The calendar said it was the first day of Spring 2012 but the biting cold was more like mid-winter. I had just entered the children’s section of the SWI I was visiting and the worried nannies brought first to me a child who needed immediate help. They carried in a bundle of heavy quilts. As I peeled back each thick blanketed layer, there was the tiny face of a baby. A baby boy with big and intense eyes fanned by his long thin fingers. This baby boy latched right onto my heart as he reached out and latched my finger with his wee hand. I guessed this child couldn’t be more than 2-3 months old. I was very wrong. He was would soon be two in June.

The nannies carefully laid him down before me to show me their concern. This child, who couldn’t have weighed more than 10 lbs, had a spinal meningocele on his lower spine that was as large as his head. It took all my control not to weep. After he was wrapped back up I asked to hold him. I rocked him and whispered in his ear that he would be helped. The world would not forsake him. I promised him that.

The local hospital was helpless to assist him. They well understood that he needed more resources than they could provide. The nannies pleaded for help. They have witnessed the transformation of baby “Valentina”, his cribmate, whom they sent to Love Without Boundaries True Children’s Healing Home and asked if I could please ask them to help this child too. LWB arranged for Baby Carson to be sent to Shanghai for evaluation and surgery last week. Today he will have his operation. I am asking all of you to keep this child in your hearts, thoughts, and prayers. It will be a life changing day for Carson today. Now he can move his legs. He may lose this after surgery as his meningocele is so large and he has waited so long.

We are praying for a miracle.

Stefani Ellison
China Waiting Child Advocate/Resource Coordinator
Children’s House International

My cleft trip summary was supposed to be submitted right after Maureen Brogan’s beautiful post, but to be honest, I didn’t have it in me. I needed a breather as I felt both emotionally and physically raw after returning, and trying to sum up the week I witnessed in China with a few clever sentences seemed trite and disingenuous. I wrote earlier that these trips were hard, but I had no idea. I came back to the US changed. No epiphanies, but the world looked and felt different, and the problem was that I couldn’t articulate why, either to myself or others. Until tonight.

My family and I live in a beautiful little town just north of San Francisco. Tonight was Outdoor Family Movie Night at the kids’ school, and when we arrived about 100 kids were sprinting around the field, doing their best to stay warm as a thick wall of fog descended over the ridge and the temperature dropped to where you could almost see your breath. Laughter was echoing in the valley, and as darkness brought in the night, children ran back to find where their parents had laid claim to a sliver of real estate with blankets and folding chairs. I was lying on my side, and my daughter came and sat on my legs, using them as a makeshift chair to view the movie. As the screen lit up, I saw the side of her face excited for the start of a movie. I looked around and realized that I was surrounded by moms, dads, and children, all smiling and laughing. And it occurred to me: this kind of scene is unimaginable to the kids I had met in the hospital a few short weeks ago. And the question that appears so naturally is…Why? Why do some children experience pain and sadness early on and have no one to comfort them? More generically and perhaps a bit cliché, why do bad things happen to good people?

But what came into my mind next, and what I want to share with you, is that the Why doesn’t matter. Life and the world are complex and, in my opinion, questions like that will never be answered satisfactorily. What does matter is what occurred in China that week: the solution. The solution was months of preparation by dozens of volunteers all over the world. The solution was the doctors and their teams that travelled over 5,000 miles volunteering their time, money, and expertise so they could make a difference. The solution was dedicated LWB employees, one in tears from the stress of bringing almost 50 children from all over the country so they could land in an operating room at a specific date and time.

So the Why question is irrelevant. But there is another Why question that can be answered. It just relates to the solution rather than the problem. Why? So that these children get their opportunity to be held, loved, and cared for by their OWN mom and dad. That they will have the chance to be sitting on their own dad’s legs to get a better view of the movie on Outdoor Family Movie night. And that it’s not an unimaginable fairytale for them. It’s part of their life.

I’m wondering whether it’s coincidence that this happened on the night before Mother’s Day. It does give me a great opportunity to thank everyone, especially mothers, who made this trip possible. There are hundreds of you who gave your money, time, and dedication. On behalf of Love Without Boundaries, I thank you all. My request on this Mother’s Day is that you help us do it again. The need is there, and together we can continue to be a part of the solution. And for those of you that are thinking that adoption might be the right choice for your family, there are some wonderful kids looking forward to their very own Outdoor Family Movie Night.

