Catch Up

I had really intended to do a better job posting both in Ethiopia and when we got home. That didn't go like I had planned, but I am going to try to catch up now. There are several posts of tips and then one post per day of what we did and where we went. I am not going to post my tips for meeting birth parents/families, but I definitely have some. So if you would like them, email me and I will email you back with my advice for that.

Sorry this has taken so long, I know a lot of you are anxious to hear about our trip. When we got home Seth got pretty sick and we are having to do breathing treatments for him. He also has two ear infections. We have spent a few days at the Dr., lab, and x-ray. Seth also has some digestive issues that we are still trying to figure out. He had some pretty serious diarrhea when we got him which we have mostly sorted out. He seems that he is lactose intolerant, but he also had bacterial infection (diagnosed from his stool sample) that causes diarrhea so it was a double whammy. He is still throwing up even though he has been on a lactose free formula and we aren't exactly sure why, but I'm sure we will figure it out soon. I also became very ill after coming home. I won't go into the gory details, but I was sicker than I can ever remember being in my life. I am still not sure what exactly I had, but my Dr. said to take the Cipro that I took with me to Ethiopia and I am much better now. I didn't pick up any strange illness in ET, FYI. I was tested for everything, I just had a high white blood cell count. I also got every immunization possible before we traveled and I took my Malarone everyday.

Note: In my tips, I say "the hotel" a lot, and I should say that we stayed at the Desalegn Hotel every night except for the two nights of our Alaba trip.

Disclaimer: Most of my tips have been mentioned before, either on other peoples' blogs or in travel meetings, etc., but some of them I repeated because I have friends with different agencies. I am sure this is not a comprehensive list of everything you need to know, these are just things I can think of right now that might be helpful to those of you who are traveling soon. Please email me if you have any questions that I didn't answer.