Travel with Conscience

Falling for Isabelle: an Adopting Story
Lydia Dean

I will forever have this image of the four of us huddled around the computer on the kitchen table in the village house. Each of us is intently looking at pictures of children, mostly babies and toddlers from China. The mood is serious as we advance through the files. Some of the children have gaping cleft palate holes in their faces, others with club feet and hands, Hepatitus B, epilepsy or heart problems, the list goes on. They all have important things in common--a need to be loved, to wake up to a mother and a father, and a right to a future that is safe and bright.

The idea to adopt a special needs child from China was somehow collective. A couple of years prior to going to India I developed a burning desire for another child, an incessant, determined, uncontrollable need for a child. I became one of those women in the grocery store who stared at babies secretly coveting them. Nicholas and Emma thought it was a grand idea. They wanted a little one too and thus urged me on, baited me, tempted me however they could. “Oh Mom look at these sweet little socks,” “Mom, come look at this baby.” Nick would remind me that he would be old enough to baby sit, that I would have so much help it would be a cinch. If I allowed myself to forget about the idea they forced it to resurface at every turn. It went on like this for a couple of years, pushing the thought away and yet it somehow returning with greater force. Then I went to India and not long after it became clear that we needed to adopt – the idea just felt right to me and the others members of the family were so willing. Whatever had been blocking me had been removed.

Questions then tumbled into my world rapid fire. Where to begin, which country to consider, a boy or a girl? We were an American family living in Provence, France. Would this pose problems in the process, would it be more difficult? Slowly after long hours combing internet sites, the details became more clear. Many Americans, especially military families living abroad successfully adopted every year with little extra hassle. There were international adoption lawyers to help with the legalities and English speaking social workers in different counties who could conduct the home studies. I then searched hundreds of sites offering adoption services in order to find a reputable agency. I made calls to several and at least 2 raised concern over our living abroad. Then I contacted Children’s House International, an agency used to dealing with expatriate families. I spoke with several women who headed up different programs, all of them seemed extremely knowledgeable. I would later learn that they had their own special stories to tell, that they had adopted themselves over the years and knew first hand the trials and frustrations of the process. Feeling comfortable with the agency, our next step was to choose a program, in essence choosing a country from which to adopt. Many programs had had problems due to governmental concern over evidence of baby trafficking. Cambodia, Vietnam, and Guatemala were under great scrutiny. Russia and other eastern European countries had well-established programs but had higher risks than other countries when it came to fetal alcohol syndrome.

I kept returning to China as it appeared to represent a stable, predictable, well established process. Unfathomable numbers of baby girls are being left abandoned due to China’s one-child rule implemented in 1979 to curb population growth. Boys are preferred over girls as they can carry on the family name and have better means of supporting their parents. I started looking at photos of the Chinese children who had been adopted by other families and began having visions of my own sweet bundle. Soon after we took the plunge and entered into the Traditional Program for healthy babies. We were told we would go through about 8-10 months of “paper-chasing” and then on one special unknown day we would be matched with a baby, most likely somewhere around 12 months old.

During our wait process the agency encouraged us to have a look at the files of waiting children, those who fell outside the category of “healthy.” I don’t remember when it was or how far into the process we were before we looked at that file but I can tell you it wasn’t immediate. That picture in my mind of my sweet bundle was perfectly healthy. One day the topic of special needs came up with John and so I asked him what he thought of the idea in general terms. I was perhaps looking for reassurance that we were wise not to take the risk. Without a second’s thought he responded, “Oh you know me, I would take any of them. They all need to be loved. I don’t care what they have wrong with them.” It was that clear and simple for him. I was stunned and silent.

I quietly started to peek at the files of waiting children and eventually the faces of these sweet children who had for some reason been asked to face incredibly tough challenges crept their way into my dreams at night and sat on my shoulder during the day. All it had taken was for John to spurt out these courageous words for the door in my heart to eek open just a bit further. It was then that my perfectly formed image of my bundle started to transform and broaden, taking the form a 3 year child without a hand, or a 2 year old girl born with an eye closed shut, or an 11 month old with a malformed leg.