Chris and his daughter

~Chris Ingoldsby, LWB Board Member

Bergen is one year old and has some very complicated heart defects. He was brought to the Anhui Healing Home in February in hopes that relief from the cold, harsh Anhui winter would help him to gain strength and increase his appetite. Unfortunately surgery is not an option for Bergen in China. Our goal is to keep him as healthy as possible as he waits for a family of his very own, who can give him the best medical options available.

Bergen has become much stronger and has developed a bigger appetite these past few months. Bergen is ready to graduate from the healing home and move into foster care. We are currently searching for a special foster family for him, along with sponsors to support his care. As a sponsor of Bergen, you will receive monthly updates and photos. Every child deserves to feel the love and support of a family, and we cannot wait to follow Bergen as he joins his foster family and adjusts to his new surroundings.

• Sponsor Bergen in Foster Care

Have you ever read about a new arrival to one of our healing homes and wondered about how that little one ended up there? We know our volunteers make it look fairly effortless, but the reality is that a whole lot of communication and travel are usually involved before a new baby is safely tucked into her new home.

LWB has now worked with over 200 orphanages across China. When we begin a relationship with any new orphanage, we give them materials on our healing homes programs and explain that they can call us when they have a child who they feel might not survive due to medical issues. Calls from orphanages come into to almost every director we have in China, and then LWB’s medical and healing homes teams quickly go to work. Blood and medical tests are ordered, echocardiograms are done, and admission forms are completed. Once we have confirmed that there is a waiting bed available and that we can put a medical plan into place, it is time for make arrangements for the little one to travel. Some babies are too tiny to even have the necessary papers in place to allow them to fly on an airplane, and so the majority of the children we take into our homes arrive by train.

Anyone who has been in a busy train station in China before can only think admiringly of the caregivers who often manage countless flights of stairs, carrying both a suitcase and a sick baby, to travel often a very long distance to a city where he or she has never been before. Often the babies coming into our homes arrive straight from the hospital where they have had emergency surgery, and so the nannies are traveling with babies who have just been discharged post-op. The challenges of Chinese train travel just multiplied for that nanny!

Once the baby arrives to our healing home, there is of course more paperwork, and then an overall admission assessment is done. During this time, emails and calls fly back and forth as our medical advisors and volunteers determine what the child needs most urgently in order to begin healing. The baby’s profile is loaded onto our website for sponsorship and often introduced on Facebook. It is then that a child who once had great odds stacked against her gains a worldwide community of supporters and friends, all of whom are cheering her on to get better. Together we get to watch the amazing transformation, all of which begin with a single phone call from an orphanage asking, “Do you think you can help?”

Thank you to everyone for partnering with us to help some of the most vulnerable babies of all. You are changing lives every single day and giving children like Bennett (seen below) in our Henan Healing Home an entirely different outcome for his life. Isn’t that such a beautiful thing?

That’s what we teach children when they grab their first dandelion gone to seed. Children see the endless possibilities afforded by wishing. They make their incredibly important wish, fill their cheeks, pucker and blow their wishes as far as the wind can carry them.

I became a mother on Mother’s Day 2004.  In a stuffy Civil Affairs Office in Nanchang, Jiangxi, I received my daughter.  How naïve was I then to the journey that I was just beginning?  My journey had just merged with the journey of a lovely baby girl, our red threads pulling tight and intertwining forever.  No matter what their age, adopted children are not blank slates when they come to their forever families.  They have been on their own journeys since before birth.  Their birth parents initiated their journey. We adoptive parents are merely jumping on a moving train, hoping to enjoy the adventure and help steer through the rocky parts.

A little more than three years later, I was in another stuffy Civil Affairs Office, this time in Guangzhou, to receive my son.  Adopting a toddler of 28 months old taught me a lot about leaping onto a moving train — a very fast-moving, determined little train.  He taught me how much history a little child can carry.

Part of my children’s early life history is their experiences in orphanages and foster homes.  But their history really began long before that.   Their journeys began with their birth parents.  I imagine their birth parents had hopes, dreams and wishes for them even before they were born.  Doesn’t every parent dream about their child long before they are able to hold them?

