Birth Without Labor

Here I am, coming down from what has probably been the two most intense days of my life after the two I spent recovering from Mia’s birth. I think we left off with bedtime at the Hotel Intercontinental in Medellin, preparing to meet our little boy. Needless to say, neither Josh nor I slept a wink yet we were strangely energized the next morning as we prepared to go to court and then to meet our son.

At 8:30 AM, we left Mia at the hotel with our Colombian friend and babysitter Fanny and found our driver/guide Gloria in the lobby. Gloria is quite a trip. She knows the adoption system inside and out and can call in many favors due to her insatiable appetite for networking. Thus, she will stop to kibitz with anyone she has met more than once and this adds a good two hours on to your day with Gloria. A simple walk up the courthouse steps becomes a twenty minute long meet and greet, completely in Spanish. Sometimes we would actually have to stop in the middle of a set of steps so that Gloria could schmooze with some locals. Add to that the local tendency to walk VERY, VERY SLOWLY and you have a couple of very impatient New Yorkers on your hands. However, as you will soon read, Gloria’s schmoozing may have chopped a few days and even a week off of our trip if we are lucky. So in the end it was certainly worth it!

We met Gloria in the lobby and were told that we would take a taxi to the court because parking is so difficult there. The courthouse is huge…jammed with people and some impressive statues by Botero (the Colombian artist who did the giant, naked man and woman in the Time Warner Center…you know, the big , fat man with the tiny….). Of course we also noticed the “wanted” posters everywhere, and we followed both Gloria and Fanny’s advice to keep our passports very, very close.

We passed through security and went to the clerk’s office to meet our lawyer, Alina. I think Alina may have said “hello” to me but I’m not sure…she pretty much did not speak to us at all. She was all business and spoke only to Gloria who kept assuring us we had “very good lawyer.”

We were told to give our passports to the clerk and to sign two papers. Then that was it. We followed Gloria out of the courthouse at a snail’s pace (stopping mid-staircase to chat up a few social workers and a man named Pablo), and were offered a ride in Alina’s husband’s car that was buried behind twenty other cars in the courthouse municipal parking garage. About six years later we arrived at our hotel to pick up our big-sister-to-be. We shoved some breakfast down (oy vey that coffee is GOOD!) and we were on our way to La Casa de Maria y los Niño’s, the orphanage where we were to meet our baby boy.

We got into Gloria’s car (No seatbelts! At all! How, um…..care free? Authentic? Oy….) and Gloria told us about herself. She has been guiding/driving adoptive families for La Casa for twenty seven years and she told us that while we are in Colombia, she would be here completely at our disposal. We felt extremely relaxed and taken care of with Gloria. What she lacked in speed walking skills she made up for with race car-like driving, and between her broken English and my even broken-er Spanish we managed to understand each other quite well. Did I mention that her car has no seatbelts? At all?

After a short drive my heart began to pound as we entered the driveway for La Casa de Maria. It is a very clean and spacious facility with bright-colored play ground equipment and a few palm trees. As we walked through the front yard towards the building entrance, we passed about fifteen or twenty kids from three to eight years old. These were truly beautiful children, and many of them ran up to us to ask how old Mia was and if we spoke Spanish. They were all dressed in the same gray, sweat-shirt uniform and I felt terrible to be parading my two-parented child past them with her brand new dress covered in pink and red hearts. I had an urge to grab them all and drive away in Gloria’s car.

We entered La Casa and noticed a “tree of life” on the wall, the leaves being bronze plaques with the names of major donors to La Casa. We were struck by how many Jewish names were on the wall and I remembered that Senora Altman, the orphanage director, is Jewish. It must be strange to be a Jew in a country with a national religion. Back at the courthouse we were surprised to see a giant crucifix on the wall in the clerk’s office.

I excused myself to visit the bathroom, and while I was in there I heard a baby crying through the open window. I peeked out and across the courtyard I saw through a set of windows into a large nursery where two uniformed caregivers were tending to a baby in brown overalls and a blue and white checked shirt. My heart skipped a beat because I knew I was looking at my son.

