WEIGHING IN
Francie's first year here, I tended to measure my success in caring for her at least partly by how much she grew. Internationally adopted kids tend to be small--poor quality food, not enough food, and internal parasites all take their toll.
Other adoptive parents do this too. They love to talk about how little their kids were on arrival and how much they've grown--"The doctor couldn't believe she'd gained that many pounds in six months!" That kind of thing.
Speaking of poor quality food, one thing they used to feed the babies at Francie's orphanage in Haiti was "bread soup." You take white bread and boil it until it's the consistency of pudding, and then eat it. On one visit to Haiti, I asked one of the nannies for some food for Francie because we were about to go on a long drive and I wanted her to eat first. I had a bottle of formula in mind. I was given a bowl of white glop instead. Francie snarfed it down--it was what she was used to.
Anyway, things were bad in Haiti those last few months before we got her, and I doubt if she got quite enough to eat. Her first doctor's visit put her at the tenth percentile for height and off the bottom of the charts for weight. In addition, of course, to the scabies, the giardia, an umbilical hernia, and the infected scabs on the back of her head. Other than that she was fine.
A year later, she was about fiftieth percentile in both height and weight. Two years later, she was about fiftieth in weight and seventy-fifth in height.
No matter how lousy a job I do some days, no matter if lose my temper or feed the kids junk food or forget to read to them or whatever, I have numbers that say--look, I did good. She grew. A LOT.
Angelo arrived here right before his thirteenth birthday. His brother John, who was with us for a year, was almost ten when they arrived. We hear from John's new family that he's grown a ton. Angelo hasn't.
He was tested a year or so ago for growth issues. They took a blood sample and a urine sample. Then they referred us to an endocrinologist (office, three hours away) and sent us a bill for $900, which was not covered by our insurance. We were stunned, to say the least. What on earth can you do to a vial of blood and a vial of pee for $900?
The endocrinologist said there was a chance that Angelo was just a "late bloomer" (for this we had to see a specialist?) who might enter puberty on the older end of the scale. And of course, we have no way of knowing if we have his correct age anyway.
The endocrinologist was about to schedule Angelo for some major testing when Fred stopped him. The $900 pee test fresh in Fred's mind, he wanted to know if pursuing this further meant that we were talking about discovering a possibly fatal condition, or just the possibility of adding an inch to the kid's adult height through growth hormones. The endocrinologist said that he doubted we were talking about anything life-threatening and seemed to feel that anyone who would be so crass as to ask about the cost of a CAT-scan or MRI or whatever it was probably shouldn't get one anyway.
So much for the endocrinologist. We gave up. If the kid's going to be short, so be it. He may have just suffered too much malnutrition and high lead levels (among other things) in Haiti in his first twelve years of life to ever catch up. Yeah, John caught up, but he was three years younger and had a better shot at it.
We've gotten used to people asking Angelo's age and then raising their eyebrows and saying "Really?" when we answer "sixteen." If we were less honest, we could still be getting him child's plates in restaurants.
We had the bathroom scales out last week, for some reason. Angelo decided to weigh himself. He HAS grown lately, we've noticed, although since we decided to quit worrying about it, we don't know how much. He still looks about thirteen.
But according to the scales, he has passed a milestone. At age sixteen, Angelo finally weighs over 100 pounds. 105, to be precise. In his shoes.
