Week in Review

I’m starting to get a handle on my jet lag so I figure it’s time to sit down and document how our week went in Moscow. This will probably be long but it’s important for me to chronicle our week so we can look back at it down the road. Randy and I had NO idea it was going to be so hard the second time around. The minute they put Artem into our arms we knew he was our son. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind. Actually, I think I knew he was my son when they handed us the piece of paper at the MoE that had his referral information on it. It was perfect from the moment we met him so we really thought this time around would be just as magical and we’d meet our child on Monday and spend the rest of the week bonding with them like we had done with Artem.

Well you know they say no two biological children are alike so why shouldn’t that be true with an international adoption? Randy and I spent Saturday and Sunday sightseeing around Moscow and enjoying lazy days before getting ready for a busy week. We ate great food, saw the sights, and met up with another family from our agency and their new little daughter. We felt great. Monday morning rolled around and the nerves had kicked in and my stomach was not feeling well. What I had initially blamed on nerves had morphed into something much more dreadful and I found myself unable to be away from a toilet on a moment’s notice. Not the way I wanted to kick off the week and I’m pretty sure I’ve been blacklisted from a certain coffee shop around the corner from the MoE.

We met with the MoE representative late, around 11:30 or 12:00 and were given a referral for an adorable nine month old Uzbekistan boy in an orphanage on the south side of Moscow. It was going to be a long, long drive and I already wasn’t feeling well. Our translator brought his wife along since he felt she was better at translating medical reports and wanted her knowledge there when we were getting our information from the baby home. It turned out that our child wasn’t at the baby home but in a hospital for an ear infection. Our translator’s wife told us that in Moscow the children are frequently hospitalized for simple illnesses b/c the baby homes aren’t equipped for the one-on-one care the illnesses require and she went on to joke that they like to keep you at the hospital for 30 days.

We drove for a couple of hours on a winding, backwoods road that left my aviator husband feeling motion sick; something he never gets, and I was ready to check into a local hotel and just sleep off the rest of the day. The baby home was very clean and recently remodeled although it was very hot since there isn’t any air conditioning and Moscow was in the middle of a heat wave. We were very impressed with how it looked and the staff seemed nice enough but we didn’t get the warm fuzzy feeling we had when we walked into Fryazino, Artem’s orphanage, despite Fryazino being much older and not as state of the art. We met with the director, a middle age woman wearing a spaghetti strap tank top and no bra; guess I didn’t have to worry about being underdressed in my navy dress pants, tailored oxford shirt, and lace trimmed white tank, and sat in her office with the baby home doctor to review our referral’s file.

When we met Artem, the Fryazino director sat next to our translator and together they went line by line through Artem’s medical and social reports and gave us all of his information. At this home, the doctor held the report and told our translator’s what was in the report. That was the first thing that struck me as odd. Initially the MoE rep told us our referral was very healthy but after hearing his medical report there were some things in there that gave me concern; he had pneumonia while still inside his mother, had low oxygen at birth and required a ventilator and a couple other things. We had arranged for an independent, Western trained Russian doctor to meet with the child, something we didn’t have to do with Artem, but because we had such a late start and had to go to the baby home and the hospital, the doctor wouldn’t be able to meet us that day. Randy asked the baby home doctor directly if there was anything in his file that should concern us and she would not answer the question; she just skirted around it. He asked her again point blank and again she wouldn’t answer but told us he was making progress with his development. By this point my stomach was really hurting, I was very hot, hungry and I started getting the shakes and forgetting how to spell words when I was writing. Things started going black and I started getting a ringing in my ears and turned to Randy and said, “I have to get food, right now!” Bless his heart, he jumped up, ran to the car, and within a minute was back with dried mango and a bottle of water.

We left the baby home to head to the hospital so we could see the baby and stopped for lunch and at this point I think it was around 4:30 pm. Food, finally, but Stallin’s Revenge didn’t enjoy the food and by the time we were at the hospital I was getting sick all over again. Let me give you some advice if you are headed to Russia, bring your own toilet paper when you travel around Moscow, trust me, just do it, you’ll thank me later. The drive to the hospital was another hot, winding drive that left us feeling nauseated and we couldn’t find the entrance to the hospital and were wandering around the grounds schlepping the camera bag, bag of toys, and file folder in the stifling heat. Once we made it inside we were taken upstairs to a tiny room smaller than our master bathroom, stark white, no toys, no sounds, just a crib, bed, sink and a chair. There in the rusted metal crib was a chunky baby staring at the ceiling with a glazed look on his face. It didn’t seem real and there weren’t any trumpets sounding or angels singing. Just a hot, sweating, poor little babe all by himself. He barely reacted when he saw us and didn’t show any emotion at all when we spoke to him. Randy picked him up and he was so stiff we couldn’t even get him to bend at the waist to sit on our lap. When we did try to put him on our lap, he would flail himself backwards and try to lie flat again. He wouldn’t look at us but kept staring at the ceiling. The room was so small we couldn’t put him on the floor to play with him, we could only hold him. And he’s 22 pounds, covered in sweat on the backside and the last thing I wanted to do was hold him close to me and make him even hotter. It was miserable. I was dripping with sweat and the room started going black again but I remember thinking, “I’m going to pass out, but it’s okay b/c it’s a hospital and they will take care of me, it’s the best place for me to pass out.” And then I remembered our translator joking that the hospitals like to keep you for 30 days and I told myself, “Don’t pass out, they’ll keep you for 30 days and you won’t get home to Artem. Do not pass out, do not pass out.”