I returned to the waiting area where Senora Altman was already introducing herself to Josh and Mia. I didn’t mention my “sneak preview” through the window. We signed a few papers and then were taken to a small room covered in pictures of successfully adopted children and their families. Senora Altman took her time to cover every known detail of our son’s life. We learned about his birth mother, her labor, his health, his psychological profile (yes, for a 6 month old), HER psychological profile, the legal process and how he was doing now. We learned about his feeding schedule (basically you feed him all day long and he never stops eating) and his sleeping schedule (he sleeps when he isn’t eating). It was a very long conversation and Mia was extremely patient throughout all of it. Finally, it was time for the big moment. I held Mia tight as Mrs. Altman disappeared into the other room to collect our son.

The door opened and there he was….totally calm, wide-eyed and relaxed. I passed Mia to Josh so I could take Mason in my arms. He gazed up at me and then fixed his focus on the video camera that Gloria was using to capture the moment for us. Josh and I gushed, passed him back and forth, spoke in English and basically did everything we could to completely overwhelm this little guy and he remained completely steady, calm and cool. It was as though he was expecting this whole process and it was completely natural to him. About five minutes into our meeting, I can honestly say that I began to love him.

Things that struck me in that blur of a moment: How Mason, still not completely able to command any kind of core strength, seemed to be devoured by that pair of brown overalls as they crept up his neck and tried to swallow his little head. Mia, how she wanted to cry but felt it was not appropriate and how amazing it is that a five year old might stifle her emotions in order to conform to an adult set of expectations….how I kept returning to her, trying to assure her that here we were on the other side of things and yes, I still love her. But mostly, the moment is marked by Mason’s eyes. He has these incredible, dark eyes. Black eyes that open so wide and completely drink you up. He is a beautiful, beautiful child. I cannot believe he is ours.

The past day with Mason has been like a dream. He is, quite honestly, the absolute easiest and happiest baby I have ever encountered. I am sure I will screw it up by the time we return to New York, but for now, he is consistently happy and calm. He rarely cries and when he does, he is very clear about the reason. We never have that “the baby is crying….what does he want?” moment with Mason. What he lacks in physical development he makes up for in social-emotional progress…his communication skills are incredible. It’s like he is psychic, and can easily convey to anyone what he needs and how he needs it. This makes him so easy to care for….it is the most natural thing in the world.

The greatest surprise is that Mia has turned out to be an incredible big sister. She can make Mason laugh hysterically with one look. He follows her with his eyes wherever she goes. He constantly wants to hold her hand and always seems to be studying her, learning how “big kids” behave. She is clearly falling in love with him, always asking to be near him, to touch him, to help me feed or bathe him. Despite all her fears about a new kid in the house, she has turned into the “mini mama” I always hoped she’d be.

Mason eats like a horse. It is truly remarkable. He devours anything you put in front of him. He is extremely small, having been born with malnutrition and then treated by a nutritionist in the orphanage. He was raised by local foster parents who apparently kept him on a strict schedule of solids and formula. We have been roughly following the schedule that Mrs. Altman gave us, but slowly trying to condense his feedings into a more realistic “American” routine.

The first night, we put him in his crib at 8:30 and he fell right to sleep. We did not hear from him until 9:45 when he woke up disoriented and cried for something familiar. I took him out of his crib and cuddled him for about five minutes (he is so soft and delicious) and he fell right back to sleep until 6 AM. He had a bottle and then back to sleep until I had to wake him up at 8 for a meeting with the government social worker! Tonight he has so far followed the same pattern. I honestly think I have the world’s best baby here. It’s just amazing how calm and secure a kid can be when he has not been exposed to neurotic New York parents.

I’m getting too tired to write all the details of today’s adventures and I doubt anyone is still reading anyway…to put it briefly, there was an issue with Josh’s passport (who spells JOSHUA “JOHSUA”???? And why did the FBI, Homeland Security, the NY Police Department, our lawyer AND Immigration all miss it while this one Colombian Social worker caught the error in five minutes?), it took about three hours and we fixed it. Mia swam the entire length of the Olympic sized swimming pool at the hotel, Mason continued to be the world’s best baby, and I have fallen even deeper in love.

Gloria, for all her schmoozing, managed to get us an appointment with Buenastar, the Colombian governmental social worker’s agency or “defender of minors” today. This appointment was not supposed to take place for four or five days, but because we completed it this morning, our case is now before a judge and we may actually get final court approval for the adoption a full week earlier than planned. This means that Josh and Mia will be able to return to NYC on Tuesday as planned, and Fanny and I will be able to fly Mason to Bogota for his Visa earlier than expected. All in all, I expect to be back home in NYC earlier than planned, and that makes this family very, very happy!