The adoptee parents had to provide a certificate of Health from their local doctor.

There were four visits from a social worker to inspect our home and the environment.

Further medical forms were required to be completed by our local doctor.

Each month the baby has a medical check while awaiting adoption.

A way to earn a quiet flight home.

Xiao Qiu's first visit to the doctor: Dr Lucy says her chest is fine and we did the right thing giving her antibiotics in China. We have to go back in a couple of weeks with her immunisation records once I get it translated by helpful Chinese friends. The doc gave her a beautiful book and a nice winter jacket - every day she gets one or two presents as we have visitors every day (and I might buy her a couple of things too!!! she is very spoilt - today I bought her a small remote control car....).

The possible problems with the SARS epidemic.

Our appointment at the Overseas Adoption Clinic at Westmead Childrens Hospital

We had numerous visits to the doctor and a visit to the hospital in month 5.

For those about to pick up their new daughters, it is very exciting but also scarey. More on this in month 6 with another hospital visit..

On her tenth week with us, Lin passed two large roundworms, each nine and half inches long, during her nightly bath. We rushed to the pharmacy with them in a bottle and they sent us to outpatients at the hospital as roundworm is uncommon in Australia except in Darwin. We were told to see our own doctor in the morning so that she could send the specimen to Infectious Diseases. Fortunately our own doctor had lived in Africa and had suffered from roundworm herself. She said that Lin would have been in a fair bit of discomfort and that the worms would have been there for about a year because of their size. This would explain the previous two weeks of grumpiness, the previous night’s sleeplessness, and her small size.

She has been much happier since losing the worms and the whole family has now been wormed, including the cat! In retrospect we should have wormed her as soon as we got her as worms are very common in China especially in the tropical parts like Nanning. I took with me to China every lotion and potion on the recommended list published on China Adoption web sites but surprisingly worm tablets is not on the list. I think it should be. Poor little girl – these worms were huge – we are lucky they decided to come out. The doctors at Westmead received the worm for identification and Combantrum, which is just sold over the counter, was prescribed so it was not a hard problem to fix. The doctors there debated whether worming should be automatic or not and there is no clear agreement but in my opinion since the tablets have few side effects it is definitely worth putting on the list.