And so that is how we found ourselves sitting around the table looking at the files of special needs children. It was a delicate matter from the start with Nicholas and Emma who were not even 8 and 10 years old. While they were open to the idea of a medically needy child I don’t think they knew what exactly that entailed and I am sure that the photos they looked at were not what they had initially imagined for a brother or sister. But they were very brave and together we painfully admitted to one another what we could and couldn’t manage.

I was intrigued from the minute I set yes on her. There was an agelessness about this mysterious child who stood so stout, and proud in her pictures, as if to let everyone know the strength of her spirit and the hope in her heart. At 8 months old with barely a hint of a smile, bundled in worn sweater sitting on a chair with a clearly deformed leg we knew this child was ready to live life. We all agreed to request more information on her medical file. Zhuang Luzi, born on Feb 6, 2005 and abandoned on the steps of the YiFeng Orphanage in Jiangxi China on March 9, only a few weeks old with only the clothes on her back and a note in her pocket with her birth date. She was born with fibular hemimelia, a congenital disease causing a missing fibula in her right leg, a difference in the length of her legs and two missing toes on the right foot.

The details we received from there were vague and few. There were no x-rays, exact measurements on the difference between her limbs or information on her mobility. I dove headfirst into researching hemimelia and limb differences. The net sum of my findings was that the method of treatment depended on the length of the difference. If it was slight, she could wear a shoe lift and function normally. If it was significant, attempts could be made to lengthen the limb, sometimes a long and painful process. The alternative to limb lengthening would be amputation. The word shot through me like a bullet. I wasn’t quite sure I was prepared for that.

As I delved further into the medical findings it was clear that there was a rather heated controversy over which method of treatment was best. While amputation seemed extreme, children were up and fully functioning with the use of a prosthesis from an early age. From 18 months they could begin a normal active childhood. The benefit of limb lengthening on the other hand, was that the child could keep her leg and foot and over the course of several operations, regain the difference in length. The downside to this approach was that it involved many painful procedures throughout childhood, a leg that is severely scarred as a result, and uncertain final results at the end of all the effort.

This was all so much to digest at the outset. Within a short period of time I had gone from perusing adoption sites and dreaming of babies to researching infant amputations. But I kept returning to her photos, over and over. Something in her eyes spoke to me and I just had to proceed. Whatever she needed to go through we would go through with her. The agency informed us that when we felt ready, we could petition to adopt her. If there were no other families petitioning she could be ours barring any complications with our dossier. Ours I thought. It was all happening so quickly, as if out of my control yet I knew it was completely within our control to proceed or not to proceed. Without any further thought we sent off the petition and within hours I had a return email from the agency.

Mrs. Dean,
I am pleased you have reached the point that you understand the risks and long term possibilities of having her as your daughter. We have changed her status to – My family has found me
Congratulations, she now has a family and it is YOU!

I jumped for joy, screeched and cried. Plaster dropped in clumps from the ceiling below us in our ancient village house. Zhuang Luzi had found her home. The enormity of it, what this meant for her and what this meant for us was baffling. The kids and John were out at the time and wouldn’t be back for a few hours. Not knowing what to do with my energy, I rushed to the store and bought the makings for a party, along with a photo frame and a precious pink dress that would hang on my bedroom doorknob until she came home. In the middle of the table I placed her photo and a single blooming red bromeliad that would take the place of our growing flower in China, one that we would tend to each day as we waited. When John and the kids returned I shared the news. Together we named our sweet girl Isabelle Luzi and from that evening on our family had grown. No longer were we a family of four. Somewhere thousands of miles away in an orphanage in Jiangxi, China was our child and she had already found her way in our hearts.

We waited and we waited for months on end. Nobody can prepare you for that horrible grueling wait. It’s like giving birth to a baby you aren’t allowed to see. I wanted to crawl out of my skin, I wanted to scream and pull my hair out. It was all completely out of our control and there was only one thing to do. Wait. All I could think of was our child living in lord only knew what conditions. Was she was being properly cared for, held, loved? I read horror stories on the psychological effects of early childhood institution and resulting attachment disorders. We had been told that special needs children take a fast track through the acceptance process but for some unknown reason there were serious slowdowns within Adoption Affairs in China and acceptances were only trickling out.

