John and Lillie Schwarz' story

Mother's Days were the worst. Lillie Schwarz clenched her jaw when the church pastor asked the mothers in the congregation to stand. They rose and smiled, radiant in their flowing dresses.

"I wanted to be one of them,'' said Schwarz, of Sharpsburg, south of Atlanta.

"I wondered if God thought I wouldn't be a good parent.'' Laura Ide felt a similar twinge in the northern Atlanta suburb of Duluth.

"When you're in church, they ask who's been a mother for a week,'' Ide said.

"Then they ask who's been a mother for the longest time. Everyone got to stand up except for me.''

Ide and Schwarz, suburban women in their 30s, have never met, but they share a bond born of culture and statistics: To become a mom. They would walk to the ends of the earth to one day hold their own child, to soothe the wrenching of failed infertility treatments with their husbands. And they're far from alone.

Nearly 6.2 million U.S. women reported fertility problems in 1995 _ a 35 percent increase over 1982. Researchers say the rise coincides with the large number of baby boomers in their 30s trying to conceive children. One study projects that 6.4 million women will be infertile in 2005 and that the total will hit 7.7 million in 2025. The trend has created a $2 billion market for treating infertility. In 1999, more than 30,000 babies were born with the help of assisted reproductive technology. Neither the Schwarzes nor the Ides, however, had any such luck.

Three miscarriages convinced Schwarz that she and husband John weren't going to conceive their own children. Ide and husband Gary gave up after spending nearly $50,000 on fruitless infertility treatments. Both couples concluded that adoption had to be the answer if they were going to build families. Their decisions are part of a national trend. In a 1988 survey, 200,000 American women said they were considering adoption; in 1995 the figure was 500,000.

The adoption explosion has created an industry worth $1.4 billion in 2000. Since 1991, the Georgia Department of Human Resources has finalized 6,759 adoptions in the state not involving a relative or stepparent. Both the Ides and the Schwarzes rejected adopting from within the United States, where the demand for young children far outstrips the number available. It simply takes too long _ often two to five years _ to get an infant or toddler. And they feared the possibility that the birth mother would change her mind at the last minute. Another option remained. They would join the 18,000 Americans a year who adopt overseas, a number that has doubled in the past 10 years.

In Georgia, international adoptions have accounted for 15 percent of adoptions since 1991 that don't involve a relative or stepparent. Russia is the world's No. 1 source of adoptable white youngsters. Its downtrodden economy and state-supported orphanage system have created a siren call to American couples yearning for children.

The Ides and Schwarzes always knew their ultimate destination: parenthood. But as so often happens on uncharted journeys, the next turn to take becomes apparent only after you've gone the wrong way. When they first ventured onto the path to parenthood, neither Laura and Gary Ide nor Lillie and John Schwarz knew that they'd end up in Moscow and Siberia.

Throwing in the towel Lillie and John Schwarz had tried for 10 years to get pregnant. They started in New Port Richey, Fla., near Tampa, where Lillie was a corporate trainer for AmSouth Bank and John was a mechanic's helper for Delta Air Lines. After advice from her gynecologist, Schwarz started on a regimen familiar to many of the 9 million U.S. women who have sought infertility treatment: first progesterone, then Chlomid, a drug that stimulates the ovaries to produce more eggs.

Schwarz, 39, was ecstatic when she became pregnant for the first time. She told everyone she knew. Finally, she was going to be a mother. Less than two months later, the pregnancy, and the dream, ended in miscarriage. She and John kept the second pregnancy to themselves. That didn't submerge the hurt when she miscarried again. Her third pregnancy came with promise in 1997. John, then 27, had received a transfer to Atlanta to work as a Delta mechanic. He found a house south of the city. For Christmas, they drove in John's Chevrolet pickup truck to his parents' home in Worden, Ill., near St. Louis. They arrived Dec. 23. There just an hour, Lillie went to the bathroom and discovered that she had spotted. She was crushed. Again. Her third and final pregnancy had ended.

It was especially hard because neither Lillie's mother nor her sister had ever had problems having children. Lillie had nine nieces and nephews. She had started changing diapers when she was 9. Even as a child, she knew she was going to be a mother.

