Adopting our sons Matthew (in 2004) and Andrew (in 2006) has enriched our lives! Here I describe how we came to the decision to take these leaps of faith. We hope this story will motivate you to rescue a young life in need if biology dealt you a bad hand, or even if you just have room in your heart and another place at your table.
Uterus 1438 to the cashier please
Like many adoptive parents, our story began with some bad biology. After finally getting into a home of our own, Lori and I felt ready to go for kids. After going 0-for-18 after Lori went off the pill, we went to a local fertility clinic based on a friend’s testimony about the skill and demeanor of one of their physicians, who I admit, was very good at what he does, and is pleasant. He did some tests and told us that biology passed us by ahead of our time....
The waiting room was universally occupied by other 30-and 40-something professionals, many of whom (like us) waited too long to try to have kids. In fertility treatment, you see the doc every now and again but the actual procedures are handled by other clinic staff. These clinic staff people were often very cold, especially the office manager who was a nurse practitioner. Imagine medical care with all the bedside manner of the Department of Motor Vehicles and you will get a pretty good picture of the practice we tried. One visit, I overheard the office manager yelling at a (presumably distraught) unsuccessful client on the phone: “I don’t KNOW why you’re not pregnant!!” Ironically, her bio in the clinic’s literature described her as having founded and organized infertility support groups. This woman must have attended the Sam Kinison School of Counseling. She might as well have given the caller the full Sam treatment: “YOU’RE BARREN!! DEAL WITH IT!!! IT’S NOT OUR FAULT YOU’RE TOO D--N OLD!! MAYBE IF YOU DIDN’T THINK YOU WERE TOO GOOD FOR EVERY GUY YOU MET IN YOUR 20s YOU WOULDN’T BE HERE!!! OH OH OHHHHHHHH!” Even the other office staff, while more pleasant, were still businesslike. They may as well have said: “Uterus 29 to procedure room 3 for sperm injection. Please bring your checkbook with you.” It IS a business after all.
Doc said that realistically, IVF with Lori’s own eggs was a long shot. If we wanted to have success, we would have to use some younger woman’s donated eggs. My health insurance only covered peripheral procedures like blood draws and ultrasounds, not the petri dish stuff, so considering success odds was a huge factor if we were going to blow our life savings. We paid a deposit to get access to their databank of egg donor profiles- complete with voice recordings and listed to several candidates.
Take a hike Barbara Walters
All along, we knew that adoption was also an option. We wanted a baby for the sake of being able to have the experience of parenting an infant at least once. Also, we did not want to dive into parenthood from day 1 with a special needs child if we could knowingly avoid it. Domestic U.S. adoption? Forget it. Here’s why: It’s broken.
1) The wait for a healthy infant can take years, 2) even if you line up a birth mother she could change her mind and/or disappear (this actually happened to my boss’ friends), 3) in our state a birth mother HAS A WHOLE YEAR AFTER PLACEMENT TO CHANGE HER MIND AND GET THE BABY BACK, and most importantly, 4) the demand for non-special-needs infants in America so outstrips supply that birth mothers increasingly retain parental contact privileges in “open adoption.” This is where the birth mother not only knows who is getting her child (and vice versa), but she often will retain visitation rights such that she still gets to be mom at the kids’ birthdays, while the adopting couple has to do all the daily heavy lifting of parenthood. In America, the individuals who donated the gametes involved in the creation of the child (i.e. sperm and egg) get too many rights.
Open adoption was grotesquely illustrated on a Barbara Walters 20/20 episode that featured several couples literally auditioning to be the adoptive parents of a 16-year-old girl’s baby. It was like American Idol for desperate wannabe parents. The promos were enough to turn me off to watching it. Lori and I would brook no shadow parent with any kind of persistent, recurring presence in our child’s life. If open adoption is what it takes to get more American girls and young women to give up their babies, and there are adoptive parents willing to entertain a continuing presence of the birthmother, great. As for us, however, we want to be the 24/7 parents of any child we raise. If either of our adopted children wants to track down his birthmother in the future, we will assist him, and encourage counseling to prepare him for what he might encounter.
So we decided that if we were going to adopt an infant, it would be from abroad. Why Russia for international adoption? Several reasons: Russian adoptions are adjudicated in Russian courts and are FINAL. If Boris crawls out of the woodwork down the line and protests: "but I didn't know she was pregnantsky!" too darn bad. This is unlike America, where not long ago a judge stripped a distraught 3-year-old girl from her stable adoptive parents into custody of her sperm-donor father, who was unemployed and lived in a trailer. Second, unlike China, infant referrals from Russia (especially boys) are fast. Many parents I spoke with when vetting adoption agencies got referrals in a few weeks once Moscow got the paperwork! Third, if we were going to blow all our savings to take a trip somewhere to become parents, Russia seemed an intriguing place to visit. Many of my favorite composers are Russian, and its history interests me.
