Playing Politics with Forever Families

I never lost faith that I would be a mother to a second child.  Through years of poor health that made it inadvisable to conceive, followed by multiple surgeries that made it impossible to conceive, I never gave up hope.

Through what seemed like reams of paperwork, tense social worker interviews and hurried trips to the county courthouse, I never gave up hope that adoption was the answer.

Through endless months of waiting, disappointing setbacks and changed legal procedures, I never once gave up hope that I would bring a little girl into my home and make her my daughter.

So, today, my heart is breaking for the 46 families in the process of adopting children from Russia. Today their hopes for a child to call their own were ripped away with one signature. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law banning U.S. couples from adopting Russian children in what seems like retaliation for an American law banning Russian nationals involved in human rights violations from entering the United States.

Dreams of forever families have turned into nightmares because of politics.

Over 740,000 children are housed in Russia’s orphanages. Over the past two decades, the U.S. has been the number one destination for Russian adoptees with 60,000 Russian children being adopted into American families. One of those is my daughter.

The first picture I saw of my daughter…love at first sight.

Five years ago, the Hubs and I spent the holidays planning our first trip to Russia to meet our daughter. A week before Christmas, we received a referral of a little girl in need of a forever family. She was eight months old with big blue eyes and chubby cheeks. She won my heart before I ever saw her in person.

I spent the next few weeks learning Russian phrases–please…thank you…hello…good-bye…I love you. I read up on Russian customs and traditions, so I could show the people of Russia that I respected them and felt honored to be chosen to raise one of their children.

During that trip to Siberia, the hubs and I spent a total of five hours with the little girl whom the orphanage workers affectionately called Dasha. We held her. We fed her. We played with her. By the time we left, we were in love with her.

I cannot imagine the agony of those parents who have recently met their children and woke up this morning to the news that they will never again see them…that their promises to return will go unfulfilled. The despair of the children waiting endlessly for their forever families to return is heartbreaking.

This picture was taken minutes before we had to say goodbye until our adoption was finalized five months later.

When I left Baby Home 95 in Novokuznetsk, Russia in January 2008, I knew I would see my little girl again. In my heart, I knew she was my daughter.  I prayed every night that she be warm and happy, and my arms ached to hold her when I found out she was sick with chicken pox. I was her mother, and every day that passed without her, widened an emptiness inside me.

Those 46 mothers are in my prayers today, and their loss is heavy on my heart.

When asked what adoption “feels like”, I often say it is every bit as painful as childbirth. Watching other people have the children you can never have hurts. Having a stranger approve you as being suitable to be a parent hurts. Waiting hurts. Leaving hurts. Now, being a victim of politics hurts.

I can only hope that somehow the lawmakers can see beyond their political battles and find it within their hearts to allow these 46 mothers and fathers to complete their adoptions before the doors are closed completely. These are mothers and fathers and families, and they only want to spend forever together.

Stiletto Momma

Roots In My Heart

Mine wasn’t the first face my daughter saw when she entered the world. It wasn’t the second or third or even the 100th face she looked at by the time she finally looked at mine in the over-warm visitors room of a 400-child orphanage in Novokuznetsk, Russia.

She probably looked at me and saw a strange lady with crazy curly orange hair. She probably heard my voice and was scared by the nonsense that came from my lips.

She must have been confused by the hugs of strangers.

And what did she think when her caregivers explained to her in her native language that soon she would fly across the ocean to live with a new family, learn a new language and live in a new culture?

Me and the Hubs with the Young One outside Baby Home 95 in Novokuznetsk, Russia, on “Family Day”–the day we officially adopted the Young One into our family!

Four years later, she tells me with a proud smile that she was a baby in Russia. In the next breath, she states quietly that she didn’t grow in my belly like her big brother.

She knows she was adopted, but at five, she doesn’t comprehend entirely what that means for her.