"It was just natural that this was something I was going to do one day,'' she said.

"It was very, very, very difficult _ especially when you see people who take it very lightly. Take children very lightly. Take the fact they were able to have children very lightly. Or you see people that abuse their children or abort their children.''

On her half-hour commute to the Bank of America branch that she managed, Schwarz's Nissan Maxima became her private crying room. The thought of a pregnant colleague made her cry. Having her period made her cry. Listening to the radio and hearing the song ``Butterfly Kisses,'' about how fast a little girl grows up, made her cry. It was time to throw in the crying towel. Even before she started seeing an Atlanta-area fertility expert in 1998, Schwarz had broached the topic of adoption with her husband. It took another year for the idea to take root. John didn't know whether he could love another person's biological child. But after they moved to metro Atlanta, the Schwarzes met a couple with young children, and John became attached to their friends' newborn son.

"I thought, if I can be crazy about this child, why could I not be crazy about another child?'' he said.

My dark days' Like Lillie Schwarz, Laura Ide consumed a diet of fertility drugs: Chlomid, Lupron, Profasi. Unlike Schwarz, she never became pregnant.

"Not even a thought,'' the 34-year-old said.

Ide, who worked part time in accounts receivable for a home materials company, tried for two years to get pregnant. Neither she nor Gary, a graphic artist for WAGA-TV, knew she was suffering from early menopause. Two years of no results led them to three years of infertility treatments. Laura calls that time ``my dark days.'' Every treatment started hopefully; every failure ended grimly. Sadness permeated her life like a cold rain. She ached when friends had children. She felt selfish. She cried in the shower. She would be unconsolable for days at a time. She would lie on the couch, not wanting to go to work. Armed with a new CD burner more than a year ago, Gary tried dulling her hurt by making a collection of '60s and '70s songs about families and children. She listened on her way home from work.

"Let the Sunshine In'' from an episode of  "The Flintstones'' lifted her with lyrics about smilers never losing, frowners never winning. She smiled at Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life.'' She reflected during Carole King's ode "Child of Mine'': Oh yes, sweet darling, So glad you are a child of mine. You don't need direction; You know which way to go. And I don't want to hold you back; I just want to watch you grow.

"In some ways,'' Laura said, "it helped me keep hope.'' As she found hope in song, she discovered solace in redecorating. More than a year ago, she cleaned out a bedroom that one day would be her nursery. The couple threw out the junk and replaced it with tiny furniture painted in primary colors. She painted the walls with Sundance Yellow from Benjamin Moore and trimmed them with molding from Home Depot. Wallpaper border with teddy bears wearing sleeping caps traces its way across the midsection of all four walls. Three stuffed bears sit on a white corner shelf. Over the double bed in a bright red frame hangs a picture of cars and other toys.

A legend underscores the scene: "The best journeys are taken with imagination.''

"Doing that room was my therapy,'' Ide said. But there was no papering over Christmas 2000. For the second time, the Ides underwent a procedure using eggs from a donor implanted with Gary's sperm. The $10,000 question (the price for each try): Was she or wasn't she? Blood was drawn 14 days after the embryo was implanted. Just before Christmas, they found out. No pregnancy. Even before their last in-vitro fertilization, the Ides had considered overseas adoption. After Christmas, they visited family members in Florida and talked about what to do next. Then the die was cast. They were going to Russia. A well-worn path Across the country, couples such as the Ides and Schwarzes turn to Russian adoptions for speed and selection.

The time between completing a first application and finalizing an adoption can be less than a year _ warp speed as bureaucracies go. After research on the Internet, the Ides and Schwarzes settled on Genesis Adoptions, a nonprofit agency based in Alpharetta, Ga. For $20,000 to $25,000 per child, the company promised to handle everything: lawyers, immigration papers, applications, drivers and interpreters. It specializes in Russian adoptions. Not all the children in Russia's orphanages are true orphans.

