Miracle of adoption abroad

Angelina Jolie and Madonna may be the most famous Americans to adopt children overseas, but they're certainly not the first. Each year, parents in the USA adopt about 20,000 children from around the world. And though the super-rich appear to be able to swoop into a far-off land and scoop up adorable children with ease, for the majority of adoptive parents, the process is a costly, emotionally wrenching grind.

I know. My wife and I just returned from Russia with a 2-year-old girl. In just a few short weeks, we've come to learn what other adoptive parents have been telling us for years: that adoption is an amazing, transforming experience. It's no less a miracle than having children the old-fashioned way.

But the road we took to get there was no miracle. It was a 2 1/2-year journey from the time my wife and I decided to adopt to the day we were given custody of our daughter. We spent months filling out an endless marathon of forms and getting them certified. Then we shipped the paperwork to Russia and waited helplessly until our number came up.

And then, when our number did come up, we flew over to meet the little girl who was randomly chosen to be ours and fell in love with her. We ultimately decided to adopt her, even after being told by several doctors that she probably had a severe form of epilepsy.

This adoption story began after my wife, Cathy, and I, after much research, decided to adopt a child from Russia. The first thing to do was sign up with an adoption agency. We chose Children's Hope International. After a social worker visited us and approved us as adoptive parents, we had to prepare a dossier of information and notarized legal forms -- police background checks, for example -- that would be shipped to Russia.

Paperwork usually can be done in six months or less. But because of our busy schedules, it took more than a year. Part of the delay was spurred by the Russian government, which in 2005 moved the goal posts in international adoptions.

Until then, Russian orphans had to be available for domestic adoption for three months before they became available to international parents. In 2005, the government doubled the timetable, which slowed foreign adoptions in Russia.

Though most Russians have no problem with foreigners adopting some of the estimated 700,000 orphans in their country, Russia's nationalist party has decried the practice. The nationalists point out that since the early '90s, 14 Russian children have been killed by their adoptive parents in the USA.

To address such concerns, the Russian government has put in place stringent new rules regarding the accreditation of international adoption agencies, including Children's Hope. The new process is designed to eliminate the fly-by-night brokers who spent little time vetting the American parents for whom they were working.

By September 2005 we had completed our dossier, and the agency sent it off to Russia.

The first trip

On May 30, the moment we had been waiting for arrived: The adoption agency e-mailed us a photo of a little girl, just over 2 years old. We knew virtually nothing about her, including her name; all we had was a birth date, some basic facts about her birth mother and a brief summary of her medical problems, one of which was translated as "congenial heart disease."

In late June, we flew to Moscow. From there, we traveled to Tver, a midsize city about 100 miles northwest of Moscow. The next morning, Tuesday, June 20, the head of the Children's Hope International's operations in Tver, Alexei Savichev, came by the hotel to meet us. We learned that our girl, Irina, was living at a "baby house" about 45 minutes away.

Our job at this first meeting was to try to establish some kind of bond with Irina. We were also looking for potential health problems. The biggest concern for parents adopting in Russia, a nation with high per-capita alcohol consumption, is fetal alcohol syndrome. Most health problems among orphans can be treated with medical care and parental love. But with fetal alcohol syndrome, the damage cannot be reversed.

At the orphanage, we were ushered into a small reception room with toys and stuffed animals. A few minutes later, a dark-haired woman in a white lab coat entered, carrying Irina. She sat shyly on the woman's lap, clutching two small stuffed animals and holding them up in front of her eyes, hiding her face from us. The caregiver placed her on the floor in a sitting position and tried to initiate some contact between us, but the little girl wouldn't budge.

After a few minutes, Cathy told me to get the bubbles out. I dug a plastic container of soapy mixture out of my wife's bag, removed the wand and began blowing. Each time I unleashed a stream of bubbles at Irina, she screamed with delight.

After about 45 minutes, the caregiver spirited Irina away from us for her afternoon nap. As she left the room, Cathy and I said "bye-bye" to Irina in Russian. In response, she turned back and waved to Cathy. My heart melted.

The next day's visit was much easier. Cathy engaged Irina in various activities while I took close-up photos of our little girl's face, which we would send to Jane Aronson, a pediatrician and adoption specialist in New York we had hired.

