First Days

Monday, 31 January 2011

Lisa, Mackenzie (2 close friends I was on MDT with, and both happen to be from the USA too!), and another OM volunteer joining us from Switzerland by the name of Rebecca, and I arrived at the Door of Hope.

Forgive me for the excessive amount of detail in the opening paragraph; I just thought it’d be nice to clear that part up since I’m spending the next couple of months with them J

The Door of Hope is the next ministry I’m volunteering at, and it’s located in Johannesburg, South Africa. The Door of Hope mainly cares for abandoned babies and, to a smaller extent, toddlers, and finds them foster/adoptive families.

So, upon entering the house, I saw a girl my age sitting on the floor with a child in each arm and about 10 children lying all around her, and for some strange reason I just felt like crying. It was another one of those overwhelmed-by-a-mix-of-emotions moments…

Fear – 12 kids to 1 caregiver sounded like a pretty intimidating ratio, and I wasn’t sure I could handle that…

Excitement – I was finally at the Door of Hope, and I’d be able to love all these kids and play a part in giving them hope.

Love – Simply seeing all these babies who had stories behind how they ended up here and knowing that they all deserve and need love and care stirred up a weird emotion within me… I’m pretty sure it’s love. I don’t even know how to describe it because it wasn’t an emotion per say. It’s difficult to describe love sometimes.

By the way, I didn’t cry. The others went to pick up a baby each, so I went and played with one on the floor for a little while before finally being courageous enough to pick him up. We had a short orientation around the house and were settled in a flat downstairs for the night.

Tuesday, 1 February 2011

We started work at 7am. The day shift usually lasts from 7am – 6pm (even longer than MJC study hours!) with a short 15-minute break in the morning and an hour-long lunch break.

First thing on the schedule – wash up the babies.

Kenzie and I (we’re both working in the Big Babies’ department where the babies are between 3 and 10 months of age while Lisa and Rebecca are working in Starfish cos they’re staying here longer) followed the other 2 volunteers into the little boys’ room.

Never have I seen anybody in the world looking so happy first thing in the morning. I stood by the cot of a little boy named L, and when he saw me, he smiled and started giggling. T, in the next cot, was flashing a toothless grin too. Practically all the babies were smiling and giggling, and that just made my day.

(If only I could wake up this happy every morning… Well I probably could if I wanted to actually. Hehe.)

It was a totally exciting experience for me to change my first diaper ever. It sounds ridiculous but I don’t think I’d seen the whole diaper-changing process before. Movies don’t count. I was lucky enough to have the first 2 babies only wet (good warm-up), but the 3^rd one was an adorable, chubby boy with thunder thighs and kicked a lot, and pooped a lot too! So yes, I did get to change my first dirty diaper J

Once all the babies were cleaned up and changed for a fresh start to a new day, we fed them. Some of the older boys were fed cereal while the younger babies were given bottled milk.

And so 1 February marked the day I first fed a baby bottled milk J I might’ve actually done that before but I don’t remember it so I probably haven’t.

The rest of the morning involved holding and playing with babies, feeding them, changing their diapers, putting them to bed, waking them up, and holding and playing with them some more… (In the afternoon we went to get groceries and move to our home for the next few months – the toddler house, just a few minutes away from the baby house we work at.)

As I cuddled and held one baby after another, for the first time, I actually saw myself being a mother. I’d always known I’d be a mother some day (I hoped, at least), and I’d always believed I’d be a good mother (I hoped too, at least), but I was never so sure I’d enjoy being with my kids all day while they were growing up, just playing with them or feeding them or holding them and doing pretty much nothing else.

But for the first time, I realised that I probably could do it, and actually enjoy it. Here I was, holding babies I’d known only for a couple of hours, and having so much love and affection for them… What more if I held my own baby – a baby I would’ve carried in me for 9 months, a baby who was my own flesh and blood, a baby who would remind me of my husband, a baby I’d have named, a baby I would call my own and be proud of and be insanely in love with… How much more would I love that child and want to be there for every first-something – first word, first smile, first laugh, first step…

The babies here at the Door of Hope are the happiest babies I’ve ever seen in my life. It amazes me how smiley and giggly they are all the time (other than when we’re about an hour late feeding them), and when I commented about it, another volunteer replied, “These babies receive a lot of love here!” It’s so true. And as I thought about it yesterday, I would want to be with my baby most of the time – bringing him around with me wherever I went, even if it meant he was crawling around the floor as I worked on something, or he was sleeping in my arms as I watched a movie.

I just realised what a significant difference my presence would make to my kid. And I want to be there for my kid when he’s growing up. He only grows up once… I don’t think I’d want to miss that :)