The bleak economy forces many parents, especially single mothers, to abandon their children. Nearly two of every three Russians lives below the poverty line. Unemployment is nearly 12 percent, almost double the U.S. rate. A few Russian children get adopted by Russian families, but many leave with Americans. Flights from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to Moscow are often crowded with couples like the Ides and Schwarzes.

It's a well-trodden path. Prospective parents land in Moscow, get driven to their hotel, meet their adoption agents and rest for their trip to the orphanage or flight to Siberia. Once there, they bond with children they've previously seen in videos, convince a Russian judge they're up to the job of parenting, then apply for passports at the U.S. Embassy. Russia imposes a 10-day waiting period on foreigners waiting to leave the country with adopted children. Judges waive the wait if they're convinced it's in the child's best interest to leave sooner.

Either way, the countdown has begun. The due date has passed. There's no water to break, no waiting rooms to pace. The child is here. Roll the video The two critical tools in selecting a child from Russia are a television and a video player. The first look that a would-be parent has at a potential son or daughter is on a videotape about 10 minutes long.

Starting in June, the Schwarzes went through three tapes before seeing 20-month-old Alexander, a brown-haired boy with bangs and a round face. On the video, he skipped over short broomsticks. He put them back into a cabinet when asked. He placed rings over other sticks. His hair was dark, just like John's. He was walking. He was adorable. He was the one.

On the Fourth of July, Lillie and John flew to visit John's family, taking all four videos with them. Everyone zeroed in on Alexander.

"There was just that connection right off the bat with him because he was so animated,'' Lillie said.

"We knew that he could hear; we knew that he could talk; we knew that he could do what they were telling him.'' Now they were getting close. They sent the tape to a Genesis-recommended doctor in Minneapolis for review. Go get him, the physician said.

About the same time, Laura and Gary Ide were going through their videos _ nearly 20 in all. In May, a 2-year-old girl piqued their interest. They sent the videotape to a doctor in Boston recommended by the adoption agency and requested follow-up blood work from Russia. The doctor gently advised them to keep looking, because the child might be suffering from hepatitis B, a serious liver infection. That advisory eased Gary's concern that the doctors might be shills for Genesis Adoptions.

Like every parent, they wanted a healthy child. Horror stories abounded. Some couples returned from Eastern Europe only to watch their children develop costly health problems. But if they exercised due diligence, the Ides and the Schwarzes decided they could live with whatever consequences came with their children.

"You get that with your own (birth) kids,'' Ide said.

"You don't know if you're going to step outside and get hit by a meteor. There's no way to keep something from happening.''

Finally, in July, the Ides found themselves awestruck by two unrelated children they saw on tape: 2-year-old Alex and 2-month-old Valleri. This might be their family. Laura saw the video of Alex first. Gary was still at work, so Laura called Gary's mother, Barbara, in upstate New York.

"She said she was shaking like a leaf she was so excited,'' Barbara Ide recalls.

The new families were beginning to take shape. Neither Laura nor Lillie was pregnant, but they were expectant. Now they waited. For December in Russia. `Coming back with a child' Atlanta's recent New Year's snowstorm had nothing on winter in Moscow _ or Tobolsk or Tomsk, the Siberian cities the Schwarzes and Ides, respectively, would visit.

It's common in December for the Moscow temperature to top out at 15 degrees Fahrenheit. In Tomsk, the midday sun hangs low in the gray sky, and jagged peaks of snow encrust the landscape like white icing at the edges of a wedding cake. In Tobolsk, the Irtysh River is a frozen mantle. But despite the cold, warm anticipation flowed. At an orphanage in Moscow, their first stop in Russia, Laura and Gary nervously waited. About 5,400 miles from home, they recognized exactly where they were. They stood in the music room _ the same one they had seen over and over on their video for six months. The real music started when orphanage officials brought Alex in.

"You're going to meet Mama and Papa,'' they told him.

He looked smaller than in the video. But there he was, with light-brown hair and green eyes like those of his new mother. Six years of heartache dissolved like sugar in a pitcher of hot tea. For a change, happy tears flowed.

"We had tried for six years to have a child on our own,'' Laura said.

"We thought of nothing other than being parents.''