But one morning that precious email came giving us formal Travel Approval from the Chinese government to go and pick up Isabelle. I flew to New York and met my mother and together we flew to Beijing then on to Nanchang where we joined my husband. Three weeks after receiving that email and only 24 hours after landing in Nanchang there was a knock at our door and we knew that finally our wait was over.

When you give birth to your own children you have memories of a particular moment when your child arrives. It’s a private precious moment that marks the beginning of their life and yours that will be inexplicably entwined from then on. As I would learn, adoptions are a whole different experience. Never would we be able to compare biological birth with adoption. They are separate experiences with separate journeys altogether. With Isabelle that special moment came as I opened the door after hearing the knock. A wave of emotions swept over me all at once-- relief, joy, and pain for what I knew was going to be an extremely difficult day for her. The head caretaker from the orphanage carried her in her arms and sat on the edge of the bed. Isabelle looked stunned and listless, her eyes slightly crossed. Now at 19 months she looked nothing like the strong child in the pictures. She was small and pale and I wanted more than anything to take her in my arms, to let her know everything was going to be fine. But we weren’t allowed to just yet. More waiting was required. We had been told only to observe, to use the initial time while she was calm with the caretaker and the translator to ask questions about her. It might be our only opportunity to learn about what she likes, what she eats, what her routine is, whether she has been sick. Considering we knew nothing about her past whatsoever and that we were not allowed to visit the orphanage where she spent the first year and a half of her life, these few minutes of information gathering were more than important.

I pulled out my carefully put together list of questions and I tried my best to focus on them but my eyes kept returning to Isabelle. She looked as though she had shut down entirely, her little slight body slumped and still. We asked about her foot and whether she was mobile. “oh yes,” they said emphatically. “She goes all over very very fast,”. John and I looked at each other with sheer relief. Then her condition couldn’t be that bad.

When they finally left I took her in my arms while she sobbed fearfully. It wasn’t a violent scream or cry, it was more like a moan from deep inside her. Then she did just as I was told she would do – overcome by overwhelming shock she sobbed herself to sleep. I sat in that dark hotel room with my sleeping baby in my arms and felt time nearly stop. The long grueling wait was over, she was home, and I was never letting go. I breathed in the smell of her milky skin, still wet form crying. That sweet scent was uniquely different and foreign to me and I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted to drink in that smell. Somewhere in my body my mother instinct was registering it into my very being. In that dark musty hotel room I stroked her forehead and prayed that I would have the strength to give her all that she needed, to fill whatever holes she might have. I pledged to give her every ounce of love I had in me.

After she woke up she remained calm yet still clearly scared. She looked around the room with little reaction. I sat her on the bed and peeled off all of her clothes, her little blue socks and her tattered shoes. Pulling off the turtle neck she was wearing in the dead of the hot summer we were startled to find a large quarter-sized birth mark on her neck. Further inspection revealed a truly beautiful child and I couldn’t tear my hands from her tender body. We then looked at her three toes and her deformed lower leg and upon first glance we were shocked by the difference in length. I put her on the ground to see her move but she only sat and soon cried. Over the course of the next few days we realized she had no mobility at all. At 19 months she wasn’t even crawling. How much of this had to do with being institutionalized and how much had to do with the hemimelia remained a mystery. My gut told me right away we needed to prepare ourselves for the most difficult of options.

The following couple of weeks in China are a blur of walks in the park, bureaucratic offices, and hotel rooms. My husband went home to look after Nicholas and Emma while my mother stayed on. Quietly Isabelle and I got to know one another. She ate eggs, fruit, and noodles ravenously and slept hard. It was all rather dreamy and unreal. While other adoptive families dealt with rejection from their children or other assorted behavioral challenges, Isabelle snuggled in comfortably, laughing and joking often and playing nicely. I thought that we had truly bonded and all my attachment fears had been alleviated. I don’t think either one of was ready for the shock of real life at home in France. She fell in love with John, Nicholas, Emma and the dog but reacted immediately to the competition for my time. She screeched, cried, hit. She panicked over food. I couldn’t leave the room without major fuss. Calm Isabelle had been replaced by someone overcome with fear.

