Our Daughter

Since today we are not doing any touring, just staying at the hotel, tying up loose ends with paperwork, and then flying to Guangzhou tonight, I'll write about our Adoption Day and the first days with our daughter.

On Sunday, Oct. 30th, when all of us adopting parents finally got to the hotel after our delayed flight from Beijing, we only had time to run our suitcases up to our rooms after we checked into the front desk to get our room keys. As soon as we entered the Jin Feng hotel, we could hear our babies making noises in the 2nd floor conference room where they had arrived and were waiting for us! It was just after 3:00, and we were scheduled to meet them at 3:30. We were informed that they had just been taken from their foster mothers that morning, and driven with orphanage officials the 2-3 hours from Fengcheng (and one of the babies is from Fuzhou). Our daughter has been with her foster mother since she was 9 days old.

We ran up to the room, got our cameras ready, and headed stright to our daughters. Jeff and I were one of the first into the room and immediately saw our daughter being held by the assistant director, just feet away from us. Our guide, Veronica, verified that it was our daughter. She translates everything for us. All the babies are wearing special hand sewn yellow and gold puffy Chinese outfits that look very hot, but very pretty also. I can see that the other babies are pretty active and alert, sitting or standing with assistance from the nannies. Some are fussing, some are babbling, all look active and alert and busy. Except our little Xiang Li. She does not move. She is clinging to the assistant directors chest, and has melted into his arms. He is a younger man, maybe late 20's-early 30's, and actually resembles our daughter just a tad bit. I can tell he seems to be protecting her and she needs him to do this. She is withdrawn and is merely observing in a daze. I am worried immediately, and voice this to Jeff, who has already set up our video camera on the tripod to record the entire moment.

We were able to get lots of video and pictures (although mine are blurry since the lighting was so dim and I couldn't figure out how to fix it while I was crying my eyes out looking at my daughter) while we were standing there waiting until the moment came when the officials began checking our passports before handing our babies to us one by one. I believe we were the first to be handed our baby, and she came right to me and melted into my arms just like she was melted into the asst. director's arms. She was in a daze the whole time and just entirely quiet and detached from the situation. I was just holding her to my chest and saying her Chinese name and 'I love you' in Mandarin. Some babies were very vocal about being handed over, some seemed nonchalant, and some were happy. Our little LiLi was silent and stoic. After everyone was handed their baby, we headed up to the room to get to know each other.

When we got her undressed in her room we found many layers of clothes on her sweaty body. First, a bright yellow and gold hand made Chinese style snowsuit, then a cream colored winter long sleeve knit sweater, then some split pant pajamas, and then her diaper. We immediately saw her emaciated body covered in scars, old and new, as well as a very bad skin condition which was irritating her from head to her little toes. She was pock marked up and down, and her skin had red welts all over, big and small, especially all over her feet and hands and in between her fingers and toes. She had to have been miserable, and we soon came to realize she was when the itching began as soon as the clothes came off.

We called our guide so that we could make a trip to the hospital that night because the next morning we were to sign papers accepting our daughter and hand over $7,000 to the officials for the orphanage donation and other expenses. The other reason we were going to the hospital was in an attempt to have a doctor identify the problem with her legs and feet. As soon as we saw her little malnourished body when her clothes came off, we were shocked at the condition she was in. Her legs and arms had no muscle tone and were limp. When you hold her to try and get her to walk with assistance, her feet point in at a sharp angle towards each other. We did not know if there was a deformity and she would need surgical procedures. We signed up for a non special needs adoption. Of course I've done my homework and have educated myself over these 9 years that I've been waiting to adopt from China, so I always knew we had a chance of receiving a child with special needs even though that was not the program we waited in line for or actually signed up for. We immediately contacted our on-call international adoption pediatrician specialist back in the states and Skyped with him to discuss the pictures we sent him of her body and condition. Thank goodness for him, or else we'd still be in the dark as far as her condition.

Even though her adoption paperwork updates all said she was crawling very well, she hardly moves her lower body, and certainly does not crawl at all. We have gotten her to lay on her belly and push a little to inch her way forward just a few inches. She turned 14 months old the other day, yet she is the least developed of our group of babies, who range from 9-12 months old. I think all the babies in our group were with foster mothers. We just happened to get a foster mother who did not do her job, and merely kept our daughter alive until we could come to adopt her. I am thankful she at least did that, because she certainly doesn't seem to have done much else for her.

She is sweet and beautiful little dumpling who has thrived on our attention and nourishment from moment one. When she reaches up her feeble little arms slowly to ask for you to hold her, it will literally melt your heart. She will smile slowy but more and more all the time, and has even laughed now. She has taken to both of us equally and smiles for both of us. She is not quick to respond to strangers, in fact the only other person who she has responded warmly to is our Chinese guide and the 6 year old Chinese big sister of another family who adopted a baby in our group. She holds her arms out for us all the time and when she lays between us to nap, she'll reach out one arm for me and one arm for Jeff just to feel us near her and make sure we are close to her. Sometimes, she doesn't even want to be a few feet away, she wants her body pressed up against our chest for comfort. It is just too precious.