We finally left after a few more minutes and we walked out completely silent. What just happened? Was that really how it was going to go? Meeting Artem brought on an angelic choir singing in the background but meeting our second child left us with nothing to say and me on the verge of tears? This wasn’t how I thought it was going to be. Randy and I briefly spoke off and on for the remainder of the 2.5 hour drive home and both of us had the same reaction; there wasn’t any connection at all between us and the child. We hadn’t ruled him out since he was going to be returned to the baby home the next day and we would be able to see him interact on his “home turf”. We would have the doctor meet us and give us his input and then we’d make the decision.

The boy returned to the baby home the next day but our doctor had a full day with patients and was not able to go the home to do the medical review, but would go on Wednesday instead. Our second visit went a little better but there were still some concerns about his development, the flat spot on the back left side of his head, and the way he just stared at the ceiling and his hands like it was the first time he had seen them. He was adorable, really, really adorable, but it still felt like we were visiting someone else’s child, he just didn’t feel like our child. We decided that on Wednesday after the doctor saw him and gave him a clean bill of health, which we were sure he’d get, we’d feel better and be able to make our decision. Only the doctor didn’t give him a clean bill of health. We got something totally new and something we were not prepared for; cerebral palsy. Despite having a great visit on Wednesday with the little guy and seeing him smile and kick his feet when I walked into the room, I knew something was wrong when the doctor did the startle test; the one where he acts like he’s going to drop the baby and then checks the reaction. Normally babies throw their hands in front of them to break the fall, but this little guy didn’t do it. He kind of put his hands in front of him but it was delayed. After the doctor met with the boy and reviewed his medical file he returned to give us his report. I asked him, “Are they medicating him?” since he always seemed so lethargic and he said, “Yes, but I’ll get to that in a minute.” Wow, I didn’t expect him to say “yes”. Turns out the baby home has been closely tracking him for cerebral palsy and had been medicating him with a relaxant/stimulant blocker to help with the muscle spasms he has and giving him B12 and B6 injections. This was information they did not disclose to us and we only found out after paying an independent doctor $800 US Dollars to see the child. The doctor told us the only way to rule out CP was to get an MRI but that would be on our dime and would not be able to happen until the following week and we needed to sign intent to adopt papers before we left for home. Randy and I agreed to the MRI and felt like we owed the little guy a chance to see what was going on. The doctor also told us he had been hospitalized at least six other times for ear infections so that told us he had spent a great deal of time out of the baby home and in that hell hole of a hospital with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling. Perhaps that could explain why he was so developmentally delayed. I felt so bad for him and felt like we had to get him out of that situation, but in the back of my mind I couldn’t shrug off the feeling that he wasn’t our child; I still couldn’t get the bond to be there like I felt with Artem. We called our agency and asked if there was a second child we could meet. We felt like the odds were very slim but we had to ask.

By Thursday morning we were told the MoE had a second referral for us. We hadn’t declined the first referral and it was unheard of for the MoE to give a second referral before declining the first referral AND it was very uncommon for the MoE to give a second referral on a Thursday. Despite all of this they told us to forget about the first child and gave us a second referral for a 21 month old blond hair, blue eyed little boy and we were off again to another baby home, this time only forty minutes from the MoE. Once again the child wasn’t in the baby home and was at a hospital, for what turned out to be simple dehydration which given what we were experiencing throughout the week, it didn’t surprise me. The second home gave us that warm fuzzy feeling like Fryazino did and the director sat with our translator going through the child’s file line by line even handing him the report several times for him to read through it. Nothing was being hidden from us. We asked the director the same thing we asked for the first child, “Was there anything we should be concerned about?” and she gave us a confident, “No”, he was delayed as most institutionalized children are, but he’s making progress and just needed a loving home. We drove to the baby hospital to meet the boy and what a difference from the first hospital. The children were in the hallway playing with the caregivers. They were playing with a ball, blowing bubbles, and interacting with older kids on the hallway. They brought in a very shy, scared little boy that took almost an hour to warm up to us, but once he did, we were able to get lots of smiles from him and got some good belly laughs out of him when we would play chase down the hallway. This little guy was clearly healthy, had a good fear of strangers, and resembled me despite a very botched, very bad haircut! He is a much better fit for our family and we are confident he is going to give big brother a run for his money. We only were able to see him for a few minutes again on Friday but it was long enough for us to see him start to smile and jump up and down when he saw us peek our heads in his room before the nurse brought him to us. We gave him his little photo album and read through it with him pointing out Mama, Papa, brother and Bella. He took his time looking at each picture but would stop and stare at the pictures of Artem and touch them with his finger. Our translator showed him the picture of his room and made a comment about all the toys waiting for him and the nurse said something along the lines of, “It doesn’t matter about the nice house and toys, you are finally getting a family with a mother, father, and brother to love you.”

So now we wait for news of our court date to bring Andrik Lane home from Russia. We were hoping for an August court date but it looks like we might get delayed because of the judges’ vacations in August so most likely we’ll be back in Russia in September for court. At least the weather should be better; and as hard as last week was, it gets even harder waiting to get back to Russia to bring Andrik home for good.