Baby adoptions bring new life across an ocean

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Author: LAUREL WALKER; Journal Sentinel staff

Dateline: Kokshetau, Kazakstan

In the ill-equipped maternity hospital here, four healthy looking babies lay quietly on their backs in small cribs strung with colorful toys.

Abandoned.

Their mothers -- perhaps young and unmarried, almost certainly without financial means as their country, independent since 1991, struggles economically in these post-Soviet years -- will not raise them.

The infants soon will be moved to a government-operated baby house, with about 50 others. If not claimed by age 3, they will be moved to a city orphanage where they very well could spend their entire childhood.

Lyudmila Kim, chief doctor at the hospital, hopes for better. Maybe, she says through a translator, they will join Kokshetau babies now in America, like the happy-faced tykes pictured in a stack of scrapbooks on her table. Last year, 51 babies were abandoned after birth at this 270-bed hospital, and 26 were adopted by foreigners, mostly Americans.

Increasingly, Americans are turning to foreign countries, and particularly to the former Soviet Union as a source for adoptions.

Kazakstan, bordering China and Russia and the largest but least densely populated of former Soviet republics, so far has been a small source of international adoptions -- 54 in 1998. Russia, with so many more baby houses and orphanages, has for two years now supplied more infants for American adoptions than any other country.

Of the 15,774 U.S. visas issued to foreign orphans last year, 28% -- or 4,491 -- were for Russian children adopted here. Five years ago, Russian orphans accounted for just 746 of the 7,377 international adoptions by Americans.

For now, the U.S. State Department has discouraged Kazakstani adoptions by Americans while that country gets its regulations in order. However, some are proceeding anyway.

Cindy and Ed Harding of Atlanta were the fourth American couple to travel to Kokshetau, a Sister City of Waukesha, when in October 1997 they brought home two babies -- Robert, 3 months, and Juliana, 1 month. Kokshetau city officials who are promoting adoptions personally authorized the Hardings' adoptions. And six months later, Deputy Mayor Galym Bekmagambetov traveled to the Hardings' home to check on the children's progress.

He was pleased. Like the physician Kim, he encourages foreign adoptions if the Kazakstani babies are not adopted locally. However, regional judges and not the mayor now approve adoptions.

heads the Kazakstan program of

of Florida and helps others seeking Kazakstani adoptions. She personally advocates those adoptions over Russian adoptions because she believes the institutional conditions for babies in Kazakstan are better than in Russia, with more staff per child and more activities. In addition, she said, younger babies are available to parents.

"There is no waiting list at this time, so adoptive parents travel as soon as they are paper ready," Harding said, referring to the completion of all paperwork.

From start to final adoption is a three- to four-month process, she said, and the cost can be about $25,000, including travel. New requirements include a four-week stay in the country: visiting the child for two weeks, getting a local court date, waiting 10 days for a decision and another week to get visas for the baby.

Adoptions from Russia are far more common. When the Hardings brought their Kazakstani children home, they were aboard a "baby flight" out of Moscow on which 10 other American couples were bringing Russian children home.

Carla and Ed Schoenenberger of the Town of Delafield made such a flight in October 1998. A puppy-eyed, fine-boned brunet of a boy they call Quinn Alec was their reward.

He was 7 1/2 months old at the time and adopted after a seven-month, $26,000 process from an orphanage in Ekaterinburg, which the Schoenenbergers termed a "very gloomy city" near the Ural Mountains.

They and four other families were introduced to their babies, one by one, in a brightly colored "music room" where toys seemed almost untouched. It was probably the brightest spot in the orphanage of 100 babies, with a caregiver ratio of about 1-to-20 or more. There were two or three other such orphanages in the city of about 1.5 million people, Carla Schoenenberger said.

As she watched a videotape of their first meeting with their new son, Carla became tearful.

"I still cry when I see this," she said.

Quinn, though small for his age, was immediately responsive. From the patch of scalp worn bare on his hair, the Schoenenbergers figured he'd probably spent a good deal of time on his back in the crib. Another family was allowed to see another room where three children were together in one bed, the Schoenenbergers said.

Yet the Russian caregiver was emotional at the meeting of Quinn and his new parents, and they believe the children are generally well-cared for despite limited resources. Medical records for Quinn were reviewed in advance by American physicians, and a medical briefing was given at the orphanage, where the Schoenenbergers could have refused the adoption.

Today, Quinn seems a well-adjusted, healthy little boy swimming in love from his parents and new siblings, 10-year-old Megan and 12-year-old Ryan, the Schoenenbergers' biological children.

The couple were anxious to share their experience because it went so well, thanks in large part to a support group called Families of Russian and Ukrainian Adoption and help from the adoption agencies they used.

Still, the process of foreign adoption can be confusing, complicated, even frightening.

Reams of official paperwork must be completed. Traveling to a foreign country where you do not speak the language, carrying a pouch of thousands of dollars in cash on your person for the transaction and being dependent entirely on a foreign coordinator whom you do not know but must trust is unnerving.

Carla Schoenenberger said their Russian coordinator, a man named Yuri, met them and said, " `I'll take your passport, your visa and your money.' " The Moscow airport was intimidating, and customs agents were unsmiling and seemed suspicious.

At the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where visas are issued for the orphans, "there was just a sea of kids," Ed Schoenenberger remembers. It took them all day to clear that hurdle.

But when the long flight home and the trip to their Town of Delafield home was finished, the Schoenenbergers had what they'd come for.

A new son, and one less abandoned baby in the world.

------------ Laurel Walker, a columnist for the Journal Sentinel's Waukesha County Bureau, recently returned from Russia and Kazakstan with a group that visited Waukesha's Sister City of Kokshetau.

Caption:

Chart

Journal Sentinel, U.S. State Department, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service

Coming home

Adoptions of Russian children by Americans, unheard of in 1990, now surpass those from any other foreign country.

Immigrant visa issued to orphans coming to the U.S.

Top countries of origin - 1990 Top countries of origin - 1998

South Korea 2,620 Russia 4,491

Columbia 631 China 4,206

Peru 440 South Korea 1,829

Philippines 421 Guatemala 911

India 348 Vietnam 603

World total 7,093 World total 15,774

International Concerns for Children can provide information on international adoptions and refer couple to agencies experienced in them, by country.

The agency's web site www.portnet.org/lCC

The U.S. Department of State's Office of Children's issues and the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse maintain Internet sites to provide information and resources.

The U.S. Department of State's Office of Children's Issues Web site: travel.state.gov/ officeofchildrenissues.html

The National Adoption Information Clearinghouse Web site: www.calib.com/naic/

The Families of Russian and Ukranian Adoption Web site: www.frua.org

Photo color

Cindy Harding of Atlanta, Ga., holds Robert while Jim Harding holds Juliana in this 1997 photo taken in Kokshetau, Kazahkstan, when they adopted the babies. With them are Natalia Ishiplakova (left), children's director at the maternity hospital in Kokshetau, and Lyudmila Kim, chief doctor.