To meet Lovely Roseline-part 2

It has now been almost 3 months since I met Lovely Roseline and I am still working through meeting her and leaving her all in such a short amount of time. This post is part 2 of my brief 24 hours with my baby girl and it is long.........sorry! Much of the reason I am blogging is to have an account to be able to share with my daughter of this time in our life. So read it as you have time, and take a little trip with me inside my heart and mind as we keep moving towards the day when we Bring Lovely home!

"I say we sleep, but really she slept and I laid beside her and watched her! Even As she was trying to get to sleep I see things that make me think back to watching her brothers sleep as babies, she twirls her hair just like they both did! I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and though she really was not ready to just let me hold her while she slept she did reach out as I was next to her and just grab on to my finger, and held on tight!
When she wakes up she has soaked through the thin diaper I had been given for her and I hear her cry for the first time. I try to give her a toy to hold while I clean her up but she does not want any of the things I brought with me, all she is interested in is the one Duplo she has held on to since she left the nursery.
I hear people making their way down to dinner so we join them and I get to see how though she may be tiny for her age Lovely girl can eat! She loves the rice and beans they are serving and eats all I dish up for her. Then when I go to get a serving for myself, she eats almost all of that too! The teens from the mission group finish their meal and break into a spontaneous time of singing with the Haitian youth who have eaten dinner with us! It is awesome and I sit and soak it in and can’t believe I am sharing this moment with my baby girl!
Solo’s are sang by kids who have grown up with everything and solo’s sang by those who have had nothing, both with complete thanks and devotion to Jesus! A moment to be captured in my heart forever!
Bedtime comes quickly as my body feels how long it has been since I have slept! I hope to sleep but in truth really very little sleep comes to me even after Lovely falls quickly and quietly to sleep in the crib next to me. My mind is racing too much to be able to think. I already am so head over heels in love with this amazing, gorgeous tiny little girl I can not even process that the very next day I will have to say Goodbye to her after just barely having said Hello! My stomach is growling when I realize that I gave my dinner to my sweet girl and I search through my backpack and find a bag of Peanut M&M’s my sweet Husband-Lovely’s Papa has tucked away for me……I lay in the dark and eat one at a time and cry.
Sunday morning we wake up and lay and look at each other. Lovely does not cry when she wakes up, she just opens her eyes and lays there. This actually makes me sad. We (Lovely and I!) have been invited to go to church with Dr and Mrs. Bernard and I love putting the pretty little dress on her that I brought with me. When I go out for breakfast I soon realize that my phone did not “change” to local time and we are late! I ask the young man who is washing dishes for something for Lovely to eat and for milk and he offers me a piece of bread and for milk points to the water and the jar of creamer. Sadly Lovely drinks the watered down creamer like it is the best thing she has ever had! We hurry outside to find the car waiting for us. I remembered going to more than one church service when I was in Haiti with Dannielle many years ago and am anxious to experience that again. Just like it was many years ago, when they began to sing I recognize several of the tunes and was able to sing along in English. I adored having my baby girl on my lap! And she looked up at me curiously as I sang out with all my heart. At the end of the group singing an amazing little family-Papa, Mama, and baby girl walked up to the front of the church and Mrs. Bernard leaned over and told me it was a Baby Dedication! Even though I did not understand the words that were spoken I fully understood the emotion and it was beautiful! A blessing prayer was given and then the congregation broke into “Great is Thy Faithfulness!” and I did not sing this time, I just listened to these amazing people who had ALL been through so much sing out of the Faithfulness of their God, My God and again, I cried! The service got much longer than Lovely girl wanted it to be and given that she had only had a piece of bread and water with creamer she began to squirm with hunger. I searched again through my backpack and located a tiny little box of raisins the airline had served as a “snack” on our flight and began to give Lovely one at a time----she loved them! Many times I thought as I sat there with her on my lap that it was like I was in a dream………and I wished it was not one that would soon be over.
That afternoon I needed to try and get ahold of Jim and tell him I had indeed arrived safely so Lovely and I asked if we could use the computer. She sat on my lap and played quietly now with one of the toys I had brought with me. As she played and I tried to get the internet to work she would stop from time to time and just look up at me and smile, I love that she is starting to relax and be comfortable with me. I learned as we sat there that she is very ticklish and especially likes her toes to tickled! For the first time I get to hear her laugh out loud and it is an incredible sound  Over and over I would just keep trying to type while holding her and repeating to her “I am your Mama, You are my child” and she would look at me as I tried to speak Creole and sometimes smile. When I finally got the email to work I was typing away quickly before it quit again and suddenly heard this tiny little voice say with a question “Mama?” I was shocked! It was if she was trying it out, while at the same time trying to figure out if what the Nannies and I had been telling her was somehow true. She only said it one time but I can still hear it in my ear when I close my eyes! She then babbled in Creole and I wondered so much what she was trying to say to me! Again it hits me that in just a few hours this time will be over and I will have to take her back to the nursery and say Goodbye and it Kills me!!!
