Day 1: Womb, box, crib

On a hazy day in late October, with temperatures in the mid 70s in the rural fishing village of Maoxidu, near the town of Yuting, a fragile cry announced Yue Mengjie’s existence in the world for the first time. Only, not very many heard or noticed it. Born premature, possibly by about 6 weeks, her cry must have been soft. She was so small she could have easily fit into a shoebox.

That may not be too far from what happened. I don’t know what size cardboard box, but the updated report we received recently indicates that our daughter was found in a box. All that was in the box with her was a note confirming her birthday. Nothing more was left with her.

So, there she was, all 5 lbs, 1 oz., 17 3/4 inches of her, in “a box at the roadside”. “Abandoned” as the report puts it.

Because she was premature, her birth must have caught her parents by surprise. They may not have prepared a basket to leave her in, or obtained a bottle to feed her with, or set aside a blanket to wrap her in. Not that they could have afforded any of those items. It was a poor village she was born into.

A man found her that day. It must be difficult to hide an eight month pregnancy in a small village. Did the man know who the parents were? Regardless, he no doubt understood what was happening.

China’s One Child Policy is the law of the land. In an effort to limit the population growth, China has limited families to having only one child. And in the rural areas especially, every family wants - no, every family requires - a son.

A son would work the fields. A son would provide for the family when they were too old to work. A son would carry on the family name. A son would not require a dowry. A son would not leave the family when he got married.

If families can only have one then, for the sake of the family’s survival, in many ways it HAS to be a son.

This makes it very hard on families who have girls, especially for the mother. I am sure that Mengjie’s birth mother loved her as much as any mother loves her daughter and would have tried to do anything to keep her, if it would do any good. But, she didn’t have much choice.

I don’t have any idea whether her mother and father had talked about abandoning her or if they just knew that that’s what they had to do. I don’t know if she was taken from her sobbing mother against the mother’s will just minutes after birth, or if her mother herself had gathered all the strength she could and quickly left her by that roadside in order to save her from being another victim of infanticide. I don’t know if her birth mother left her, or her father, or both together. I don’t know if they quickly left or hid someplace nearby to make sure she was discovered.

We’ve only been told that she was found in a box at the roadside. It was probably in a place where it would be highly likely that she would be discovered, but not likely that people would be seen leaving her. Abandonment, after all, is illegal.

For a baby so young and so small, there must have been some quick action. By the end of the day, she had been discovered, reported to the local police and transported to the orphanage in the city of Yugan. The orphanage received approval from their authorities to admit her.

That’s the story of how life began for our daughter. Quite a remarkable first day of existence.