She had a picture album we sent to her from Ann at Red Thread China, in addition to some toys and clothes and cameras for her foster mother to take pictures of her while we waited all summer to travel to China. We received all the items we had purchased for her, most of them seemed to still be unused and in the original packaging, except for a musical piano and her photo album which Ann had labeled with our family photographs. I swear that when I said the words Ge Ge (older brother), she knew to point to and react wildly to Sabian's photograph. We were astounded that she reacted like this over and over when we called him in Mandarin her older brother. Maybe her foster mother did show her that album for those months while we were waiting, because she certainly acts like she knows he is her brother and she recognizes other Mandarin words as well. The album was dirty and smelled musty like it had been used and played with. After her Scabies diagnosis by the dermatologist in Nanchang, we made sure to cleanse anything that came from the orphanage/foster family because Scabies is a contagious skin condition.

When we talked to our on call pediatrician back in the states, he said she clearly is malnourished and looks like she has been sat in a chair/rudimentary walker and neglected. She has the typical big belly and underdeveloped limbs of a malnourished child. Her lack of nourishment and sedentary care has contributed to her feet pointing inwards with no muscle tone or lower body movement progression. His diagnosis was to get her nourished and evaluated back in the states and he believes that although she may be a project (his word) for quite some time, with proper nutrition, her underdeveloped limbs will corect themselves and she will catch up physically. I just don't know how long we are talking about and if physical therapy will be involved, or to what extent. We'll find all that out when we get home to see some doctors.

When our adoption group met with the Social Welfare Institute director and assistant director, they answered lots of our questions about our daughters and their foster family situations.
I had told Jeff that her foster mother had to have been elderly, and sure enough, that information was given to us that she was older than 60 years. She is a peasant and her husband is a retired construction worker. They are poor and our guide Veronica said their living conditions were probably very low quality. There was a red note left with our daughter when she was left to be found at 9 days old at the gate of the children's amusement park at the entrance to the Fengcheng Social Welfare Institute. We took video and photos of it but were not allowed to keep the note because the orphanage had to keep it (for her file?). It basically stated her date of birth and something about the Chinese zodiac calendar. We did get a name of the person who actually found our daughter laying on the ground at her finding location and brought her into the orphanage (Social Welfare Institute) when she was 9 days old.

We also found out that there are supposedly 80 babies at Fengcheng who are abandoned, and that Fengcheng SWI mainly cares for special needs and abandoned adults who cannot care for themselves and have no family members to care for them. That made me sad to hear. In Hong Kong, we saw a group of adult special needs men and women boarding a bus and it made me think of them when I found that out. When asked by another adoptive mom in our group which babies were chosen for international adoption and which babies were chosen to be adopted by Chinese locals, they did not answer the question and tried to give another answer which did not answer the quesion at all. We were told that about half the babies in Fengcheng SWI orphanage will be adopted internationally and the other half to local Chinese

We really feel like the answers we were given, were to appease us, and were not necessarily the truth on all accounts. There are lots of inconsistencies. For example, our adoption agency told me that the reason our foster mother could not take photographs of our daughter while we waited to travel all summer long was that she lived very far from the orphanage out in the countryside, and could not get to the orphanage to either take the camera or the baby to the orphanage. On the other hand, the orphanage officials told us directly that all the foster mothers lived very close to the orphanage and that the assistant director visited all the foster mothers every month to check up on the babies. So either both the adoption agency is making up stories or the orphanage officials are telling lies or most likely, there is a little covering up/exaggerations on both ends.

After the question & answer meeting with our entire adoption group had ended, the orphahage officials came over to Jeff and I and we had our own discussion where our guide Veronica translated for us. They offered an apology to us for the sad physical condition that our daughter was presented to us in. They claimed that they did not notice her scars or skin rash/condition/scabies (they called it excema-ha!) last month when they visited the foster mother. They also claimed that our daughter just doesn't absorb nutrients properly and that's the reason for her lack of development. Wow! That's a first. Maybe if she was actually given nutrients, she would have absorbed them. They also believe that massaging her legs/feet would heal her problems and that she had been massaged previously in an attempt to help her legs develop. They said when she was four months old they did not notice any problems with her feet turning inwards, so it must have developed later. I'm thinking, good heavens, how long has this poor child been neglected?!? For an entire year? They also were clear that they have already verbally chastized this foster mother for her poor care and that she let our daughter get to this condition. The disturbing thing is that we found out from the asst. director that she also is in the care of a two month old abandoned baby girl who may be adopted later by another couple just like us who is expecting her foster mother to care for her. This foster mother needs to be fired, not given another baby to care for. Take her off the list, man. For real.

We seem to be the only family in our group of 8 adopting families who are in this situation. All the other babies seem to have had foster mothers who took proper care of their daughters and even got very attached to some of them. One of the babies was given a jade necklace on a red string which the foster mother asked specifically not to be taken off the baby as it considered very good luck to have. Our guide showed us her jade necklace which is always around her neck and given to her from her maternal grandmother.

I know our daughter was chosen for us for a reason. I am confident she will grow and progress with our care and love. I have no regrets and loved her instantly with a fierce protection instinct as only a mother can have. She acts like she has known us since the day she was born. She has a sweet little flat nose and rosebud mouth with a perfectly square chin and a slight dimple in it. Her eyelashes are long and her eyes are bright and cute Her eight teeth are tiny and there are four on top and four on the bottom. She shows her slight smile when she is around us and I can tell she is happy to have both us always near her to meet her needs. She is absolutely adorable and during all these years when I dreamed of what my chosen daughter would look like, she is exactly what I have always imagined and hoped for.

***We are in Guangzhou now at the Marriott (awesome!!!) We flew here to Guangzhou Friday evening, Nov. 4th and as soon as we entered the hotel, thought we had died and gone to heaven! Real air conditioning! It is such a nice room. I'll post pics in the next post about our first day here in Guangzhou.