By Terry R. Cassreino
HATTIESBURG – Camryn is a different child.
Two weeks after getting our daughter at the Gloria Plaza Hotel in Nanchang, China, Camryn
has quickly changed from a scared little girl to a happy, fun-loving child who enjoys the non-stop attention from everyone she meets.Two weeks ago, Camryn cried and scrreamed her head off. Today, she eats regularly, is adjusting from the 13-hour jet lag of our return trip, loves to be around her parents and enjoys attention from her grandparents and other relatives.
But for you to better understand the progress, allow me to go over a few key points in this young child’s life. Then sit back and take a minute to ask yourself if you could have done any better adjusting to the many changes Camryn did.
• Camryn was born April 5, 2005, possibly somewhere in Jiangxi province of China. We will never know exactly where. And there is a distinct possibility that Camryn is from Hubei province which is one over from Jiangxi.
• Her mother abandoned her. Think about that for a moment: Her mother abandoned her
the day after her birth, possibly placed her in a basket, left her on the side of the road and fled. Luckily, someone found Camryn and she was placed in an orphanage.• We’ll never know the real reason the child was abandoned. But there are several possibilities: Her mother wanted a boy so she abandoned the baby because she was a girl; the mother was affected by China’s limit on children; or her mom was a teenager ashamed of her pregnancy.
• I’ll throw in one other possible reason: Her mother was freaked out by Camryn’s polydactilly, an extra thumb on her right hand. So mom abandoned the baby with hopes that officials could care for her; they did, by the way, and her hand is perfectly normal.
• After a year in an orphanage, Camryn was ripped from her daily routine on April 3 and casually handed off to two strange-looking white people (one bald guy with a strange sense of humor who likes to visit Wal-Marts in other countries) with unusual accents.
• The child lived in three different hotels in three different cities over the next two weeks before being dragged (well, carried) screaming and crying aboard a jet for a 24-hour flight away from her homeland and to a new country.
• The child was bombarded by family and friends at the airport in Jackson, Miss., and again at our home in Hattiesburg. Plus, she found herself in another strange place, although with two white people she has slowly come to like.
This is a tall order. So, in my opinion, it’s not that shocking that Camryn has needed a little time to adjust to us. What is surprising, though, is how quickly she has appeared to adapt to her surroundings and new people.
They say children are resilient; I have proof.
Hard-knock life
Life in the orphanage probably was not easy.
Pam and I were unable to visit the orphanage in Jiujiang City where Camryn spent much of her first year of life. The city was simply too far away from Nanchang and in another part of Jiangxi province.
But we did visit an orphanage in Nanchang and, like most social service institutions in the United States, it was sad to see the residents. This place was filled with children, all homeless and all looking for a place to live.
If anyone in their right mind visited, they would have been emotionally touched and wanted desperately to help these children. Of particular note were the older children of 3, 4, 5 and
above, who are harder to place in families than infants.Anyway, I digress.
Life in Camryn’s orphange probably was similar to a degree to the one we visited in Nanchang. And in these institutions, children long for attention and love of which they don’t receive enough. The orphanages simply don’t have the staff.
And that leads to the children being substantially behind the curve compared to those of the same age in the United States. For instance, Camryn can’t crawl, sit up on her own, prop herself up on the stomach or hold her bottle.
Here’s another sad image: Many children from orphanages, including Camryn, have a flat spot on the back of their heads which indicates they were left in their cribs. Some who were adopted the same day as Caryn had a bald spot on the back of their head for the same reason.
Re-adoption process
Now that Pam, Camryn and I are back, the next step is for our social worker at Catholic Charities in Jackson to visit our home and file a post-placement report on the baby for the China Center for Adoption Affairs and Holt International Children’s Services.
I talked this week with our social worker and she will get back with me with a date for the visit.
Then Pam and I must initiate re-adoption procedures in Mississippi. We will re-adopt Camryn here through Mississippi courts and obtain a state birth certificate; she already is a U.S. citizen, so this is just a formality most families follow.
And finally, we’ll apply for a new passport for the baby in case we ever go on a cruise or visit China again (which, by the way, we just might do because Pam and I are interested in doing another adoption in the future).
Photos and text copyright 2006 by Terry R. Cassreino.
