handsful

Today, we received Lainey’s finding ad. When a child is found in China, an ad is placed with the child’s photo and identifying information. They do this in case the parents want to claim their child, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this happening. We acquired this information from a man named Brian Stuy, of www.research-china.org/index.htm. He and his wife have 3 girls adopted from China. He finds the ads and offers them to adoptive parents, believing that it’s vitally important to have this earliest link to our children’s pasts. We’re so grateful to have this picture of Lainey, at approximately 3 days old, as well as a little more information about her beginnings.

The paper contains a picture of Lainey before her lip repair. It appears to be a unilateral cleft, but it’s a little hard to tell for sure. She looks so young and quite sleepy :)

In addition to the enlarged photo that Brian made, he also sent us the whole paper that her ad was in. It’s called the “Anhui Youth Daily” paper and only about 5 pages in length. Here is a closeup of the ad page. Lainey is 2nd from the left, on the bottom row. I’m not sure how often this paper is produced…there are 12 abandoned children in this one.

Brian’s wife, Lan, is Chinese and translates the ads. Lainey’s ad says this:

An abandoned baby

A girl

We don’t know what her name was

She still had her umbilical cord on. We estimated she was about 3 days old.

She has small eyes.

She has a cleft palate and lip, thick hair, slightly yellow skin.

On July 7th, 2006, she was found on Nanhu Road, Bengbu City.

I would love to know a more specific spot for her finding place, and it’s possible that the orphanage will be able to tell us more. To think of her being left beside a road is difficult to understand…I imagine that there must be a very safe, yet obvious place on that road, where her birth mother felt she would be found quicky and taken care of. We’ll be forever grateful.