Faith's Mommies

Last night, little Faith wasn't feeling so good.  She has a icky cough, and this awful inability to puke when she coughs. Yeah fun, but we're grateful we hadn't seen this since Wuhan.  I can handle throw up when there is no possible of me puking 24 hour later germs attached to them, but it is still unnerving especially when it happens in their sleep.  So I choice to sleep on the couch, easier and quicker access to her room if she needed me.  Around 2:30, she needed me.  I brought her out to the couch, laid her head on my chest, tucked her feet between my legs to stay warm (she has a tendency to cuddle up to me with little frog legs anyway - I wonder if this has anything to do with how the seem to bundle and carry the babies that I heard about from my friends who adopted infants?).   This is just one of the many questions about her life before us that I spend so much time pondering about.

Last night, as we lay there, her coughing, and me trying to help her relax so she can rest and get well, I started to again ponder her early life.  I thought about her birth mother, the woman who would have held her just as I was as little baby.  How long did it take them to realize she couldn't hear?  Who's decision was it to abandon her?  Was it the mother's, ashamed she'd brought not only a female to her husband, but one with a handicap?  Did she cry, as she placed her baby down in the parking lot of the hospital probably under the cover of night and run away?  What was Faith's birth name?  Did Faith cry in the dark, without the safety of an adult nearby?  How long did she lay there before she was found?  Abandoned - left without a trace of who you are, a history you will never recover.  Can any of us fathom what this feels like to the million of Chinese girls who will experience this reality every day?

Then came her second mommy, her foster mother.  I am sad I wasn't able to meet her, that I have no pictures of her to share with Faith.  That there is more history I will not be able to complete for Faith.  I know so very little of her 3 years with this family.  Were they loving or distant?  She is so loveable but I am never sure if that is because she never had it, or had so much of it that she continues to crave that closeness?  I did read that children who never make attachments are the ones that struggle to bond with their new families, so I can only assume from her quick bonding to us, that she was indeed loved and nurtured.   Her behavior, and the little information we do have, would suggest she was actually spoiled - given whatever she wanted maybe out of pity, or perhaps that little sly smile won over the men in her life (as it continues to do here!)  What were her days like, she doesn't easily engage with toys and books, she'd sit on my lap all day long and do nothing but cuddle if I allowed her too.  Yet, oddly the minute we get out in public she's a wild woman -- running around, wiggling out of my arms, and generally the complete opposite of how she is at home.  I know all parents say that, but this is more than the usual, there is definitely something to her behavior - I am starting to suspect it is a reaction to the overstimulation that being out of the house creates.  I am sure she was not out very much, and hasn't learned coping strategies with stimulus that comes from being out of the safety and familarity of your home. 

Which brings me to the final ponder of the day - as her third mommy, how safe do I make her feel?  How secure is she that there isn't a fourth mommy in her future.  I do pray, that isn't God's plan for her!!  Not just because I don't want to be dead or divorced lol, but I would be heartbroken to see her have to suffer any more traumatic transitions in her life.  She is truly remarkable that after all this, she continues to trust human beings to care for her, that she allows them to love her and returns it with such complete resolve that it is overwhelming.  I am always having to remind myself its only been 4 months, it does still feel like she's been here forever, the fact that we waited 6 MONTHS from the moment we got her picture to the day we met her, seems a blink of an eye now!!  I know now that there was no way they could have prepared her for our coming, I never received back my photoalbum I sent, so I doubt that she ever saw it.  That day , November 2, 2009, was the first time she'd ever laid eyes on us!!  She let us pick her up, hold her hand, and leave with her, without a tear.   God had to be whispering in her heart, these are the ones I had been telling you about ... these are parents I promised you, thank you my little dear for being so patient with My perfect plan, even when it must have seemed I'd forsaken you.