So the upcoming anniversary of the day our daughter was placed with us has left me emotional & exceptionally nostalgic. The celebration of her birthday was exciting & filled with party planning & prep. But her gotcha day is something completely different & to me in some ways even more special & now I find myself thinking of everything that we've done, haven't done, should have done & perhaps should not have...
The Sunday before we fetched her felt like it was never going to end. I remember that we prepped her room until late that night & when both of us were lying in bed exhausted, we were thinking 'did we do enough?' ' Are we ready for this?' I suspect pregnant parents feel the same before going in to hospital. We woke up bright & early, fetched Nanna & Auntie Sonia & showed up @ the adoption agency all bright-eyed & bushy-tailed to fetch our baby.
Naturally there were papers to sign & speeches from social workers - nothing that I can remember, to be quite honest. And then it was time for us to meet her.. Her caretaker, auntie Cindy, brought her in & gave the most awe-inspiring handover speech. I was stunned at the time, incapable of even crying. She explained to Danielle in such a loving way that we were going to be her forever family that I'm convinced our, then five month old, daughter understood every single word.
And so with a short speech & a kiss on the cheek she was handed to her daddy. He took her in his arms, kissed her & did - what I now refer to as his Mustafa-thing - whilst saying a not-so-silent prayer to God for answering all our prayers. Then it was my turn to hold her & I remember looking at this little girl thinking, ' ok so we've got a baby now.. what now?' I noticed that she was hungry & gave her a bottle, something that thank goodness her caretaker had brought - It had not occurred to me to pack milk & a bottle! But she had toys to keep her entertained in the car! :-)
We had a good little photo session with her, us the social workers, care takers & Nanna of course. She kept her cool, but I realise now how totally strange it must have been for her & how scared she must have felt.
It was a struggle to get her into the car seat, must have taken us at least 15 minutes & I suspect that the social workers had a good giggle @ us! The drive to our home was filled with smiles & playfulness. Once home the celebration meal had to be cooked. You see my husband's family is Portuguese & an event is nothing if not combined with the perfectly prepared meal! However I didn't get to eat any of that specific meal that day as the day had turned out to be waaaaayyy too long for our little bundle & she started to make her feelings heard. Neighbours had heard of the little one's arrival & started coming to see her. With even more unknown faces now around her she raised the bar of making her voice known to us & Paulo quite literally escorted people out of the house so that she could have some breathing space. Yet, she kept crying & was unable to sleep so we drove home, only a short distance away from Nanna's house.
We have a cool printout against our fridge that in short describes how to love a child - one rule on this printout says: 'When crabby, put in water". So we decided that she probably needed a bath to feel better. WRONG choice! She screamed throughout the bath & even more when we started dressing her. Until eventually, after two hours I had reached my breaking point & started crying with her.. She stopped & looked at me with a face that said: "O crap, they've put me with retards! They don't know how to look after babies!"
We put her in bed with a bottle & a prayer, and just like that it was the end of her first day with us. We went to bed still in utter amazement that someone had actually given us their baby. Other than Jesus dying on the cross for us, it will Always be the most amazing gift we both ever received & we will remain forever thankful.
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