[An experience by Tama Janowitz in “Family Wanted, True Stories of Adoption”, Granta Books, London 2006, p. 157]

Day 1-2
We are in Beijing, en route to adopt our baby. Our group consists of eight couples and two single women, along with our leader, a woman named Xiong Yan, who will serve as tour guide for two days in Beijing before we fly down to Hefei to collect the babies and where Xiong Yan will do our final adoption paperwork.

The endless adoption process has been like a scavenger hunt: the FBI, for example, needed fingerprints to prove we weren’t on their most-wanted list. Birth certificates with original signatures had to be acquired, then sent to city departments, taken to state departments, federal departments, then to the Chinese consulate. Medical exams were required, along with tax returns and letters of recommendation. Our heads even had to be probed and analysed by therapists. During that time, it seemed we would never get our baby. My husband, Tim, and I were keen on adoption. I knew Tim would make a wonderful father, and I was longing to become a mother. I really did want a baby, as long as it was quiet and gurgled to itself in a crib. Anybody I ever new who had a baby always said, almost continuously, ‘You should have a baby. It’s the most fantastic thing that can happen to you.’ I could never figure out why they kept saying this when the look in their eyes was that of a survivor of an airplane crash, but I figured it was something I would understand later.

Day 3
I am beginning to get to know our group a little bit. Everyone is in their mid-thirties to mid-forties – a physiologist, a paediatrician, a photographer, an editor, an insurance agent, an education researcher, a marine engineer. Under normal circumstances, the people in our group wouldn’t have much in common, but the fact that we are all joined together in this adventure makes me feel like a timid opera buff on a conducted tour of La Scala. At the hotel in Hefei we all disappear to our rooms, still laughing, smiling. The next time we see one another, we will all be with our smiling, adorable, happy little babies.

Two o’clock, two fifteen, two thirty. Tim and I pace back and forth, as if a husband were waiting for his wife in labour next door in the delivery room. Finally, around 3:30, the call comes: she is on her way. After months of arguing, we have decided to name her Willow. The photograph we received later indicated that she was extremely short and fat. A name like Willow will help to change. The doorbell rings: Xiong Yan and a baby-nurse from the orphanage arrive with Willow.

Willow is very cute, dripping with sweat, with giant ears. ‘She’s just been fed’, Xiong Yan says. ‘When you give her food, make sure it’s boiling hot – that’s what they’re accustomed to. She should be fed at six a.m., nine, twelve, three, six, and then she goes to sleep and gets fed again at eleven at night. Keep her warm – never let her stomach be uncovered.’ Then, handing us a box of rice cereal and a bag of formula that we are to combine in specific amounts at the next feeding, Xiong Yan and Willow’s nurse leave.

Immediately, the smiling happy baby in my arms bursts into tears. The nurse was right, Willow doesn’t cry… as long as she is played with – every single second. This baby doesn’t want to cuddle; she wants to be bounced, rocked, swooped around the room, then turned upside down to stare grimly while adults flap their arms and hop around the room like monkeys. Her head has been shaved, and though they tell us it is another Chinese custom to assure thicker growth, we wonder as in her photograph she had not been shaved. Could it be she is bald?

Despite her physical weakness, she has an abnormal amount of energy. She cries non-stop, and since I have read somewhere that babies cry only for a reason, Tim and I decide to change her diaper. We put her on the floor and try to get her out of her clothes. Though she is weak, she is able to fight like a wounded fox in a leghold trap. Even with the two of us working hard, the task is next to impossible. My face is bright red; sweat is pouring off Tim dripping onto the sweating baby. We look at each other. ‘Is it too late for her to catch the bus back to the orphanage?’ I ask.

The diaper changing takes around an hour. When Willow is back in her clothes with a diaper haphazardly strangling her midriff, the sobbing diminishes somewhat, which makes us realize it is time for her bottle. Trying to get the lumps out of the gruel with the lukewarm water in a thermos provided by the hotel takes almost another hour. By then I can tell, she is really angry and bored – obviously this was not what she expected.

The hotel has provided our room with a purple metal cage, a crib with bars that are spaced just far enough apart to trap a baby’s head. Willow doesn’t like the crib. Being in the crib makes her very upset. If she was anger before, now she is furious. The toys we brought from the United States are louse; any fool would have known. But finally, after several hours of strenuous entertainment – songs, clapping, arm wrestling – and another feeding we are able to get her to sleep. By now it’s quite late, though how much time has passed it’s hard to say. I was ready for bed hours ago.

At three a.m. she decides to take a second look at the toys. She discovers that if she pounds a button, the tinny electronic version of ‘It’s a Small World’, a song I have always loathed, will play over and over.

Day 4
Dawn. First there is the feeding, the bathing, the changing, the attempt at cheering her up while the other adult member of our family unit tries to shower and put on some clothes and vice versa. At no time must she be ignored. The kid has no inner resources – can’t read, write letters, put on nail polish – and seems to have nowhere to go. It is now eight – it has taken us only three hours to get ready for breakfast.

In the lobby, large groups are patrolling the halls, and I see that every single one of them is lugging a sobbing Chinese baby. A woman approaches Willow in her stroller. Willow looks up at her and coos appreciatively, as if she is about to be rescued from what is obviously a mistaken placement. ‘Oh, what a cute baby!’ the woman says. ‘I was supposed to get mine yesterday, but she’s not going to be delivered until today. It’s like torture, waiting for her!’ – ‘You could take this one’, I offer.

Day 5
The horror. The horror.

Day 6
By now the other parents also appear to have aged ten years. They’re so worn down that at last they, too, are willing to admit everything is not perfect. Two babies cry constantly and even if they can be stopped will start again the moment anyone looks at them. One baby is on a hunger strike. Two babies have been given the wrong ration of rice cereal to formula and are severely constipated. At every meal we have the most fascinating conversations on topics ranging from diaper rash and diarrhoea to baby dandruff.

Day 7
I will never forgive myself for believing all those girlfriends who kept telling me, ‘You should have a baby! It’s so great!’ I see now that it was their method of revenge. I must remember to encourage others to do this marvellous thing – adopting a hyperactive, sweating lunatic unable to change her own diaper.

The Chinese paperwork is complete; our next stop is a week in Guangzhou (formerly Canton) to complete the American immigration process. After that, we fly back to the United States, where, I suppose, the real nightmare begins and where Willow will soon begin demanding Barbie dolls, Nintendo, and pure-white Arabian mares, start taking drugs, contract sexually transmitted diseases, insist on attending the fanciest, most expensive private schools, and sob uncontrollably when she doesn’t get into the college of her choice.

Postscript: Four Weeks Later

Despite what my journal predicted, we have been extremely lucky. Our baby is easygoing; she’s laughing, laughing, laughing all the time. Honestly, no matter how many times anyone insists I wrote those earlier entries in my diary, I truly can never believe them. It must have just been the jet lag. Or something. Willow is so sweet! Just the other day our pediatrician told me not to worry – hopefully by college age she won’t need a bottle and will be on to the harder stuff. Having a baby is the most fantastic, wonderful thing a person can do. And Willow is so cute! So smart! I’m thinking maybe in the fall I’ll look into adopting one from India. Yes, I can see her already: perhaps a bit older than Willow, with golden skin and silver bangles at her slim wrists and ankles, and thick, wild hair. I wonder just how long it will take to convince Tim…