Thank You!

I wanted to say Thank You to everyone who left us a reply or sent an email last week when I asked for your adoption experiences when we were evaluating our first referral. I asked for your input and you definitely gave me what I asked for! I had over 55 messages in my inbox the next morning and I read each and every one of them. I wish I had time in my day to personally respond to all of the messages but since I don't please know that it meant so much to me that you took the time to send me a message.

I still feel a great deal of guilt for turning down our first referral but I hope with time, those feelings will start to fade and I can just focus on our new addition and get through the wait until court. The wait for trip #1 is nothing compared to the wait for trip #2. At least we are heading into August next week; that sounds better than July!

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.

Success At Last

We were able to meet with a second referral today; a 21 month old boy. He's 2 years and one month younger than Artem. He's healthy and happy and a good fit for our family. We declined our first referral when the doctor we hired to review his file discovered the baby home had been tracking him closely for cerebral palsey. Something they did NOT reveal to us the first two days even when we questioned them directly about any other conditions we should be aware of. I'm feeling really guilty about turning him down since he was an adorable little boy and our last visit with him went really well. But Randy and I both know our limits and cerebral palsey would have been too much for our family to handle.

Our new little guy was VERY guarded when he met us and took quite a while to warm up to us, but after about an hour we were able to get some smiles and belly laughs out of him. We were scheduled to have our eight doctor medical exam tomorrow but that would mean we wouldn't be able to see our little guy anymore on this trip so we will forgo the medical exam and see him tomorrow instead. When we return for court, we'll come a few days early and have our exam then.

As of tonight we still haven't agreed on a name. We need one tomorrow by 11:00 a.m. It's looking like it's going to come down to a fierce game of rock, paper, scissors in order to determine a name, but we are not giving up yet.

Seeking Input

On Monday we met a nine month old adorable little boy. It was a very difficult day due to the long, winding drive, a heat wave in Moscow with buildings lacking any air conditioning, and me suffering from what we’ve termed, “Stalin’s Revenge”. It wasn’t pretty.

The little boy is adorable but we had some concerns with his developmental progress. He was in a baby hospital yesterday rather than his normal baby home due to an ear infection. He had been hospitalized for 6 days staying in a crib in a tiny room with no a/c, no toys, and no stimulation; not even a mobile for the crib or any paint color on the walls. The heat in the room was so bad I had to sit down because the room was spinning and things were going black on me. This little baby had been there since July 6th lying in that heat sweating. We couldn’t really get him to interact with us and got very little emotion out of him. We think part of it was the heat and part of it was the fact that he hasn’t had any interaction with anyone since the 6th. There wasn’t any room to do anything with him other than hold him since the room was so tiny.

We saw him again today but this time he returned to his baby home since his ear infection has been cleared up. The poor boy is cutting four top teeth all at once so I’m not convinced it was an ear infection due to illness rather than teething. Today we saw a little more emotion from him but it was still limited. He laughed a little and we got him to babble and blow raspberries but at one point he fell backwards and we waited for him to cry but he didn’t. He can roll over on his own and can crawl but he cannot sit up. He’s 20 pounds at 9 months old so we wonder if he cannot sit on his own b/c of his weight and lack of stimulation and time outside of the crib. He will roll over and take his foot and try to get himself to the sitting position but immediately falls back. He has very strong legs and tries to stand on his own but again starts to topple over.

Tomorrow we will see him again and a local doctor is meeting us to examine the child. The doctor was not available today. His medical background is very good with no drug or alcohol use by his birth mother, was born at 38 weeks with Apgar scores of 7 and 8, and he looks healthy but we just don’t know how to judge his lack of development. Is it due to a mental problem or because he’s in an orphanage and doesn’t get any time to work on these skills? If anyone has any input, we’d love to hear your experiences.

We had no idea the second time around would be this difficult and we certainly didn’t think it would take us three days of meeting a child to help us make our decision. This has been the hardest thing we have done so far and we feel incredibly guilty not instantly loving this boy like we did with Artem. If you have any input for us, please leave us a comment or you can email me privately at staylor602@hotmail.com

No News Yet

Just wanted to post a quick update as it's 10:45 p.m. at night. We met with a child today but have not decided whether or not to accept him. We are hoping to meet with him again tomorrow with a physician to help give us a better idea on his health and help us make our decision.

Hopefully we'll have more news tomorrow night.