In a few more years, I fully expect her to ask me who her “real” mother is. What did she look like? What did she do for a living? Did she have more kids? Are there other children in this big world who could be her siblings?

I won’t have the answers for her. I know very little about her birth mother other than her name, her age at the time of the birth and the fact that she gave me the greatest gift a woman can give another.

I can tell my child about her nationality, the country of her birth, the town where she was placed for adoption and the story of how I came so far to find the daughter I always wanted.

I have few details to give my child on her origins, but when she asks those questions, I will be sure to hold her close and tell her that her roots are in my heart, and they have been growing there since I first saw her face.

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Today’s Five Minute Friday prompt is “Roots”. This had special mean for me. What does it say to you? Join us on Lisa-Jo Baker’s site and tell us.

Remembering Siberia

The memory of the bitter cold that night four years ago is so vivid that I can still feel the frigid air invading the brand new down parka I had bought for this occasion. I can still see the darkness broken only by the airplane’s interior lights…feel my grip tight on my husband’s arm as we waited to board…and hear the foreign sounds of a language for which I knew only the words “please” and “thank you”.

As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep once we finally found our seats inside the cramped confines of Siberia Airlines.  As we flew through the night, I remember my fascination with the mountains we glided over. Their whiteness shown bright against the black sky–a result of a fresh blanket of snow that made the landscape glisten.

The first picture I saw of my daughter.

I was on my way to Siberia…to the economically depressed mining town of Novokuznetsk, Russia…to Baby Home #95…to an overly warm room on the second floor of an institution housing 400 children all waiting for families…to the little baby I desperately wanted to call mine.

There are days I am still in awe that my husband and I flew to the other side of the world to complete our family. Our son was never meant to be an only child.  Life conspired against us, however, and he remained that way for 14 years. By the time we boarded that plane January 23, 2008, we had endured as much heartbreak as any other couple faced with the realization that adoption was the only way we could grow our family.

When we walked into that room in Baby Home #95, I was filled with equal parts excitement and anxiety. Just a few short weeks ago, I had been given three pictures of an eight-month old girl named Daria. I had studied those three images over and over, but I was overwhelmed with the fear that I would not recognize her when we were finally face to face. What if they brought in several babies, and I couldn’t pick out the one that was meant to be mine?

A Forever Family

Then came the fear of rejection.  What if I did happened to recognize her, but she refused to come to me? What if our foreign words failed to offer her comfort? What if she cried, and the agency liaison assigned to observe our interaction reported that these Americans were not fit to raise a daughter of Russia?

To keep the nerves at bay, I pulled out the accordion file that carried all of our documents and reached for the checklist from our adoption agency. We were to use this to record our observations of this little girl’s motor skills and to test her visual and auditory senses. I read how we should lay her on her back and encourage her to roll over; put her on her hands and knees and see if she would crawl to a toy; clap our hands loudly to check for hearing; and move a toy back and forth to see if she could track it with her eyes.  Then I thought of the acquaintance who had ventured on a similar trip to the Ukraine a year ago, but returned without her child because he failed to pass those tests.

I was afraid the exhaustion and jet lag would get the best of me when finally, the door opened, and I heard our translator say softly in my ear, “There’s your girl.”

Smiles for everyone!

And there she was. As beautiful as imagined. As sweet and well-natured as her caregiver claimed. I opened my arms to her, and she welcomed me with a steady gaze and a coo that needs no translation.

I had found the reason for our inability to conceive another child. We were meant to be the parents of this beautiful little girl. We were meant to wait for her for 14 years, just as she was meant to wait for us to finally be her forever family.

Our waiting wasn’t over with that meeting. As Russian law dictated, we were to leave her at Baby Home #95 and return to the USA to await review by a judge, but before we left, we had one more piece of business to see to. We were required to state our intentions for this child. Did we intend to adopt this child and make her ours. I had no hesitation when I signed that document.

In my heart, she was already mine.

Stiletto Momma