Today started early. Around 3am. I couldn't sleep. After getting in at midnight, we were both hopeful to be able to sleep from pure exhaustion. No dice. We received our 6am wake up call, but we were already wide awake and playing on the Internet. We went down to breakfast at 6:30am.
The breakfast buffet at the hotel is pretty good, but there are definitely some
things on the buffet that you don't see everyday in the states. Fried noodles (my favorite dish so far), dim sum, steamed eggs (apparently a favorite for the babies...looks nasty!), steamed veggies, fried rice and other unusual things...for BREAKFAST Wow. They had eggs and hash browns and bacon and sausage too though, so Rob was okay to eat (although he is NOT complaining about the food so far, he says its pretty good)!
We met at 7:30 to fill out paperwork for the adoption. Daphne had to walk us
through it because every single parent in that room had Baby-Brain. Plus, the documents were not in English (minor detail). Then it was time to leave to go get our baby!
We again piled on a bus and headed for the Civil Affairs office. We were warned ahead of time that the power was out to the building so it was going to be HOT and stuffy and they were going to make this trip short and sweet. I refer to it as the "Grab and Dash". It truly was. As we were walking into the building, a group of babies were walking in (with their nannies of course). Everyone FREAKED trying to decide if these were "our" babies. Our rep finally had to tell us these were NOT ours and to hurry inside. Whew. What a roller coaster. We rushed upstairs of this hot & stuffy building along side of nannies and babies (not ours) which was very
overwhelming.
They immediately rushed us into a conference room and started calling names to "line up" in the order we would all receive our children. We were about seventh. All the sudden the flurry started. The nannies started showing up with the babies, one coming into the room at a time. Things all went so fast. Before we knew it, we were next! Once we realized we were next up, we looked up and saw her. There was our baby girl. Our names were called and we went through the formalities (showing identification, then comparing identification of the baby they were about to hand us). Then it happened. The nanny stepped up and handed us the most beautiful angel
we had ever seen.
Time stopped there for a minute. All of the noise and commotion disappeared. This was the moment we had waited for. Mary was in our arms. Words can never describe the feelings we had at that very moment. It was so surreal. Then time started again. We were rushed to the other side of the room so the next family could be "created". We stood there with Mary. She was little. Smaller than we expected. She was beautiful. She was fascinated with us. More specifically with Rob's glasses and my tongue (she would stick out her tongue, so I would stick out mine...so she could touch it). Then we got back on the bus and went back to the hotel. Mary fell asleep on the bus and we did not have the heart to wake her up. There were several babies screaming, but it didn't seem to bother Miss Mary.
We let her sleep back in the room for about an hour and a half. Then, as she opened her eyes to see a strange room with strange people, PANIC ATTACK! Luckily it only lasted for about ten minutes. We gave her a bottle and she was fine. We set her on the floor to play with her toys and she was fine. We even got some smiles out of her! And it was just like that, we were a family. We spent the rest of the day in the room, getting to know each other. Rob did go with a group to the local store for some formula and junk food (for me, not the baby).
The pediatrician came by later with Daphne to check on all the babies. Mary
had a little bit of sniffles, but nothing major. The doctor did notice Mary's
throat was red, as were all the babies from Zhijiang. We were to watch her and the doc would be back the next day to check on her. Then the orphanage director and some of the nannies came by the room. They brought us her camera back and the photo book! Then we signed some papers that relinquished custody from the director and gave it to us. The director played with Mary. She recognized him right away. I don't think Mary's nanny was there because she did not respond too much to any of
them. Just the director.
We managed to get her to go to bed about 8:30pm. I first laid her down and she started to cry. Then I remember reading in an update we received last night that she likes to be rocked to sleep. Okay! I can do that! Under two minutes, she was OUT!
Below are a couple of pictures from today's surreal events.
Waiting to leave for the civil affairs office
Waiting for the moment of truth!
Gotcha!
Mary sleeping back at the hotel
Playing with her new Mama
Precious Mary
No comments:
Post a Comment