“Adopting Haiti”

Watching “Adopting Haiti” was good for me, to see what was happening at the orphanage after earthquake and the efforts to get the children home to their forever families. I can’t imagine the stress of being there and trying to do the best for the children, both short-term and long-term. I’m so thankful for all those who participated in those efforts!

Emotionally, it’s hard for me to describe how I felt watching the movie. I remember those two weeks like they were yesterday, although there were a few details I’d not known or had forgotten. The movie almost seemed surreal watching it a year later without all the stress I had when it was occurring. The tears watching it this time were so much fewer. Last year, we watched those clips on CNN as they’d come on with great anxiety – waiting for news of when our children might be in our arms, eyes peeled for any glimpse of them, just to know they were still OK.

There are a few key pieces of the story of our children coming home that were missing. A couple are just for us – a couple clips we saw last year of our children (Elijah standing in a tub getting a sponge bath from a nanny, and Josephine standing up in a crib with six other babies). The other is huge – the wait on the parents’ parts, both in our homes and in Florida for the children to be released to us. Those times were agonizing, and very much a part of the story. When “Adopting Haiti” cut from the children being loaded onto the cargo plane to the Wyatt girls at home in Ohio 7 weeks later, it seemed to leave a gaping hole.

However, I’m glad to see Saintania and Eveline are home and doing well and thriving. I’m also happy to see that Mr. Wolfer was able to help the girls reconnect with their birth family. The story was very touching, and I cried right along with Saintania, as I thought of my children possibly never knowing their birth parents, or even knowing what became of them.

For those of you that are interested in watching it, go to www.hulu.com, and search for “Adopting Haiti”. Both Elijah and Josephine are shown in the movie. Elijah is in a clip around 23:30-35, with the blue shirt walking and then sitting on the bench. I believe he is shown again on the bus, sleeping and then with his back to the camera looking out the window, with a blue shirt on around 34:20-28. Josephine is shown on the van behing held by a nanny at 29:34 – look at the far right of the screen, she peeks out around another child to see what’s going on. She’s also VERY briefly shown again on the van, around 35:45, again at far right with a plaid outfit with white sleeves with three animal pictures across the chest.

I’m so glad that we’ve ordered copies of this movie to save for the kids. They are not really old enough to fully understand what was going on, but we do plan to watch it with them now that we’ve watched it. It will be interesting to watch their faces as they watch part of their story, a year later, and see if there are any glimpses of memories that pop up for them. We have shown them photos of themselves and us visiting them at the orphanage on our trips to Haiti, and they LOVE it. If they do remember, I’m not sure images of the chaos of everyone being outside after the earthquake will be as fun for them, but hopefully not traumatic.