nurses (sisters) obviously care about the babies well being and smile and talk to them all the time. And we are still in the mode where we are afraid we can break Emily just by touching her! In a few more days we will move into a room at Lotus and stay with Emily full time.

For the past few days the routine has been to go see her for an hour or so, leave during the doctor's rounds, get a consultation with the doctor(s), then go back for another visit in the afternoon-evening. In between we do errands. Sunday we went apartment hunting. Monday we went to the US Consulate to get paperwork questions asked. On Monday we took no pictures of Emily because cameras were not allowed at the consulate. Today will be an excursion to the City Center Mall to get the passport photos printed.

It looks like our DNA kit arrived without any problems at the consulate. Dr. Samit told us and the consulate representative confirmed that they only do DNA tests on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The test must be preformed by an approved doctor physically at the consulate who only comes on those two days a week; but the consulate representative said it might be possible to ask the doctor to come on another day if one of the two days is a holiday (Thursday is Veteran's Day in the US).

We were interested in finding out if we could get special permission for Emily to have her test done under supervision at the Lotus Hospital but the consulate rules don't allow that. As a side note, we did learn that another US couple arranged to have an ambulance take their baby out of Lotus Hospital to the consulate for DNA testing and then back to Lotus hospital. We briefly considered this but decided we didn't want to take any unnecessary risks with Emily no matter how small. Especially with infection such a big risk for premature babies.

The consulate also gave us the information on their approved physician who will be administering the DNA test and we stopped by his office on the way back and prepaid him for his part. ("Stopping by" is not so easy as it sounds!!) It came to 2400 rupies (about $57 US) which we payed in cash. The consulate requires the receipt of prepayment at the time the DNA test is administered.

We asked if the consulate would be willing to accept the DNA results via fax or email and were told that they looked up the law and there is no question that we will have to wait for the accredited lab to send back a hardcopy of the results in a sealed envelope via DHL. This definitely adds a few days to the process because "overnight" mail from the US to India is not EXACTLY overnight. We heard that the consulate only picks up its DHL mail two days a week (Monday & Thursday)... but we're hoping that's not the case.

The consulate representative we spoke to today was very friendly, professional and helpful with answering all our questions. At the appointment we think we will be speaking to some other officials. The whole point of the visit was to introduce ourselves and get pointed in the right direction.

It seems that the consulate here is concerned with making sure everything is done correctly and that all the instructions and guidelines are correctly followed. We tried to show that we are willing to do everything that is necessary to comply with the rules and at the same time respectfully communicate our interest in returning home to the US as soon as possible. That's a fine line... we don't want to be the "problem" children but at the same time, we don't want to be the non-squeeky wheel that isn't getting any grease.

We asked about an emergency passport and it sounds like it may be possible to get one. The advantage of an emergency passport [for the baby] (from what we've gathered from others) is that it can be issued directly and immediately by the consulate but it is only good for one journey; whereas the official, permanent passport takes 10-15 days to issue and be received from the US and is good for five years from the date of issue. For our purposes, we want to get home as soon as possible and would rather forgo the 10-15 day wait here in India for the official, permanent passport to be issued. So we will have to expressly ask for an emergency passport at the time of the upcoming visit and hopefully it will be issued as soon as the DNA results are received by the Consulate from the Phoenix-based lab.

So far we've been focusing on the DNA test as the catalyst of getting home as soon as possible but we're also very grateful for the assistance of the Kiran Infertility Clinic and Planet Hospital in making sure all the documents and paperwork are in order. We've met several of the KIC & PH staff - - Dr. Samit, Mrinhal, Sai Raj, Rudy and Mohammed (MZ) - who have been really working hard to help us and we're grateful for all they are doing and continuing to do to help us. When we take over the day-to-day care for Emily we'll have to split up occassionally to get errands done and we'll be relying on them even more.

Well it looks like Anchorage got seven inches of snow. Can't say I'm upset that we missed that! For the last few days here there has been a lot of rain here. It is the end of the monsoon season and a nearby weakening typhoon is causing it to be very wet for the next few days. This is actually the first time we have seen it rain in India after 3 other trips here. It gets pretty wet! Kind of daunting. We were thinking, should we get a cab or grab an auto rickshaw to the children's hospital? Would we get wet, muddy and dirty in the open-air auto rickshaw? Would it be good to bring in all those germs into the NICU where all the premature babies are succeptable to infection? But closed cabs are harder to get here in Hyderabad than they are in Mumbai. You have to call at least an hour in advance. Better a day. And then you're lucky if you're still not waiting around an hour for the taxi to show up late.

So there is a little tension between our western expectations and the fact that we're in India. If it was just us, we could just relax and go with the flow (like we've done somewhat in past trips). But we've got to worry about Emily. So what to do when your experiences about getting along in India are telling you one thing and your bias, preconceptions and new (overprotective) parental instincts are telling you another?