We went to the room number we’d been given at the assigned time. It was a large room with many young women working at desks. When one approached, I said my daughter’s (Korean) name and she went to get my daughter’s caseworker. While we waited, a woman entered with a baby on her back, tied to her back with a podaegi, the quilt-like traditional Korean baby carrier. I recognized both of them from the video we’d been sent. I bowed and said hello in Korean. Then we did a lot of nodding and smiling until the social worker came. I was gazing at my daughter the whole time but trying to do it without overwhelming her with direct eye contact. We were led to a small playroom with a mat on the floor. We all sat on the mat and talked, with the social worker translating. I honestly cannot remember what we talked about. My major memory is that at one point my daughter (age 11 months) crawled into my arms and nestled there looking up at me with calm, wise black eyes. However, when her foster mother briefly left the room she fussed and begin to cry “umma” (“mommy” in Korean). We had brought our daughter a couple of toys and a picture of her big brother. She ignored the toys but kept the picture clutched tightly in her hand. We were invited to visit the foster mother’s home on Monday. She promised to play a tape we had sent to familiarize the baby with our voices. We posed for a picture, and then our baby went home with her foster mother.
We learned from the adoptive parents’ journals that many had volunteered upstairs in the Baby Home and Hospital, so we volunteered from 8 pm-midnight one night in the Baby Home and one night in the hospital, feeding, burping and holding babies. The Baby Home was where newly relinquished babies, some only two days old, stayed for approximately two weeks while a foster family was found for them. The “hospital” was simply a large room across the hall. There wasn’t as much sophisticated equipment as in a US Special Care nursery, but there were incubators and bili-lights. The babies were in wooden “cubbies” which lined the room at waist height and had wooden dividers to make each baby an enclosed space about the size of a bassinet. There were a few cradles in the room, with two or three babies to a cradle. There were probably 50-60 babies in each room. The night shift was small, only three caregivers in each room plus a doctor who floated between rooms. The caregivers had to prop bottles sometimes, and I winced to see pacifiers taped to mouths. However, the caregivers made sure to hold each baby for at least some of the feeding time. When they changed diapers or bathed a child they massaged the babies’ limbs. They spoke to the babies in soft, loving voices. We were amazed that the care was as personal as it was given the ratios.
We had the weekend free for sightseeing. On Monday we were taken to meet with two agency executives. They talked about their work and asked a few questions about our hometown. Our American agency had told us nearly nothing about the Korean agency. We learned that they were a large nonprofit Christian agency with many programs. We had brought specialty foods and crafts from the Northwest and were in turn given two Korean ceramic mugs and a book written by the founder of the agency. (Our agency had told us gift-giving was a customary part of Korean culture, so we had brought gifts for the foster mother and social worker also. We then shared a table with these agency executives at the staff lunch. The staff prayed and ate lunch together every day. They worked six days a week and were extremely dedicated to the welfare of the children.
After lunch we went—in the “Lovemobile”—to the foster mother’s high-rise apartment. It was nicely furnished but only a small living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms for the couple, their daughter, the two foster children, and the oldest son who lived there during college vacations. The foster mother brought out a small table and set it in front of us. On it were various rice cakes, tea cakes, persimmons, oranges, cheese and melon. We saw where our daughter slept on a mat beside the foster mother’s bed. The foster mother began to give my daughter a bottle and encouraged me to finish giving it to her. We would not have another visit with our daughter until the morning of our departure. It felt like the agency was being protective of the foster family’s last few days with her, and we didn’t push it.
On our last day in Korea I told my husband that I wanted to visit the town where our daughter had been born and take a picture of the hospital. So, he said, we’re just going to take the train to a strange town and wander around until we find the hospital, then take a picture outside it? Yep, I said. Our social worker learned of our plan and called a worker from a branch office in a city near our daughter’s birthplace. This caseworker turned out to be the counselor who had worked with our daughter’s birthmother. She met us at the train, walked us over to and inside the hospital, showed us the single delivery room where our daughter was born and introduced a nurse who was present at her birth. I visited the Special Care nursery where our daughter had spent three weeks before being transferred to the little hospital attached to the Baby Home. (My husband could not visit the Special Care Nursery because they didn’t have a sterile gown large enough for him!)
That night we attended a performance of traditional dance and music with an adopting couple from Australia who was staying at the guesthouse. In the morning we would go home–with our daughter!
To be continued…