Xuchang- passport app, finding spot, and orphanage visit

Later on the 26th, we got to travel into Mason's city, where he was found abandoned and was taken to the local orphanage, where he stayed for 2 months, before being transfered to Shanghai through the Baobei Foundation.  It took a little over an hour to get there from the capitol city of Zhengzhou.  We had several steps to conquer this afternoon while in his city of Xuchang.

 First of all, we had to go apply for his Chinese passport, so he can leave with us for the States at the end of the adoption trip.  The waiting room was crowded with curious Chinese onlookers, curious about two white people with a Chinese baby.  Fortunately we had a guide with us from our adoption agency to help with the language barrier.  We pretty much followed her, while she filled out the paperwork, and then we signed our names.  One long hour later, we were out of there.

The next stop was to his finding spot, aka, where he was found abandoned.  I will not share all the details here, but he was abandoned in a very public place, away from transportation, so it was safe and busy, where other people would be able to easily see him and make sure he was taken to the local orphanage.  I do want to ask that you don't judge his birth parents.  China is not America.  There are different laws in China, and there are important cultural differences.  His birth parents loved him...of that I'm sure, as I've observed several key elements in his abandonment story.  Please do not say, "Well, how could they just abandon him?", because it's just more complicated than that.  Mason will grow up with us honoring his birth family who gave him life, and who continued to give him life, until they took him to a safe place to be watched over.  I can't imagine the pain and anguish that his birth parents had to endure, and probably still endure, in giving their son, now our son, a chance in life.  I wish they had a way to know that he is now part of a family, with a mom, dad, 2 sisters, and 1 brother, and that he will live in America, in a loving home with good schools and great opportunities.  I hope that they will somehow find comfort that their little boy has been handed over to a family who love him dearly!

The final destination before heading back to Zhengzhou was Mason's orphanage.  He was only there when he was 2-4 months old, so I was extra excited when we got permission from the orphanage director to tour part of their facilities. 

                                          The orphanage, picture taken in a moving vehicle.

                                       A scene from one of the roughly 10 rooms that we saw.

                                                           Cribs, cribs, and more cribs

This is a room similar to the room Mason was in when he was here.  There were 3 incubators lining each side of the room, each holding a preemie.  In the middle, the cribs held small babies.

The nannies were all very sweet and were doing the best they could with the resources provided.  That being said, this experience at the orphanage has been life-changing, and even though I don't feel it appropriate to put my thoughts fully onto this blog (it's one of those you had to be there to understand), I wanted to wrap up each of those babies in a warm blanket and take them home with us.  Apparently this orphanage only had 13 adoptions last year, although it is the end of February, and I believe they've almost reached that number, with 5 new adoptions taking place next week.  We probably saw at least 50 kids there, and there are probably more who we didn't see.  I'm grateful for these nannies for doing the best they can, but I'm also that Mason didn't spend much time in there.  I pray those other sweet children will find families soon!!!

 

It's a BOY!!!

On Tuesday, February 26, we officially became a family of 6 as we were handed our Certificate of Adoption!!!  It was all very simple, and for some reason I thought it would be a more formal affair, perhaps with more paperwork to sign.  The official read of the name of each child, and the family came forward to collect the document.  So there you have it, after many many months of hard work, paperchasing, and stress, Mason Kai Schiller is now officially ours!!!  On that day, there was one less orphan in the world!

Gotcha Day/Family Day

On Monday, it was a BIG day for the adoptive families.  This was the day that they met their new child(ren) for the first time.  We also had to sign a 24 hr guardianship form, stating that we will take care of our child(ren) and not abandon them in the next 24 hours while they process the finalization of the adoption.  Even though we already had our Gotcha Day with Mason, twice, it was still exciting as we watched the other families, one by one, receiving their new darlings!  There were probably around 12 families there, and the groups were from America and Italy.  I expected a lot of screaming and crying (from the children), but it went very smooth and calmly.  We were the first group to arrive (3 families in our specific travel group), so we got to watch each of the families receive their child(ren) as the different orphanage reps arrived.  one family in our group received a sweet little boy who's orphanage was a 3 1/2 hour drive away!

