Nanchang SWI Orphanage Visit

What an experience we had today, visiting the orphanage.  Finally now on our 3^rd trip to China we were able to go inside an orphanage.  Elise’s orphanage is right here in the city only about 10 minutes from our hotel.   We had to jump through a bunch of hoops to actually get us in, but our wonderful guide Vivian succeeded!!  We started out in the 3-5 year old room where we met some of the children.  We had asked how many children were in the orphanage before we visited so that I could bring some candies with us for the kids.  We were told that there were only 20 children in the orphanage.  Well let’s just say that I bought 40 little bags of candies and they were gone in the first 2 rooms we went inside.  There are a lot more than “20 kids” in the orphanage for sure. 

 

CJ had a little boy run straight to him and hug his leg as soon as we got there.  Talk about heart breaking.  All of the kids did look happy and they were actually already eating some snacks when we went inside.  Of course they were thrilled to get a special snack from us too.  Then the orphanage director came in and immediately told us no cameras allowed.  Whoops!  Luckily we had already snapped a lot of pictures.  We were then off to the baby room.  WOW, oh wow is about all I have right now to describe seeing around 30 babies just laying there all bundled up staring straight up at the ceiling.  The babies can’t move because they have SO many clothes on, so they just lay there in little hospital type bassinets staring at nothing all day L  Now remember these “babies” range from newborn all the way up to about 10 months old.  Can you imagine your 8 month old child laying flat on their back ALL day long with no stimulation??  So sad.  The babies were all adorable of course, lots of them with unrepaired cleft lips, one in an incubator.  All looking so so sweet of course.  Good thing I didn’t have a duffle bag with me or a few would have been coming home with me!

 

Next we went up to the foster family apartment next door to the orphanage.  This is where Elise has spent the last 2 months of her life with this foster mom and her 3 other foster children. CJ enjoyed playing with the kids while we waited on Elise’s foster mom to come back from the bank apparently.  Now up to this point Elise had shown absolutely NO emotions towards any of the nannies in the orphanage.  Some of the nannies would come hold her and Elise would quickly hold her hands back out to me.  So I had hoped that Elise would show attachment to the foster mom when she arrived, but she didn’t.

 

Her foster mom was THRILLED to see her little Fangfang again.  She was excited and came in, I immediately handed Elise over to her to love on.  About 30 seconds later, Elise wanted me again.  I felt so bad for her foster mom to see that, but hopefully it will give her some sense of peace knowing that Elise already likes me.  The foster mom was very nice and we enjoyed our visit.  I made Elise go back to her several times, but Elise always wanted to come back to me.  Soon it was time to say goodbye, and then that was that.  We said goodbye to the place my baby girl has spent the first 20 months of her life.  Such a surreal moment of so many mixed emotions.