I Love A Good List

I am a Type-A, follow the rules, list making, black and white, lines are my friend, kind of girl and packing for a big trip makes my heart happy; especially when that trip involves an orphan. I've had my list made for about a week now. It's inside my "Russia Notebook" that I used throughout Artem's adoption. It has everything from my home study to-do list, to the directions to the apostille office, to the notes I was furiously scribbling when we were meeting with the orphanage director at Artem's baby home. And now that we are on round two, I put a sticky note on the edge of the page with "Second Adoption" sticking out the side as to make sure I don't venture into the "First Adoption" pages. Very catchy, I know, it took me weeks to come up with that label.

Today the big packing began and my trusty list was there on the bed helping me along. Each time I put something in the suitcase I crossed it off the list. If it wasn't in the suitcase, it wasn't marked off the list; nothing gets by without being crossed off. But to my defense, when you are packing to meet a child that you know absolutely nothing about in a country that does not share the same language or voltage as the United States, you have to be prepared, and being prepared means you have a lot of stuff. I'm lucky I am allowed 70 pounds per bag.

But for as good of a list maker as I am, I'm not the greatest packer. I can get it all in there and meet my weight limit, but it's not pretty and by the time it arrives to our destination, it's nothing short of a miracle that the contents are a) all in one piece, and b) still inside the suitcase. Now Randy on the other hand, he's the MacGyver of packing. You could give that man 3 pairs of jeans, 2 shirts, and a package of toothpicks and he'd figure out how to make it all fit into a gallon sized Ziplock bag. He's good, real good. And right about now, I could use my MacGyver because my list isn't all the way crossed off and I only have a few inches of space left and I refuse to bring less than five pairs of shoes thank.you.very.much, so those aren't going anywhere.

I'll get it all to fit, somehow, and by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow morning I will be on my way to the airport so I won't have a choice. The zipper will have to zip because there is nothing more embarrassing than claiming luggage off the carousel with duct tape around it; and yes we have had to do that but I refuse for it to be on my watch!

I'm bringing my laptop and will be blogging throughout the week, internet accessibility willing, and hope to have some good news on Monday evening.

Until then,
Do svidanya!
(Good bye)

How This Works

For those of you that aren't familiar with IA (International Adoption) or new to our blog, I wanted to take a minute and explain the process for next week.

First of all, we are traveling "blind" which means we do not receive any information about our referral until we show up to the MoE (Ministry of Education) on Monday morning. Randy and I will arrive in Moscow on Saturday, weather permitting since we have a tropical storm headed our way. We are going to use Sunday to decompress and sight see, something we didn't really get to do when we traveled for Artem's adoption since it was so cold on all three trips.

On Monday morning we'll go to the MoE and meet with their representative. Our agency coordinator will go with us and translate and present the information about the child(ren) they have matched us with. We have asked for up to two children, boy or girl, healthy with only minor correctable issues, under 24 months old. We have not specified hair or eye color and are open to all ethnicities. Basically we are leaving it in God's hands as to who He has in mind for us. The MoE will give us some preliminary information about the child and we will decide if we want to pursue the child and meet them. We will sign paperwork that will allow us access to the orphanage and to see the child and at that point we'll leave for the orphanage. This could be a short drive if we are lucky or a very long 2.5 hour, one way, drive like we had with Artem.

We have arranged for a Western trained Russian doctor to meet us at the orphanage on Monday and meet with the child, review their medical file, and give us his take on the child's health. We also have an International Adoption Clinic out of Washington on standby to review our referral's file in case we want an additional opinion by a set of doctors that are well versed in issues facing children in orphanages.

When we adopted Artem times were very different and we knew the moment they gave us his information at the MoE that we would adopt him and wouldn't need a doctor's opinion, he was very healthy and it was obvious. Now the Russian fostering program is going strong and the Russian families are continuing to receive hefty stipends for fostering a child. While this sounds like a great idea to keep the children in loving homes in their own country, there isn't a screening process for Russian families to foster and many of the people fostering are the sick and elderly who have no other means for income, or in some cases they are families that are wanting the stipend to make a major purchase and after they have had the child long enough to buy that item, they return the child to the orphanage basically rendering them twice orphaned. The fostering program leaves very few "healthy" or "healthy with minor, correctable issues" children available for foreigners to adopt. Our coordinator will meet with the MoE on Thursday and officially make our match but in the past few months when she has made matches for other families with our agency, by the time the family made it to the MoE on Monday morning, a Russian family had already taken the child to foster. We are very aware of the fact that we could come home without a child.

