Five years ago today we were in China, in the midst of our first adoption. Jiejie was new to us, and I was numb with fear. What a gorgeous, mysterious creature she was. When the other babies were asleep and quiet, she was disconsolate. When I kissed her tummy, she would giggle. When we tried to give her a bath in the hotel sink in Nanning, she was petrified. Jiejie would not or could not drink from a bottle. We spoonfed her formula, other liquids, congee, the rice porridge she loved, and some baby cereal, but at 14 months she was not terribly interested in other foods. We had been told she weighed 23 lbs. and came armed with size 2 clothes. Her weight was actually about 17 lbs. and she was a petite, reticent child. The clothes and diapers we had packed so carefully, in suitcases stuffed with supplies that we would never use but which had been recommended by others on the BTDT China adoption lists, were huge in comparison to the tiny baby. She was not walking yet, and would not walk for more than four months and after several sessions of physical therapy. She would not pick up a cheerio and bring it to her mouth, most likely the effect of fear of punishment for picking something up and putting it in her mouth at the orphanage, the kind of "safety measure" used in places where too few people care for too many children. Given a chance, she liked to bump her head, hard, against any she could find, including my head. She was quick to learn, when we made gentle head bumping an intimacy game, smiling into each other's eyes. She was also quick with the TV remote. And cell phone. The bright stacking cups we had brought along. And anything else hard or plastic. But the soft toys we had brought along for her to snuggle were ignored. It was likely she had never seen anything like them. It took her months to like a stuffed animal or soft doll and even longer to learn to cuddle them -- and us. She loved being close to us and being held, but learning to hug back took her months and months and learning to kiss more than the air around us took years.
This bright, beautiful girl was not weak in any way. She was a willful child, suffused with the instinct to survive. The head-bumping, I learned later, was a way of stimulating herself, the response of a child whose brain needs stimulation to develop. Other children rub their hands on orphanage walls until their fingers are thickly blistered. Although Jiejie was the "senior baby" of the bunch at 14 months - the others were 10-12 months old -- she was the tiniest and, when we gathered the group by the hotel elevator for a "play date," the one who let toys be taken from her, another survival strategy perhaps?
She had bronchitis, and on one of our first nights together, she vomited in my hair. Then the antibiotics kicked in, as did the herbal broth the first of the chinese doctors we consulted had prescribed. We gave her a pinch from a little tin of ginger medicine suggested to settle her tummy, and the tiniest amount of Benadryl. Soon, she was feeling better, eating better -- her favorite baby food, from Beech-nut -- was pork and pork liver -- something we would not have sought ought had the orphanage not passed on a list of favorites.
On the plane trip from Nanning to Guangzhou, Jiejie cried almost the entire time. Her father could not soothe her, nor could I. Auntie Ann ended up bouncing the baby on her knee for the entire trip. She had the magic touch. Finally Jiejie slept. By the time we got to Guangzhou, she was feeling better.
.... to be continued
No comments:
Post a Comment