Getting to know Camille

After completing the necessary paperwork we returned to the White Swan. By now it was close to 6pm. The babies were exhausted, as they’d had an 8 hour trip from their orphanage in Suixi to Guangzhou.

Camille sat very quietly with me in the room. Looking at everything, in her quiet way. I changed her nappy, not a sound from her. Of course I now realise she was in shock. Everything that she had known was gone. The familiar food, her carers, the cot she slept in, her playmates.

I put her down on the floor for just a moment, with some toys. This broke her little heart. Big tears, sobbing. So I picked her up and she clung to me. ‘Don’t let me go!’ And she stayed like this for those first few days, attached to me like a little koala. Toilet trips were impossible, she didn’t want me out of her sight. Even when she was totally exhausted and I tried to put her to bed, she cried her little heart out. In the end I lay down on the bed and she fell asleep lying on top of me. Could attachment really have happened so quickly?