Finally, to be perfectly honest, raising a kid who looked sorta like us (whether we were black, white, brown or purple) would have some advantages. We considered all the stares and stupid questions cross-racial adoptive families face in public. There are many cross-racial adoptive parents out there, God bless 'em, who when confronted with a boorish question in the supermarket after a long day: "Say, how much did she cost you?" are able to smile with grace and deftly reply: "Why she's priceless." Not me. I am liable to respond to such inquiries with "I got her for only a buck ninety-nine! Chinese girls were on closeout at Sears!" and things would get ugly from there. You'd think such questions would not occur in a cosmopolitan area like Washington D.C. Alas, sadly, some friends from our church who adopted a Korean boy tell us otherwise.
Also, a problem seldom discussed in adoption literature and only beginning to be appreciated is cultural identity issues that cross-racial adopted children face in adolescence. This I can totally believe. Lori's cousin had to pull her slightly dusky-skinned daughter from an inner-city public high school this past year in part because other students were getting in her face demanding to know what race she was! No joke.
Thus, all these considerations made international adoption from Russia our adoption alternative to the hormone shots, ultrasounds, and test tubes.
The drunken fetus
However, Russian adoption has its own risks. It’s not the several dozen grand it takes for administrative fees, thinly veiled bribes, visa fees, and travel. We’d pay that much or more for IVF with mystery woman’s eggs. It’s about the fact that Russians, especially young ones, have a tragic proclivity to severe alcohol binge drinking and dependence. All it takes is one high-dose alcohol exposure at a critical time in early fetus development to wreck that developing life forever. Every time sperm meets egg, it's always a crapshoot to be sure, but when alcohol bathes the developing brain, the odds of retardation and/or behavior problems increase markedly. This is a somewhat manageable risk, however, as we could hire a western-trained pediatrician to examine referrals for fetal alcohol effects and other problems before agreeing to accept the referred child.
For days, we agonized over what to do. I mean we were REALLY straddling the fence. With donor egg IVF, we could control the uterine environment, and Lori would have the near-universal female experience of a life growing within her. I really didn’t care so much about being able to sire my own child. My family’s gene pool has a few turds floating in it. However, there would be the weirdness of explaining to our child down the road that there was a third biological-based parent out there and that he was made in a test tube, plus, there were no guarantees we’d end up with a child in the end.
With Russian adoption, we’d know we would be a family at the end of the proceedings, and we would be providing a home to a child who desperately needed one. Both options carried advantages and disadvantages with costs being equally exorbitant. One day Lori and I seemed resolved to go one route, the next day after more discussion while walking the dog, we’d go the other way, and the day after that, etc. So finally, we prayed about it. What option do we choose?
We’re on a mission from God
I believe in God. Not because someone waved an ancient book in my face and claimed it is truth, but rather, after an extensive cosmological and philisophical investigation that I undertook some time ago. I came to the conclusion that God is probably out there (even if humanity has been fuzzy and ham-handed about the details). So, I decided to pray about it. My relationship with Him has always been more of a cosmic understanding, however, than any kind of real dialogue. So I was expecting the usual silence on the other end of the line in response to our plea for guidance. Not this time. One evening, I was surfing the web about Russian adoption, and I stumbled onto a haunting image from a Russian orphanage. It showed over a dozen toddlers eating at a row of tiny tables with a single caregiver lady in the background with her back to the camera and the children. Looking up from her meal toward the camera was a little girl in the foreground. She had an inquisitive but somewhat sad and dazed look on her face.
I was riveted on her. As I reflected on the plight of those children, I was struck by sudden burst of emotion: profound, shaken to the core sadness- I had scarcely experienced before. This emotional immersion was novel, as I typically have all the empathy of Saddam Hussein. To give you an example, when I was watching Forrest Gump in the theater, as Forrest was weeping at his Jenny’s grave, the audience erupted into a cascade of sobs and sniffles, with Kleenexes flying aplenty. Meanwhile, I was wondering if I’d get home in time for ESPN’s Baseball Tonite. Even recent pictures of Indonesian tsunami victims-- showing profound human grief and the devastation-- struck me as surreal, and had me reaching for my checkbook but not the Kleenex.
This time, emotion overcame me, and I slumped out of my chair on my knees. It was like a punch in the gut. I sensed that God answered me. The experience was too intense in comparison with other emotional reactions I've had in my life. I knew then unmistakably that Lori and I had to go to Russia and rescue a child out of an institution. I looked heavenward with tears in my eyes and blubbered: “OK God, since this is what you want me to do, I’ll do it.” I staggered upstairs to my wife and told her what happened.
Finding a reputable agency:
Next came vetting adoption agencies. Lori left this task to me. International adoption is arduous, and is fraught with things that can go wrong, and even with criminally negligent or fraudulent “facilitators.” Most notably, there are only a few dozen American adoption agencies that are officially authorized by the Russian Federation to coordinate adoption placements of their children. This accreditation is difficult for an agency to obtain, and requires intensive annual maintenance by agencies by sending the Russians several post-placement reports about the welfare of each child removed from their country. Many American agencies advertising a “Russia program” are not accredited, but they work thru an accredited third-party American agency that actually files the paperwork with the Russian bureaucracy. I did not consider agencies that were not directly accredited. I did not want to have to deal with a third party agency.
