On the night I wrote the "nothing to report" post, we received a call for a tiny little child in a very, horribly poor orphanage in Southern China. I had seen a note on a Facebook group that this child would be returned to the list on Thursday and I debated about mentioning this information to our agency person and typed and deleted the e-mail several times before sending. She indicated that she would look for this child. Around 9:15 that night, she called. She had just refreshed her computer and this child's file appeared. The child was very malnourished and behind developmentally - but so precious. Her videos made me cry because they only further showed her dismal circumstances. I researched her orphanage and found blog posts from others who had been there. Babies are in plywood cribs 22-23 hours a day and there are 1-2 workers to every 40-45 babies. She had never been given a chance to do much other than to lie in her crib. No wonder her only listed milestone was "staring at her hands." Heartbreaking. Doctors' cautioned us about her and we were very worried. We know that all children in orphanages will be delayed and will not have had the stimulation that most children have. We also know that children in orphanages are almost always much, much tinier than the developmental charts. Still, we have to first consider the children we already have and what we can realistically do with two people working full-time jobs and with two children who are already here. By the end of our 72-hour period, we realized that we just could not get to a place of feeling that this precious baby was meant to be our girl. When we started this process, we knew that we might one day be at a point where we would decide that we could not move forward with a child based upon information in the referral file. It is one thing to "know" that it might happen and another thing to go through the process of looking at a child's face and information and then to say no. She broke our hearts.
I wish more people knew of the conditions endured by many of the worlds' orphans. I looked at our basement full of toys and wished I could ship them out to be used in places like this that have nothing but a hard concrete floor, plywood cribs, and rooms without any toys. I wish I could go hold the babies and quiet their cries. Heartbreakingly, some don't even cry because they have long since realized that nobody is coming to answer their cries.
I know this little one will find her family - especially because she is very young and is so very beautiful and she has a listed special need that a lot of families very much want to consider. I will pray for her to find the family who will immediately feel that she is meant to be their girl. I know they are out there waiting for her.