I had decided before I even came to meet Lovely that I would spend all the time with her that I could, but as was leaving very early in the morning as Jim had I would take her back to the Nursery in the evening at bedtime rather then in the early morning and wake up all the other babies. Now that the time to do this was almost here I was questioning that choice so much! I did NOT want to take her back and spend my last night in Haiti alone with her just a short distance away from me, but I knew this was for her and the other children, not for me! The last little while with her I spent in the main gathering area with some of the team and some of the Haitian people and one of them begins to say something to Lovely over and over and she starts to shake and shake in my arms! I finally ask “what did you say to her?” and am told they are saying over and over, “Mama’s leaving now, Mama’s leaving” and I am mortified! I then have to ask, “can you please tell her Mama is coming back for her!” And they tell her, but I know she can not really understand this. How could she? She is not even two years old and has lived through the Earthquake, with a scar under her eye to prove this, and has lived through her birth parents being unable to care for her bringing her to this place she has never seen and kissing her goodbye! She has lived through her new Papa coming and spending a wonderful 24 hours one on one with her, then he also kissing her goodbye and leaving…….and Now, I will have to do the same thing!
So, I cuddle with her for the last few minutes, cry quietly, pray over her with words of begging the Father to hold her for me and heal her heart and somehow help her to know that we really would be back for her, and then gathered up the things to leave with her and began the walk down all the stairs one last time. As I get outside I realize daylight has gone and it is DARK and there are no outside lights or street lights! There is no way I will be able to maneuver my way in the dark while carrying her, so I go back to where some of the team are gathered and ask one of the Haitian boys if her will escort us back to the Nursery and translate for me so I can explain to the Nannies that I am “bringing my baby back” until the next time when I would come and she would go with me and not come back! The young boy who is leading me also does not have a flashlight but he holds his cell phone up and we walk by the light of the phone. I sing quietly in Lovely’s ear as we walk “I love you so much, I love you so much I can’t even tell you how much I love you, I love you so much, I love you so much, God BLESSED ME to make you a part of my life!” When we get down to the building the Nursery is in the young man turns and leaves and I realize I am going to do this next part alone. I climb the stairs to the Nursery and it is already quiet the babies are in bed. I quietly open the door and see the babies all in their cribs and the Nanny’s on a mat on the floor and with huge tears in my eyes I try to tell them I am bringing Lovely (Roseline) back………she starts to sob quietly and one of the Nanny’s reaches to her, scoops her up and lays her down on the mat between her and the other Nanny. She is crying, but she is not screaming and for this I am so thankful. I tell them “Merci” and blow my baby girl a kiss and then turn and quickly leave before she sees me burst into tears! I make my way back to my room now thankful that it is dark so the tears pouring down my face can not be seen by everyone----they are my tears, and the pain and heartbreak feels so private!
When I get back to the Guest House I wait my turn to talk to Dr. Bernard the Director of the Orphanage to try and get some answers to my many, many questions. When it is my turn to talk to him I find out that there are still really very few answers to the questions about when will I be able to come back for my baby girl! The one very clear answer I get that night is that the chance for her to get a medical visa so that she could leave Haiti quickly to get medical help has been denied. As I have explained in another post this does not mean that she has no medical problems, it just means that she is “not sick enough” to leave in an emergency kind of way…….and I am crushed! Dr B tells me as if I should be happy, but all I can think of is that it will now take soooo much longer to get her home. We talk for a few minutes and he tells me that I may email him once a month and ask if he has all the documents we need to file the application for Lovely’s visa, and one month the answer will be “Yes” and I realize this is the most “news” I am going to get. I thank him for his help and turn to walk back to my room as I really feel the tears brimming again and he says to me “If we had gotten her the medical visa she would be home by Christmas!" That’s the breaking point for me, the tears just pour out again!
Alone in the dark I lay there crying, with my stomach again growling since Lovely had eaten most of my dinner that night too and I wish I had saved a few of the Peanut M&M’s! The pain in my heart and the tears that will just not stop remind me that I have not cried this hard since Dannielle left, and it is heart wrenching! This time I know however that this Goodbye is just temporary, I will be back…..I have to keep telling myself that over and over.And, now in exhaustion, I sleep"