Adoption Week Narrative 7: Feeling Really Stupid but Too Tired to Care

Several months ago I started a series about our first week together as a family, and never got around to finishing it. Let’s pick up where we left off, shall we? If you want to catch up on the first 6 posts in the series, here are the links:

1 – Preparing to Travel
2 – The Longest Two Hours Ever
3 – Love and Terror
4 – So, Shall We Cry?
5 – A Peaceful Shore
6 – Fear in a Foreign Place

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As discussed here, Yoselin spent her first night with us laboring under the belief that Lyndie and I were the Antichrist and False Prophet of Revelation and were setting up our unholy dominion right there in the hotel, and she needed to alert the masses to the danger. She cried and screamed all night before finally falling asleep exhausted on my chest not long before sunrise.

We woke up Sunday to a new day, more refreshed than our 2 hours of sleep should have made us. We spent the day doing as little as possible. There was a sacred peace between the three of us that we didn’t want to break. Yosi was still wide-eyed, but was beginning to trust us already. Somehow, I believe, she knew a change had occurred. I think she could tell we were not just two people babysitting her for a little while. The emotional trauma of the night before seemed to have forged some kind of bond. I will always believe this.

We ate breakfast in the lovely open air restaurant downstairs, strolled around the hotel (which was fancier than any we had ever stayed in), and played with our little baby on our bed, letting her feel the textures of our clothing and touch our faces and fingers.

We were able to get her to nap while we held her that afternoon, which seemed like a good omen for the night ahead, but we still felt apprehensive about how things would go. We were both willing to hold her all night again if necessary, but it was far from the best option and obviously couldn’t continue to happen. It seemed like our fears were confirmed when Yosi began crying and kicking as soon as Lyndie started getting her ready for bed.

Lyndie laid our distressed daughter down in her crib just so we could drum up the energy to face the long night ahead, but while we were discussing our plan of action (in exhausted tones), the crying stopped. We looked over to see Yoselin fast asleep, hugging her stuffed puppy. Sweaty and disheveled, she was sleeping.

We looked at each other shocked and felt like idiots. Would she have done that the night before if we’d tried it? We had felt like leaving her to cry when she was obviously scared would not exactly promote bonding. Maybe she just liked her crib though. Maybe she was a self-soother. I still think we made the right choice to stay with her the first night, but we were desperately grateful for this relief the second night. The child was sleeping, and the silence was holy. Lyndie sat down on the bed next to me and gave me a fistbump, Obama-style. We watched soccer and made as little noise as possible before falling asleep early.