Family Day aka the craziest 24 hours of our lives!

This is the first thing I saw on my phone the morning of April 21st. Family day!!! We couldn't believe it was finally here! We knew that Milo had to wake up early that morning to take the train to meet us and our minds were filled with thoughts of how he must be feeling.

Right before we left for the Civil Affairs office. Look how well rested we look!

He didn't end up wanting anything to do with this crib, but it was ready!

At 10:00 we met our guide in our lobby. Quick note about our guide and driver, they were amazing!!! It was so nice to have friendly faces greeting us each day and especially nice to have someone to translate things for us and tell us about Changsha.
Once we left the hotel, we headed to a bank to exchange money for our orphanage donation. We have paid a lot of fees during this process, but this was one fee we were happy to pay. It was a small price to pay to the people and place that took in our son at only 4 days old, raised him for over a year, repaired his cleft lip and did the paperwork and effort that it takes to make him eligible for international adoption. Without the Hengyang SWI (social welfare institute, China's term for orphanages) and ICC, Milo would not be in the loving family he is in today.

After exchanging our money, we headed to the Civil Affairs office to meet Milo. Our guide warned us that the office was under construction (as is most of Changsha) and she wasn't kidding. The entrance to the building was mostly chopped up concrete and the every time we got in the elevator I was pretty sure we weren't going to make it.

We were told to wait in a small office and about thirty minutes went by. We both jumped every time someone came down the hallway.  Eventually Milo came in with an orphanage worker. It was indescribable to finally see the boy we had been dreaming of and praying over for so long. The woman that brought him to us wasn't one of his nannies and I'm not sure if that made the transition easier or worse. Poor Milo took one look at us and started crying. And crying. And crying. This crying wouldn't really stop for the next 24 hours. He was so so scared. He wouldn't even make eye contact with us. We had been told that he had bonded very strongly to his nannies and he was very afraid of strangers, so we were expecting him to be scared. Also, during our training sessions over the past year, our agency taught us about the grieving that adopted children will go through. However, hearing about grieving and experiencing it in the form of a terrified and screaming child that you are now responsible for are two very different things. We just kept telling ourselves that we had just plucked this little guy from the only life he had ever known and the only people he had ever known and we couldn't expect him to be happy about it. So we kept trying to feed him snacks, snuggle him and talk to him (although I'm sure the fact that we were speaking English wasn't very comforting).

The face of a little boy who has checked out and a mama who is wondering what she got herself into!

 

These are the clothes Milo came to us in. He was one bundled kid!

This is one of my favorite pictures from that first 24 hours as it really sums up exactly how everyone was feeling. 

We were able to ask the orphanage worker a few questions about what Milo ate, his routine and likes and dislikes. One of the things she mentioned was that he likes to play with a towel. We didn't think much of it until we got back to the hotel room (with Milo still crying) and our guide grabbed a washcloth from the bathroom and handed it to him. While the tears didn't stop immediately, it was obvious this was a source of comfort. He put a corner of it in his mouth like a pacifier and started rubbing it in his hands. It was such an insight into his personality and a huge eye opener of how little we knew about our new son.

The first night was rough. Milo wouldn't let us put him down, so he slept between us on the bed. He was (and still is) a very restless sleeper and I think we maybe got an hour of sleep between worrying about rolling on him and trying to get him to stop screaming.
We decided to brave our breakfast buffet the next morning, mostly because we were all desperate to get out of the room! Milo pleasantly surprised us with his good behavior. He sat on my lap and ate everything we offered him. This was most likely a coping mechanism and a sign that he was on auto-pilot, but we were still happy to see him take food from us.

Successful breakfast! And a teeny glimpse of a curious little boy.

Later that morning we went back to the Civil Affairs office to finalize our paperwork. The first 24 hours after you get your child are called the "harmonious period". This is the time that the Chinese government gives you to make sure you want to go through with the adoption. It is very rare for a family to say "no", but it unfortunately does happen. In our case, it was funny what just 24 hours of parenthood did to us. Even though we were running on very little sleep and Milo had cried and screamed at us for the majority of those 24 hours, we were in love. We knew without a doubt that this little boy was ours. We were honored to be able to make the commitment that day that we would always love and care for him.

The feelings from those first 24 hours are ones that we will both be reflecting on for a long time and are very difficult to put into words. Going from no kids to a toddler is hard. Meeting your child for the first time in a foreign country is hard. Adding in the grief, confusion and anger that Milo was feeling made it really hard. We had no idea what we were doing and very much doubted that we were doing the right things. Luckily, we have an amazing support system and received much needed words of wisdom and encouragement whenever we reached out. These words gave us the strength to focus and keep doing the only thing we knew to do, show him that we loved him. We held him close, sang to him, talked to him, did everything we could to reassure him that we knew how scary it was and that we were here to offer comfort whenever he was ready to take it. We knew we would have to earn his trust and we were prepared to work for it.

More to come on the rest of our week in Changsha!