For months we battled with the transition together, everybody in the family feeling somewhat destabilized. There were many joyful moments where we simply watched Isabelle explore and experience simple pleasures for the first time. But we lived these moments alongside difficult periods as well - tantrums, screaming and incessant moaning. She must have been eternally frustrated and scared having been ripped out of her predictable, controlled environment and dropped into the fold of a busy family, speaking 2 languages. She couldn’t crawl, walk or talk during a time of tremendous change. She was fighting to protect herself with her behaviors because it was all she had. I was convinced that we wouldn’t get to know the real Isabelle until she felt safe and relaxed. It became clear that love was not something that she had been able to predict in her past. She treated it like an awkward object in her hand. She didn’t know what to do with it, to grab hold of it for dear life or to be fearful of it. And I had my own struggles. Behaving as I had with Nicholas and Emma I expected my mothering to take the same route with Isabelle yet it felt awkward for me as well.

I sought advice from other adoptive families who reassured me that time was the key. Again, patience was the virtue. Some months later we saw grains of hope that things could be normal. We would lie together and she would take my face in her hands and kiss me so gently and so slowly on the lips. She would do it over and over, savoring some sort of primal intimacy that she had missed in her early days. I could feel the depth of her need in her kiss. I felt how much she had to give, how much goodness was inside of her just waiting to be received. I in turn poured every bit of goodness, strength, and love into my kiss back and prayed she felt every ounce of it and more. Despite the ups and downs of that first year her true spirit and strength continued to reveal itself every day. I caught precious glimpses of her toddling off into the garden with the wind in her hair and a smile on her face. On these rare occasions I noticed she wasn’t looking over her shoulder to make sure I was there. Little by little she was learning she could let go and trust us, that she was no longer the only one fighting for her well being. Together Isabelle and I were finding our own route to each other.

Anxious to get medical advice on her hemimelia I quickly sought feedback from doctors both in France and in the US. We flew home to the US to consult with American doctors whose consensus was that amputation would be the best route. If we went through with the operation soon she would adapt very quickly. The doctors in France however, strongly disagreed, favoring painful, but increasingly successful limb lengthening procedures. Ultimately the agonizing decision was ours. Her well being, the shape of her future was squarely in our hands and it felt like a tremendous choice to make for someone else. We dug as far down into ourselves as we could possibly dig and looked high up toward the sky for the answers. At some point it became clear to us that she needed to be offered a new life firmly grounded on even legs. She deserved a leg and foot that functioned as well as anyone else’s, just as she had the right to a loving family. We made the painful decision to have her foot removed to make way for a prosthesis.

It’s been almost a year now since I was handed my sweet bundle in Nanchang China, almost 2 years since we made the decision to adopt. Isabelle has had her operation and we are awaiting her new leg. She is radiant, strong-willed and loving. In the next few months she will learn to run, hop and play like the rest of the children her age. Just as we had hoped, a bright and happy future awaits her. She is the definition of courageous in my mind, continuing to hold her head proud as she did in that dossier photograph.

When others ask me to describe the experience I hesitate and stumble over my words. There is no way to explain the magnitude of it—it’s simply enormous. Enormously important, enormously wonderful to have the opportunity to watch a flower open up and radiate. There would have been no way to predict the roller coaster of this experience, the waiting, the joy of finally holding her, the stresses of not being able to understand what she needed, the hardship over making a medical decision for her. It was the most unpredictable happening requiring difficult ingredients, a giving up of control and letting life take its course, letting love take its course. With Nicholas and Emma the love was inside me growing from conception forward. When the nurses put them in my arms it was as if we had known and loved one another already, we were simply reuniting. With my husband love was something that was built overtime. With Isabelle it wasn’t there already and it wasn’t built. I am simply falling for her over time. Now I understand what that means falling in love. It’s a letting go, a magical free fall that feels wonderful. And the best part is that it never really ends.