About midway through the session, Cathy was playing with Irina, who was sitting on the floor. Suddenly, the top half of Irina's body went limp and folded straight over to the point where her head almost slammed the floor. Cathy and I stared at her for a few seconds; then I reached down and returned her to an upright position. But Irina started falling backward, so I caught her and let her down gently. Her eyes were open, staring toward the ceiling.

I was tempted to call for help, but Irina's breathing seemed fine. I lifted her up and put her on Cathy's lap. Soon she was playing as if nothing had happened. Later, a doctor came in. Cathy described Irina's collapse, but the doctor assured us it must have been a fainting spell. I was satisfied.

In Tver that afternoon, we filled out papers indicating our intention to adopt Irina. Per Aronson's instructions, we e-mailed pictures we had taken of Irina, and Cathy wrote a description of the fainting spell.

On Thursday, we petitioned for a court date on which we could complete our adoption, then traveled to Moscow in preparation for Friday's flight home. We arrived in Moscow in an ebullient mood. Then Cathy checked her e-mail.

A pediatrician in Aronson's office wanted to speak to us as soon as possible. It was 5 p.m. in Moscow, 9 a.m. in New York. The pediatrician on the phone, Melissa Goldstein, told us that what we had witnessed was not a fainting spell but a seizure.

That in itself wasn't catastrophic, she said, but there was something about Irina's head that concerned her and Aronson. The way her forehead protruded in one picture suggested a "dysmorphic" skull shape. That, with evidence of seizures, suggested Irina could have serious medical problems.

We were devastated. Just a day before, we were in the presence of a darling little girl who had won us over, and now someone was telling us that Irina had serious medical problems. Goldstein reiterated that there was no way to tell for sure how serious Irina's problems were without a thorough examination. She gave us the name of a doctor in Moscow.

Before leaving Moscow the next day, we spoke with Vadim Ivanov, the pediatrician recommended to us. He said he'd try to go to the orphanage to examine Irina.

During our first week back, we got some good news. Aronson and Goldstein reviewed a 45-minute video I'd shot of Irina that dispelled any notions they had that the girl's physical development was dysmorphic. In retrospect, they concluded, it was probably just a bad angle on the photos we had e-mailed from Russia.

There was still the seizure question. Cathy and I asked Children's Hope to get Savichev to arrange for Irina to have an EEG. The test showed no signs of brainwave abnormality. But unless Irina were tested for a 24-hour or 48-hour period, it would be impossible to determine whether she had epilepsy and, if so, how serious her condition was. We described Irina's collapse to a number of pediatric neurologists in New York and Boston. They all agreed that Irina had suffered a seizure, and one said we'd be better off finding another child rather than running the risks associated with Irina's condition.

We spent most of July wrestling with whether to proceed with the adoption.

On July 25, Ivanov drove to the orphanage and examined Irina. The next day, he sent us his assessment: He was unable to find any indication that Irina had ever had a seizure. His examination showed no health problems of any kind. As for her "congenial heart disease," that was simply an over-the-top diagnosis of a minor heart issue that would have little effect on her.

The second trip

Elated over the turn of events, we decided to go ahead with the adoption. We returned to Tver in September for our court date. On Sept. 27, Cathy, Irina and I flew from Moscow to New York.

Over the next few weeks, we all began to adjust to our new life as a family of four. At first, our 8-year-old son, Sam, grudgingly accepted Irina, but by mid-October, he had shifted comfortably from "only child" status to the "older brother."

In the first two weeks, Irina's screaming tantrums over trivial matters unnerved me, but Cathy said such behavior was normal for a 2-year-old undergoing such an enormous life change. As time went by, Irina's tantrums became shorter, and she seemed to revel in her new life with us at our home in the New York suburbs.

By late October, we had pretty much forgotten about the seizure that almost derailed the adoption. And then one night at the dinner table, I removed Irina's fork or did something that triggered a tantrum. But instead of screaming, she protested in a different way: The top half of her body slumped, her head almost hitting the table. But her eyes remained open.

For Cathy and me, the moment was a revelation. We'd seen this episode before, but assumed it was a seizure. Now we realized it was simply one of Irina's ways of protesting when she didn't get her way.

My wife and I realized what we had just witnessed and how we and a series of top doctors had transformed a silent temper tantrum into a seizure.

Each day since Irina joined our family, Cathy and I have given thanks for our blessings. But on that day, after laughing at ourselves and our compulsive need to question everything and know even more, our gratitude was even greater.

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