Reality Check

As we were in the process of completing our home study, there is an amazing woman (and an even more amazing Christian!) who  was adopting from the same region and was a few steps ahead of us. She had just returned from her first visit and had blogged every detail. What a Godsend.

Being a natural born planner, the uncertainty of EVERYTHING in the process is ridiculously hard to swallow.  Her blog entries have given me a little glimpse of what to expect during our first trip to visit E. Though I had hoped that details such as these would fill in the gaps in my mental picture, I find myself calmed and also panicked at the same time.

In one particular blog entry, she spoke about her first experience giving her son a bottle at the orphanage. The caretaker had urged her to put the bib on the baby.  When the baby was tilted back and the bottle given to him, it gushed out and the child quickly lapped up each every bit he could as it continued to pour out and all over him.  The bottle was quickly taken away, with the boy having had perhaps 1/4 of the bottle end up in his mouth.  Upon inspecting the nipple, it had been cut. Confirming her suspicions of the awful circumstances surrounding feeding time in orphanages.

We had learned through our classes that caretakers have many children to feed and a short time to do it.  They line up the babies in their chairs or cribs and go down the line sticking a bottle in each of their mouths.  When they get to the end of the line, they go back to the start and remove the bottles.  It just sounds so horrific to think of these little ones speed eating with a huge hole in the nipple so it spills out in massive torrents.  We liked to think that perhaps our orphanage was different and maybe E got to drink a bottle on her time, digesting well and maybe even had some time to be held or cuddled.


It broke our hearts to learn that E's orphanage was no exception.

We keep thinking of the HOURS and HOURS we spent feeding our children.  The hours spent holding, cuddling, burping, cuddling some more.  E has never had that, and due to no fault of her own. The paperwork cannot be done fast enough as we physically ache to go and bring her home.

It breaks our hearts even more thinking of all of those children who are not coming to a loving home anytime soon.

If you are praying for us, thank you.  Would it be too much to ask that you send up some extra prayers for all of the children living in institutions who may not find families??