Today is the day I officially become a mother. I have been laying awake for hours, unable sleep for many reasons, luckily the food in China is not one of them. Even though it will be hours before I can be "Mom", I am already worried about my little girl and rough day she will have being separated from the only home she has ever known. I will be by her side as she grieves the loss of her foster family, her home, and everything familiar to her. She will cry herself asleep, completely ignorant of the bureaucracy that brought her to my hotel room in the capital city where she was found.
I worry this morning, acutely aware of the circumstances that put her in this position: the heartbreaking choice of her birth family to place her in a public place to be found and cared for.
We witnessed this very type of event happen yesterday at the train station: an elderly woman, frantically approaching a train station officials with the abandoned baby she found. Moments later, and empty baby carriage whisked past us on the elevator to collect the child for delivery to the local Social Welfare Office.
So as you get ready to tuck your kids to bed tonight and every night, hold your babies a little tighter, a little longer, and send some good thoughts to those parents and children separated by circumstances outside their control.
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