In this day of medical technology and pharmaceuticals, I believe that any woman who conceives a child and carries that child to term wants the best for that child.  Unfortunately, we live in a complicated and sometimes difficult world.  Some mothers quickly realize they cannot give their child the future they so badly want for them.   So they make a wish — a wish for a better life for their child.  I imagine my daughter being held by her birth mother for the last time, sending her away with the wish for a world in which she could grow to be beautiful, strong and equal, with only her mind and body limiting her dreams.  How many times have I thought of how my son’s birthmother must have felt when she realized that she could not nurse him due to cleft lip and palate, and recognizing that perhaps his best chance at healing and acceptance was in the care of others?  I can’t believe either of these birthmothers wished for their babies to be raised in an institution.  Surely they wished for a family, a mother, to raise their children.  They wished for healing, opportunity and love for their children.

This Mothers’ Day, in between a wonderful brunch and colorful handmade gifts, I will be the one sending a wish on the winds.  My wish is that the birthmothers of my children know that they are not only alive and well, but that they are loved, cherished, healthy, and so smart it will knock your socks off.  I wish they could know that their hopes for their children came true.  I also wish that these women could know how grateful I am for the incredible gift they entrusted to me.  Truly, I am the lucky one.

~Elena Doyle is the proud mama of Zoe and Nicky. She is also the Associate Coordinator of LWB’s True Healing Home.

The Joint Council on International Children’s Services and Adoption Learning Partners invite you to join them for a lunch-and-learn discussion called “Brothers and Sisters in Adoption.” This webinar will discuss ways to help children navigate relationships when new kids join the family. Experts will share transition tips and strategies for welcoming a toddler or school-aged child home, focusing on preparing brothers and sisters prior to adoption and the first year after adoption.

The experts will discuss:

• Transitioning new family members (sleeping, eating, culture)
• Preparing and integrating brothers and sisters
• Attachment and expectations
• How to make these strategies a part of your every day life

Submit your questions here or by tweeting them to @adoptiontweet using #adoptionsibs.

The webinar will take place on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 at 12:00 p.m. Central time. It sounds like a fantastic way to prepare your entire family for an upcoming adoption or help get answers to issues that have already arisen!

Ruth needs two more sponsors to support her tuition in the Anhui Tuition Assistance Program!  Sponsorships are $20 per month, and sponsors will receive quarterly updates and photos.

• Sponsor Ruth’s Education

For the child, however, there is often little preparation for what will happen to them when they walk through the doors of the Civil Affairs office, and so adoptive parents must anticipate every possible scenario. Some children are inconsolable with grief and crying, while others become so panicked about being taken from their caregiver that they react with kicking or biting in a desperate fight for survival. Some will immediately go to their new mom or dad, while others might be afraid to show any emotion at all and go into “shut down” mode. But again and again, I hear parents ask the question, “Why couldn’t my child have been better prepared for adoption?” It seems so simple, doesn’t it?

We picture in our heads a loving nanny explaining how wonderful it will be to live in a family, while patiently showing the child the photo album we have sent to China with pictures of our home and dog and of course mom and dad. Parents get upset when they discover that the gifts or photo albums they have mailed were given to their child just moments before arriving at the government office, or else not at all. They find it ridiculous that an orphanage wouldn’t have prepared a child better for meeting his or her family. What could be so hard about that, right? Well…often a lot, actually. Today I would like to share some discussions I have had with both orphanage staff and foster parents about why they are often hesitant to discuss adoption with a child.

A few years ago we had a beautiful little girl in one of our programs who wanted a family very much. She was chosen off of an agency list, and I was actually the one who told her in person that she would be getting her own mom “very soon.” She was overjoyed, and I know she started counting the days until she would have a family of her own. Unfortunately her family-to-be didn’t seem to have the same burning desire to get the adoption completed. Months went by without home study visits being done; each time the agency would call to ask if they were still continuing, then the family would do one more minimum piece. Six months turned into a year, and then two, and the little girl was still no closer to having this family actually come get her. The older children in the orphanage, who were no longer eligible for adoption, began taunting the little girl to release some of the anger they had in their own hearts over never being chosen. They began telling her daily that of course no family was coming, as who would want HER. Despite the nannies’ best assurances, of course the little girl slipped into a deep sadness. After the family finally backed out, I discussed what had happened with the orphanage director, who told me he would never again tell a child a family was coming “until we are walking into the doors of the government office to meet them.” Of course that was an extreme response, but adoptive parents in the West need to understand that orphanage directors and nannies regularly see families who stop adoptions. Whether it is from divorce, or money issues, the loss of a job, or a death in the family, sometimes adoptions fall through. Many orphanage officials feel in their minds that they are protecting a child from future heartache by withholding information about a family until that family actually arrives in China. They also might feel like they are protecting the child from hearing taunts or even threats from other children in the orphanage who are dealing with their own feelings of not being chosen.