I found an accredited agency within a do-able driving distance in a neighboring state whose references were all positive. I not only checked out the references provided by the agency in its literature, but I also found some eastern European adoption sites on the web where people independently post their names and numbers and what adoption agency they used. I felt it important to get feedback from others besides the carefully-selected happy clients provided by an agency itself. The international agency we chose is smallish, but had been doing Russian adoption for over 10 years. I figured the small size would minimize the chance that our paperwork would be lost in the shuffle. My conversations with the social worker at that agency showed her to be pleasant, confident, and reassuring. So I pulled the trigger and sent them a check and an application.
So you want to be a parent eh? We the State shall decide that!
The first step in the process was actually the biggest one: the home study. This is where the burden is placed on prospective adoptive parents to prove that they are likely to be fit parents. It results in a certified document indicating that we are fit to be parents which is sent to Russian authorities. Our first meeting with the home study social worker was a rude awakening to how arduous this would be. It turned out that before that agency would even dispatch a social worker to our home to interview us, we had to have over 20 different inspections and background checks performed! In a seemingly endless procession, the social worker would slide to us across the table this form or that. We had to have the fire department come and inspect our home, the county safety and sanitation department come and inspect our home, we had to get driving violation records, records documenting no outstanding child support liabilities in every state in which we lived, certified copies of our birth certificates and marriage licenses, record of our dog’s rabies vaccination, fingerprinting with both state and federal authorities for a comprehensive criminal background check, etc. It never ended.
I am a libertarian trapped in Montgomery County, Maryland, a big-government nanny zone that typically votes democrat. I even voted libertarian in the 2004 Presidential Election. It is therefore hard to describe how profoundly irritated I was by this part of the process-- where my route to fatherhood was at the whim and approval of agents of the state. It was like insult to injury. It was hard enough that nature denied us the traditional path to parenthood, but now we had to subject ourselves to all of this. I just KNOW that the ninnies who put all these regulations in place would salivate at the thought of regulating ALL human procreation. Alas, they can only control adoptive parents.
Taken singly, each item on this home study eligibility list made sense. Yeah, I guess I can see how they don’t want people who owe child support to take on more children. Yeah, I can see how they don’t want an infant raised in a rat-infested deathtrap. Yeah, I can see where they are not thrilled about a child being adopted by a guy with a bunch of DUI offenses or something. It was just the entirety of it all that exceeded reason. I venture that there must be some way of consolidating all these independent procedures to enable a simple “fit parents” versus “losers” categorization.
OK, so the never-ending stream of background check items finally ended, but it took 2-3 months. In the meantime, we attended a short series of lectures on international adoption put on by our international agency. These were very helpful in preparing us for what to expect, not only for the trip itself and initial family adjustment, but for what we might expect in our child’s reaction to his abandonment down the road. I highly recommend such a course. Lori and I also bought and read a couple well-rated books on Russian adoption.
Once all our stuff was into our social work agency, we got our visits from the interviewing social worker, Janet. Janet was cool, and adopted two children internationally herself. We spent much of our time talking about the potential pitfalls of raising children from an institution in another country that we gleaned from our classes and books. The author of one book in particular went so far as to claim that adopted kids will never truly bond with adoptive parents. This possibility really worried Lori, who tends to worry about things a lot more than I do. Upon learning of our concern, Janet confessed a shocking revelation about her own adopted kids: THEY TURNED OUT FINE. Janet jokingly put Lori on “book restriction”. I suggested she write a book on adoption called “My Kids Are Fine.”
Smoking, Non, or First-Available?
After our home study, photographs, and financial records were sent to Russia, we played the waiting game. In our application to the Russians, we stated we would accept either gender. Our agency's social worker said this would mean we would be offered a boy, and fairly quickly. Adoptable Russian girls are scarce for three reasons: First, Russian couples are more likely to eke out another mouth to feed if that mouth is female and could care for them in thier old age. Based on the general drunkeness, despair, and lack of motivation in many Russian males we later saw sauntering around the streets of Perm at all hours with alcohol in their hands, this may make sense. Second, the few Russian couples who DO adopt prefer girls for the same reason. Third, Americans seem to want prefer girls too, as though they want that cute blond Anna Kournikova. When I scan adoption forums on-line, it seems that the majority of posters went and got girls. A boy was just fine with us.
Two months later, we got "the call." A little baby boy in Perm named Egor needed a home. We were left to our own devices to find airline tickets. My heart sank as I found that evening that the only flights available were on Lufthansa for almost $5k per person round trip!!! My despair was lifted then next business morning, when I got a hold of the Aeroflot office in Washington, who offered us fare a fraction of that. I then got right to work on the visas.