Unable to waive the 10-day waiting period for Alex, the couple flew to Tomsk to meet Valleri, their daughter to be. The building was old and reminded Laura of the place where Vito Corleone was hospitalized in "The Godfather.'' The walls were dingy gray; the halls smelled of disinfectant. None of that could dull the sparkle that was Valleri, her green eyes twinkling the color of mint. She lay in her crib ``like she was expecting us,'' Gary said. It was then that the emotion of being a father hit Gary, an only child.

"When I saw her for the first time, she was more beautiful than she was on the tape,'' he said. He convinced the judge that leaving immediately would be best for Valleri. The moment of truth After spending a night in Moscow, John and Lillie Schwarz flew to Tyumen, in southern Siberia, and from there were driven three hours to Tobolsk, where they would meet their Alexander. Their $20,000 fee included, among other things, a driver and interpreter.

At the orphanage, they met up with an American couple from outside Washington, D.C., who were using the same agency to adopt a boy. The two couples had talked months before. Together they went to the orphanage, a three-story institutional building of grayish stucco and brick. They were introduced to the orphanage director, then to its two pediatricians. They gathered in a big common room. Four throw rugs covered the wooden floor. A brown upright piano was pushed against one wall. The other couple's little boy, Nicholas, was brought in first. He and Alexander were playmates. Lillie started crying.

"Reality hit me,'' she said.

"All of a sudden, they're bringing in these little boys that are going to be ours.''

Less than a minute passed. A female caretaker brought Alexander into the room, dressed in girl's pants and a shirt. He had a cold. He had had two baths that week. She pointed out Lillie and John to him.

"There's Mama and Papa.''

"When we saw him in person, we knew that it was real,'' Lillie said.

The Schwarzes visited with Alexander for three days; then it was on to court to seal the deal. Through the guts of an antiquated building, they climbed five flights of stairs. In the cramped courtroom, they sat on a narrow bench. Their interpreter picked from six or seven mismatched chairs, trying to find one that didn't shake or squeak. A small holding cell with iron bars was fixed to one wall, looking something like the lockup in "`Gunsmoke.''

Nearly 25 minutes late, the judge walked in _ not the stately, wizened official in flowing black robe whom John had expected. Her honor was a bleached-blond 30ish woman with black go-go boots that extended above her knees. She sat behind a cheap pressed-wood table. Why are you here? What kind of parents will you be? the judge asked in laid-back fashion. It was less intimidating than John had imagined. He even argued successfully to waive the 10-day waiting period; Alexander had a cold and should leave as soon as possible, he said. All of it was so much smoother than the infertility treatments, so much less wrenching than the miscarriages. John had come over with his wife. He had no doubt he was leaving with a family.

"You're going over there,'' John said, "with pretty much the mind-set that you're coming back with a child.''

Mission accomplished. The Ides and the Schwarzes were parents. "He was our present"

This was not like Christmases past. Exhilaration replaced sorrow. Noise supplanted silence. Neatness was gone forever. In Sharpsburg, Alexander Schwarz drags around a stuffed animal with antlers that twangs, "Grandma got run over by a reindeer.'' He unscrews three snowman light covers from their bases and turns one of them into a hand puppet. He discovers that Scotch tape is marvelous to unfurl in long strips until the roll is empty.

John Schwarz gave up his long Christmas wish list, Lillie said as she sat in Alexander's bedroom, where her son had emptied his closet of Legos and Sesame Street characters onto the floor. ``We didn't want many presents. He was our present.'' In Duluth, Valleri Ide jumps in a baby-bouncer attached to the door frame as ``A Hard Day's Night'' rocks out of the speakers. Alex Ide presses the button on a new toy and makes it play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.'' He unscrews the nesting dolls his mother bought for him in Tomsk. He revels in brushing his teeth _ which, for now, is more recreation than good dental hygiene. The darkness has lifted. Laura is radiant in motherhood.

"The anxiety is gone,'' she said.

"You just feel at peace now.''

Marlon Manuel writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
You may contact him at mmanuel(at)ajc.com
Story Filed By Cox Newspapers