May 10th, Anhui. Gotcha Day.
The day had finally arrived. On May 10th, 2004 (still
May 9th in the states, and thus still Mother's Day!) we woke up full of
excitement. I'm sure we did something for breakfast but we cannot honestly
remember what it was. We were to meet on the 4th floor conference room at
9:30 and expected to have our children by 10:00.
We were there early,
along with everyone else! When we first walked into the room, we noticed a
partition dividing about a third of the room off and keeping it out of
site. From behind that partition we heard...crying, laughing, Nannies
speaking to their charges. Our children!
There is absolutely no other feeling that can compare to this. Above is the exact second that Isabella Grace Chun became a part of our family. Months and months of waiting, holidays as a couple, days of travel, years of expectations and then a wonderful Nanny hands us the most beautiful child we've ever seen. We were instantly parents. Instantly responsible for our child, instantly a family. Some have talked of love at first site and we know in our case that we were smitten. Many thanks to Chris who took this photo, and Wayne who video taped the whole thing!
Isabella cried when she was handed us. In her 14
months she had been through more than we'll ever truly know. We did
our best to comfort her and after an hour or so of crying, she calmed down
quite a lot. She began to take everything in. Strange faces,
new smells and a new language. After a few moments of this she began
to drift off.
We noticed she was dressed in about three layers of clothing and was a little sweaty. Not to mention her head was practically glowing! We would come to know this as the 'my-head-gets-steamy-when-I-cry' mode. We counted her fingers and toes, looked into her eyes, kissed each other and generally felt amazed, relieved, happy!
After everyone was united as a family, one of the Nannies along with the Orphanage Director gave us a demonstration on making a bottle for the children. We were lucky in that we had a bottle handy, so they made Bella's first bottle for us! Bella happily drank it down. We noticed quite quickly that even though all of the kids were in diapers, many of them were also wearing split-pants!
Here Mama and Bella grab a calm moment on the carpet. It was amazing how we never noticed that we both had a Bella sized space where our arms were!
Bella had been through so much that day and she was understandably tired. She caught a few cat-naps as we looked on in amazement.
After spending several hours in the conference room with all of the new families, Nannies, directors, local guides and our favorite guide Chen, we finally made it back up to our room just after noon. We undressed Bella and after looking her over, immediately put her Gotcha Day clothes into a three gallon zip-lock bag. After we dressed her in her first new outfit, she latched on to some toy keys. Soon she fell asleep on our bed.
We counted four teeth in her mouth (by the time we came home she would have 10) and did another check of her for any sort of sores, rashes, wounds, lice, scabies, anything! Other than being a bit grimy and a bit floppy, she seemed to be a very healthy baby!
We gave her a first sponge bath, which she was not too happy about, and then got ready to face the world.
That evening we had dinner in the revolving restaurant with two families we had gotten to know before the trip. It was absolutely amazing seeing all of us, whom had met not three months ago for dinner at a Chinese restaurant as couples, sit here at a table in a revolving restaurant on the 29th floor of a Holiday Inn in China. We couldn't have pictured this two years before, yet here we were and we wouldn't have traded places with anyone.
That night we got the first laugh out of Bella, and she surprised us by pulling herself up in her crib. She rattled stacking cups across the bars, banged them on the crib and had a good old time until almost 10 pm. Then, she fell asleep. We lay in bed and watched her for a good long time.
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