Many adoptive families feel that if their child is in foster care, that of course the foster mom and dad will be preparing the child properly for an upcoming adoption. Even if your child is in foster care, however, I think you need to prepare yourself for the reality that adoption might not have been openly discussed with your child. Recently one foster mom learned the news that a little girl in her care for almost five years was on an adoption agency list. When I asked how she was feeling, the foster mom told me, “I know I need to be preparing her, but it hurts my heart too much to even consider, and so I just keep thinking that if I ignore this news, perhaps the day will never come.” This was a mom who knew financially that she could not afford to adopt the child in her care. She knew intellectually that she should begin the process to explain to her foster child that they would someday have to leave each other. But emotionally she could not bring herself to even think about it and so she remained silent. Other foster parents have told me that they don’t want to tell the child “too early” as it will only make the child anxious or upset. Still others have told us that they don’t discuss international adoption openly because neighbors, unfamiliar with modern child psychology, have said things in the past to children adopted overseas such as, “They will make you dye your hair blonde to fit in” or “If you don’t do everything your new parents say they will sell you to a factory.” To many rural foster families, America or Sweden or the Netherlands seem as far away as the moon, and it is hard for them to explain international adoption to a child when they don’t fully understand it themselves.

So while many in the West think it would be “easy” to fully prepare a child for international adoption, the reality is that there are a myriad of reasons why the adults caring for them sometimes choose not to say a word until just a few days before the child leaves their care. Adoptive parents need to understand that the child walking through the government office door to meet them might not have any idea whatsoever what it means to “have a permanent family.” Some children are told by the people escorting them that they have to be good or else they will be returned, and so in those initial days many children are either terrified of doing anything that could make them lose their new family, or else they will do everything “bad” to test whether their new parents will keep them. Remind yourself that you had a really long time to prepare your heart and mind for this adoption, and chances are you had your own moments of pure panic along the way. Your child certainly deserves at least as long to process and come to terms with the possibly brand new concept of “adoption.” As mentioned above, the orphanage or foster parents might have had their own reasons for wondering if you were actually going to step through that government door as well.

We all wish that this process could be “perfect” and that every child could be fully and adequately prepared for what they are about to experience. But since adoption involves humans, who all bring their own personal experiences and emotions to the table, it is of course a bit more complicated than that.

~Amy Eldridge, Executive Director

At the universally typical preschool first day, there are the children who rush to the projects, and there are the children who cry. Jamie cried. When coaxed to participate, he didn’t want to. Socially, Jamie was aggressive. When he found he couldn’t get his own way, Jamie collapsed into tantrums. Every day, for many days, was just like the first day of school for Jamie. He had such a hard time adapting to this new place and the new routine of preschool.

The Believe In Me teachers, with patience and endurance, waited until Jamie too discovered his individuality in the classroom. Jamie found he could make his friends laugh. He has a talent for making anything fun. Now Jamie looks forward to school every day. His self-esteem is higher. There are still preschooler moments of crying — but not as many. Who would believe that this happy, smiling boy was the same boy who had such a difficult time in the beginning?

Like preschoolers everywhere, Jamie is learning basic skills and developing emotionally. Jamie’s progress and success are what LWB supporters, volunteers, and staff believe can happen when every child is just given a chance.

Joshua and his caregiver obviously shared a special bond as well. His caregivers said he was easily excitable and had trouble going to sleep at night.

After receiving several days of breathing treatments and antibiotics, the doctors were able to do the first repair, which we all hoped would allow him to gain weight and grow stronger. Joshua was discharged from the hospital almost a month after his admission and returned to his home orphanage in the Jiangxi Province. He was such a favorite on the ward that all the doctors and nurses turned out to say goodbye.

Our most recent update tells what great care he is receiving and includes a wonderful description of his health:

Now Joshua learns to wave his hand to express “goodbye,” clap his hands to express “welcome,” and bow to express “thank you.” He will shake his body and hands when he listens to the music or when you say to him, “Dance.” Nannies now train him to walk on his own. He can walk a few steps by himself but falls onto nannies’ arms quickly. He walks very well when holding fences. Joshua is extroverted and likes to laugh. He becomes stronger with a better appetite after surgery. Now he looks very cute and lovely with apple cheeks. We all love him.

LWB’s Medical Team is especially happy to see those apple cheeks as well! While Joshua will still need a second surgery, we’re hoping that he will have the love and care of his forever family when the time comes.