                                   Two future Italians waiting for their families to show up.

                                     Anxious parents waiting for their child(ren) to show up.

                               Our new friends, the K family, with their new son, Zak (child #6)

      Some other new friends, the A family, with their new sons, Griggs and Hagan (child #8 &9)

                                               And of course, the Schillers on Gotcha Day!

Goodbye Shanghai!

It was mixed emotions as Chris and I took Mason to the Hongqiao airport in Shanghai to fly on China Southern Airlines to Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province, the province where Mason was born.  Shanghai is the only city that Mason has ever really known since he was 4 months old, and I don't think we'll be back there anytime soon, as it is just too expensive to travel, and logistics with 4 kids at home will make it very difficult.  Perhaps when he is a teenager!

On the other hand, leaving Shanghai means that we are making big progress in this adoption process and each day gets us closer to when Mason will officially be a Schiller (for better or worse, kiddo!)

The flight was just a little under two hours, and Mason did beautifully, only fussing a little.  He really enjoyed looking out the window around take-off and landing to watch the houses and countryside outside.  We brought a bag of tricks (ok- really toys) to keep him occupied, and he enjoyed those.  Then the flight attendents handed out the lunches, which were very Chinese, and Mason gobbled down all of his noodles (adult serving size) and half of Chris'.  Chris nor I dared to eat that stuff.

First airplane ride!

 

After we landed, collected our bags, and got ripped off by a taxi driver (I don't know enough Chinese to argue back to him about the price, so we just paid the extra money and dealt with it), we arrived at the Crowne Plaza Zhengzhou.  The hotel lobby is beautiful, and the room is...well...it's okay and it works.  It smells like, well, hmmm...like the horrible pollution outside (will show pics of that later).  We are now a part of a travel group, and a small one at that with three families (one from Illinois adopting a 4 1/2 year old son, and one from NC adopting a 14 month old son).  Tomorrow is what is known as "Gotcha Day" or "Family Day" when most families, except for us, go meet their child(ren) for the first time, sign a 24 hour guardianship agreement before the adoption is finalized, and take their new child(ren) back to the hotel with them to start the bonding process.  Even though we have already experienced our own Family Day with Mason, we are so very excited to watch these families become more whole, as their new loves enter their lives in the flesh.  I know that this process will be hard on many of the children, as it has been the parents who have been pursuing this dream and have been waiting for months, and sometimes years, to hold their new child, and some of these children have not been told what is about to happen, and all will grive at some time in their own way.  I just pray that the transitions go as smoothly as possible for the new family members and their parents!!!

The Day that felt like a Year

Saturday was an extremely difficult day. Mason was grieving hard after seeing and saying goodbye to a former ayi (domestic worker) at one of his former Healing Homes the night before. He woke up in the night calling for her and was very grumpy the next morning, as it took a couple of hours for him to go back to sleep. We have no idea if that was related to what was about to happen, but it at least shows that he was already under some stress. Chris was trying to feed Mason some apple slices for breakfast, when he threw up a little bit (He actually vomited on himself and me BIG time the night before in the taxi on the way to visit his former Healing Home) and was very upset and throwing fits.

I finally decided to take him upstairs in our friends' house to take a bath. I was holding him with the front if his body against the front of mine. After reaching the top of the stairs and entering our guest room, he had been fussing, but then he really started to hit me before his body stiffened, with his head pulled back. His eyes went upward and his body started shaking. He was having a seizure! Now mind you, he has never had a history of seizures, only a concussion from a fall that happened a month earlier, and I had never been around a person having a seizure, and especially not my own child. I quickly came down the starts and called for Chris and my friend, telling them that he was seizuring and we needed help for him ASAP! I laid him flat on the carpet, and after around 30 seconds, the seizure stopped as his entire body simultaneously stiffened before he fell asleep. Is he sleeping? Is he unconscious? Is he breathing? He was asleep and breathing (!), and we were scared out of our minds. I quickly called a Baobei contact and also a friend, who sent her driver over to our house to take us to the hospital.

