For Those Yet To Travel

Last night, I was reading through the posts from China and it occurred to me that it really doesn't tell the entire story. Don't get me wrong, in many ways I think our trip was a "best case scenario" and I don't take that for granted. However, for those yet to travel to meet their little ones, there are a couple of things I wanted to point out.

First of all, even under the best of circumstances there are some tough moments. LuLu came from what some say is one of the "better" orphanages. I do think she was shown lots of affection and I am grateful for that. I will admit however, that I wasn't quite prepared to be handed a child in her physical condition. I won't go into details because it's her story not mine. I've travelled all over this world enough to know that different cultures have different standards for cleanliness. It's just different. But when you are handed your child in that condition, it's hard. I would have told you I was prepared but I wasn't.

Also based on updated measurements and these pictures that we received just before we travelled, I knew she would be tiny. However, her size literally took my breath away. Even our facilitator (who has seen lots of babies over the last 12 years) was concerned about her size. I fought back tears everytime I changed her diaper.

Now all of these things are EASILY overcome. But they are real and they were hard to see so I wanted to mention them for my friends still PATIENTLY waiting.

Now that I see more of LuLu's personality I know that much of her "contentment" the first few days was really just her being overwhelmed. Or it could just be that there was never any reason to fuss before, I don't know. And although she is a generally happy child I can promise you she has now learned the fine art of fussing. So my advice is that even if your child seems "fine", keep it very low key those first few days. Since we were a travel group of one family, we were able to keep it very low key and that certainly helped. Actually we were probably downright boring the first few days.

Most of this is probably things you guys already knew but I wanted to pass it on anyways.

EDITED TO ADD: Stephe's question in the comments regarding sizes reminded me of something else to share. We always hear to bring several sizes of clothes when you travel. It's true. Even if you have updated measurements like we did, it's still a good idea. Based on measurements we received just before we travelled, I could look at the clothes size charts and tell that she fell into the 6 month clothes. However, that wasn't completely accurate because most of her weight was from the belly up. So 6 month tops fit but bottoms were a different story. Most of those were too big. Of all the clothes I brought for her, I think she wore the same 4 or 5 outfits over and over. We just did laundry. You can also find what you need in most cities in China. However, for me personally I would not have wanted to worry about that in the first couple of days. As a new parent, I had enough to process those first couple of days without going clothes shopping.