Our day today started out pretty uneventful. We spent the morning writing emails and then we took a walk to the Ram Store (a western type grocery store) to buy a couple loaves of delicious bread and some ice cream. All the stores are closed tomorrow for the celebration of Astana Day, so we wanted to make sure that we had the necessities.
Like usual, we left for the baby house at 1:15, picked up the Dressler’s and arrived at about 1:55. We sat in the lobby waiting for them to bring Katie out to us for what seemed like an eternity. We talked to two new American women for a while who are adopting from the baby house, too. One is from Miami and the other is from LA and they have both just started their visits this week. After a while, both of their babies were brought to them, dressed and ready to play. We wondered where Kaite was and then, a minute later, we saw Katie’s caregiver pass by us with Katie wrapped in a blanket. She went into the Medical Director's office and then disappeared down the hall. We were immediately very concerned.
We learned from Dinara that Katie's ears were hurting her and that she would need to go to the doctor's and get some medicine. Dinara said that they would like to take her tomorrow but they didn't have a driver then. We asked Dinara if Robert (our driver) could take her, and we said that we would love to go with her (even though we didn't think this was a possibility). A few minutes later it was decided that Katie actually needed to go to the doctor's today and that we were going to be allowed to take her. While we weren't thrilled at the reason we got to leave the orphanage with Katie, we were very thankful that we were allowed to take her. Robert arrived about 30 minutes later and Dinara, a nurse from the orphanage, and the three of us drove to the children's clinic near the prenatal center where Katie was born. It was a little scary riding in a car with Katie and not having any sort of seatbelt or car seat for her, but thats how they do it here. Sarah just put on her seatbelt and held on tight to Katie. Luckily there were no fast turns or stops on the drive there or back. When we arrived at the clinic, the nurse from the orphanage took Katie and left us sitting in the car. It was interesting to watch the many people with young children and babies heading to and from the clinic. We even saw one little boy who looked just like Caleb Malabuyo, it was really kind of funny.
The nurse returned with Katie about 15 minutes later and we finally got to hold her in our arms again. They had put cotton in her ears that had some sort of medicine on it but the Doctor said that she would be fine in four or five days with some ear drops she needed to take. On the way back to the orphanage, Katie was very mellow; we think that it was a combination of her not feeling well, being in a car for one of the first times and being so hot.
When we got back to the orphanage, we still had about 30 minutes before we had to give her back so we sat on the swing in the shade and just rocked. While we were there, a young mom came out of the orphanage holding a very tiny baby girl. She sat on a bench near us and just sobbed and rocked her little one. Our guess is either that the child was removed from her custody, or she is trying to make the decision on whether to give her daughter up for adoption. Either way, we could feel her pain as she held her baby girl. At that point, we were really struck at what a hard decision it is for these mothers to give up their babies for adoption and we praised God that Katie's birthmom had made that choice for her. We will forever be indebted to a woman we will never know.