We ended up going to Shanghai United, which was about 45 minutes away in Puxi, the other side of Shanghai, but it has American or American-trained doctors, and is also the same hospital that saw Mason after his fall/concussion a month earlier. Mason slept the entire way there, of which we were grateful. We kept checking to make sure he was still breathing. We were so overwhelmed. Mind you, Chris and I are scared, hungry (no breakfast), gross (just threw on some clothes and glasses), and scared...again.

After initially briefing the doctor and the nurses took their time finding a vein to take blood to check in the lab (really...a long time, with Mason screaming the entire time), the results came back that all of the lab work looked normal and that he would need a full work-up to see if there's another problem somewhere (or it could be a one time random occurrence...but they are unsure at this point). He wasn't running a fever, and I know it's not unheard of for children to have a seizure due to the fever, so that wasn't the cause. Since we are going to Houston with him (Yay for awesome medical facilities in Houston!) in a couple of weeks, they said to just wait until we get there to do the full work-up (MRI and other tests), since its safer and more accurate in the States than in China, and he didn't seem stressed to find out the reason that day. They did give us some tips and medicine that will stop a seizure, should that happen again, especially since the next week we will be in Henan province, without good medical facilities available.

An interesting fact, though, is that a seizure isn't considered major unless fit is more than 20 minutes in length...I can't imagine. So Mason's 30 second seizure was pretty mild. I had no idea.

The seizure occurred around 8am, and we left the hospital around noon. Fortunately a wonderful Baobei volunteer Noelle, who also watched Mason for the last 3 weeks before we arrived in Shanghai, met us at the hospital, and since she lived close to the hospital, she invited us over for some food before heading all of the way over to Pudong again. We are so grateful for her! Then, she allowed us to use her driver instead of a stinky taxi, so that was also appreciated. We got home and immediately started to pack for the next day's trip to Mason's home province, as the doctors gave the ok for us to proceed with the adoption trip as scheduled (whew!). We were utterly exhausted but out of time, so rest didn't happen too much for us that day.

This morning we will leave on our trip to officially begin the adoption portion of our China trip, as Mason takes his first airplane ride to Zhengzhou (pronounced jin-joe), Henan...One of the poorest provinces in all of China, where we will meet up with our travel group and Chinese rep from CCAI (our adoption agency).

Healing Homes

During the course of Mason's stay in Shanghai, he has lived with 4 different Healing Homes. First, the Leow family, then us, then the Naville family, and then the Armstrong family. All four families loved him, and he loved them! We were utterly devastated when Chris' job situation forced us to leave Shanghai and return to America (and believe me- we tried everything we could think of to stay in Shanghai, but it wasn't the Lord's plan), but we were so happy that a wonderful Healing Home was found to take care of him for the majority of our time away until we could arrive for our adoption trip and join him to our family together!!!

Thank you to the Leow, Naville, and Armstrong families for everything you have given Mason, and mostly for your love to our sweet baby boy! I am so elated that I was able to spend time with each of you during this week in Shanghai. You will always be a part of our extended family, and Mason will grow up hearing about your roles in his childhood. To you all, we are very grateful!

Mason and a few of the Leow  family, who took care of him during the time of his surgery at four months of age until we first got him at almost six months old.

Mason with Jane and France (Naville Fam, who watched Mason for about 7 months)

Mason and Leo

Mason with the Naville's 2 ayis (domestic helpers), Leo, and France

 

Mason with Noelle Armstrong, who watched him for the last 3 weeks before I made my way to Shanghai for the adoption trip!

 

Chris' Arrival!

Daddy is here!!!

Thursday was a wonderful day, as Chris arrived in Shanghai around 3pm, and made his way to us around 5pm. He was able to sleep around 11 hours total during his combined flights (lucky- I got literally 2 minutes of sleep on my flights) and arrived here safely. Mason sort of noticed him but was busy getting his toy-playing on, so he didn't pay too much attention to dad quite yet. 24 hours later, and Mason is just loving Dad and their play time together.