today Lily was handed over to me with very little ceremony-yet what a moment! I realize that I've never written about the day because once Lily came into our lives things happened very very quickly and I never had time to write. I'll try to add some details as the days go by-
We had been in Hong Kong for about 3 days before flying to Nanchang to meet the babies. DH and I knew how hard it was to function while dealing with jet-lag, so we wanted to adjust before meeting the baby. We love Hong Kong! It is one of the most fabulous places in the world-we tried to visit old haunts and meet up with friends. Mostly I tried to rest and sleep as I knew that sleep would be hard to get once we had the baby. Our agency had told us that we would be meeting Lily on Monday, January 25 therefore we arrived in Nanchang on Sunday. We were not taking any chances of having something go awry. The flight was a good one-smooth and only about 2 hours long. (I am a terrible flyer) When we arrived at Nanchang airport, our guide had some news-we would be meeting Lily that day! at 4pm. Needless to say, DH and I were excited and scared! I think this is the moment that it became real to me. At 4pm we went to a conference room where we met two other families. Shortly thereafter the orphanage directors began handing over the babies to the families one at a time. DH and I were last-I knew when the director came to the door with the baby that it was Lily-but she looked sooo different! We were expecting a bald little girl-Lily had a full head of black hair! She was so gorgeous. She was handed to me very nonchalantly-and she just looked at me. There were no tears (those came later). What a terrifying moment for me-as I look back now I realize that I felt exactly the same way when I gave birth to my two older children! We tried to get information about Lily from the director, but it quickly became evident to me that what we were hearing was pretty generic and we would have to figure it out for ourselves.
Here are some pics from the "gotcha" moment.