But we are hoping for the best and if we are matched with a child that is healthy we will sign paperwork stating we wish to adopt them and fill out the paperwork giving them their name. Randy has shot down every name I've suggested We still can't agree on a name for a boy and we are six days from meeting our child. Let's hope they have a great Russian name we can keep.

Once we sign the paperwork to adopt the child, we will be able to visit them at the orphanage for the rest of the week until Friday. On Friday we will go before a panel of Russian doctors and prove to them that we are healthy and fit to parent the child, pay them a large stack of Rubles and be on our way. By Saturday it will be time to leave and begin the wait for a court date. Court usually follows the first trip by about 6-8 weeks, a very short time compared to many regions and one of the reasons we love the Moscow Region. After court, there is a mandatory 10 business day wait before the judge signs the official decree. We are planning on bringing Artem with us to court (he'll wait outside in the lobby unless the judge wishes to see him, which happens frequently when they know a previously adopted child has travelled back to Russia) and wait out our 10 days in Russia rather than come home between court and Gotcha Day like we did with Artem's adoption. We want him to be able to see Russia again now that he's older and we also hope to make several trips to the orphanage to visit his brother or sister and begin to bond with them before we pick them up.

This is how we have it planned now; no idea how it will truly unfold. Right now we need to get through Monday and find a child that's right for our family. We are taking it one step at a time and keeping our mind and heart open for what God is doing with our family at this time.

One Week To Go

It has begun, the pile of stuff I can't forget has started to build on our bedroom dresser. I leave in one week and I'm slowly but surely getting things checked off of the "to-do" list.

My visa arrived today. I used Go To Russia for my visa and for Randy's letter of invitation and I will NEVER EVER use them again. They have been terrible. I paid for 8 day processing of my visa and it ended up being 11 days to process my visa. We paid for GTR to issue Randy an invitation to travel and mail it to him in Abu Dhabi so he could go to the Russian Embassy in Abu Dhabi and get his visa. We were told it was mailed on June 21st but after a week of nothing arriving I called GTR and they said DHL returned it back to their Moscow office without any explanation. GTR said they would mail it again on June 28th and then told us they mailed it but wouldn't provide us with a tracking number. Several phone messages to GTR went unanswered and Randy called DHL in Abu Dhabi and DHL said they have not had any shipments for Randy all the way back to June 15th and said they did not have any reason to return it. After waiting three more days, Randy called the GTR Moscow office and found out they never mailed it all along.

I contacted Peace Travel, who we used to rent our Moscow apartments for Artem's adoption, and within 10 minutes I had a return email from Dmitry saying, "Hello Susan, so good to hear from you again." The man remembered us after 2.5 years, despite the hundreds of people he deals with a year. Within a day he was able to get Randy an invitation to travel and get it sent to Abu Dhabi. It cost us, it cost us dearly, $190 for just 2 pieces of paper, on top of the $70 we paid GTR, and now that Randy will only have a couple days to get a visa, he will have to pay the expedited cost at the Embassy. Like I said, we will NEVER EVER use Go To Russia again.

Enough of that, hopefully Randy will be able to go the the Russian Embassy on Sunday and get his visa issued and we won't have anymore visa issues on this trip.

Randy's parents will arrive here on Wednesday afternoon. They will take care of Artem while I am in Moscow. Since we picked Artem up from the orphanage on April 12, 2008 I have never been away from him for more than 5 hours and I've never been away from him overnight. I'm not sure who is going to cry more while I'm gone. Artem and I are tight, we're like peas and carrots, and even though I'm excited to meet our next child and excited to have a little time off from Mommy Duty, I don't know what I'm going to do without my little shadow. We'll be able to keep in contact with Skype; Artem's used to skyping with Randy everyday, and I have some paper hearts with handwritten messages on them that I'm going to scatter around the house for Artem to find while I am gone, but still, I'm going to miss that little guy.

I'm starting to get those worries about how I'm ever going to love another child as much as I love Artem, am I going to be able to give Artem enough time when the next child comes home, and trying to figure out how I'm ever going to survive Walmart on payday with two children under four. I know thousands of mom's do it all time and with a lot more children, but right now, those are my worries.

So, one week from today, I'll be on the plane to Moscow minus a certain little boy that decided he wanted to potty train himself on a sixteen hour flight from Atlanta to Dubai and I haven't flown by myself for so long I don't know what I'll do with all of that free time. I hope I don't try to cut the food for the passenger sitting next to me. That could prove awkward!