Welcome to my Gift of Adoption Giving Circle!
August is the 10th anniversary of the referral call giving me news of my adopted daughter, Emmerson. The photograph on this page is the first one I ever saw of my daughter and I fell in love with her immediately. In honor of this milestone, I am working with a public charity, Gift of Adoption Fund, and reaching out to friends, family, and all those who I know are somehow touched by the life of an adopted child, to help another family bring a waiting child home.
It is with a sense of deep gratitude for my daughter and for the family, friends and resources that allowed me emotionally and financially to make the decision to adopt her, I am making the commitment to do what it takes to bring another waiting child home.
I am inviting you to join me in this pledge.
By reaching out to all of you, if each of us gives a minimum gift of $20, the goal of saving one child can and will be real. Our collective $3,600 gift to the Gift of Adoption Fund will make this possible.
The family we will be helping has been qualified by a licensed social service agency, has an average total household income of $43,000 and has already garnered a significant amount of the monies required to complete the adoption (the average cost for an adoption exceeds $20,000).
And, the family has already received the referral call. They have a referred child and know every detail that could possibly be known about this child that waits for them. They have a photo that sustains them. They have everything in place to bring their child home, except for the last bit of financial resources required to do so.
With our $3,600 grant, we can help them bring their child home.
With hope and in gratitude,
Kris
Our Story
I’m often asked if I wasn’t scared when I left for Kazahkstan to get my daughter. In looking back, I can understand why they might ask, but quite frankly I was never afraid. I was on a mission. I was doing what any parent would do. I was doing whatever I needed to do to get my daughter home.
I always knew that I wanted to be a parent. I assumed that I would follow the traditional path…college, job, husband, house and kids. When Mr. Right didn’t show up, my desire to be a parent didn’t end. I still knew I was meant to be a parent, and almost 10 years later I have no doubt that this little girl I call LuLuBelle was always meant to be mine.
I began the adoption process in June with he completion of my home study. I started working with the facilitator for the Guatemala program. All my documentation was in process and I was on my way when I received the phone call that changed everything. As is common in international adoption, countries change their rules on international adoption often and the country of Guatemala was “in flux” and the program was closed for now. But as that door closed, the other opened.
The facilitator for Guatemala had talked to the facilitators for Kazahkstan and there was a baby in Kokchetau, Kazahstan that needed a parent. Not only did she need a parent, but needed a parent quickly because in this region of Kazahkstan if you didn’t get the baby from the maternity hospital before they were 5-months old they were not eligible for international adoption and would be raised in an orphanage.
That same day I was e-mailed a picture of a newborn along with her medical report. This was my daughter, no question. This little red-faced girl with a ton of dark hair and a large strawberry on her chin, no matter what, was my daughter. I got on the phone. I talked to my family. I talked to my work. And then I talked to the adoption facilitators and told them I would do whatever it took to get my child home.
On November 5th, after several chaotic weeks of getting the paperwork through all the correct channels and with a moneybelt strapped to my waist, I left from Chicago. My first stop was New York, and then Moscow where I was picked up by the contacts there. I slept for several hours in an apartment in Moscow until they took me back to the airport for my flight to Almaty. The local facililitators in Almaty, two sisters, picked me up at the airport and drove me to the apartment I would be living in for the next 4 weeks. Almaty was more urban than I realized it would be, but very much a former Soviet nation as the apartment was very much like you would see in movies about Russia.
For the next two days I slept and got familiar with my surroundings. On Monday, November 8th, the sisters picked me up and we went to the airport to catch a flight to Kokshetau. The airplane was something like you would see in an old WWII movie, definitely no bells and whistles, but then I really didn’t need any. I just wanted to get to my daughter.
It was late in Kokshetau when we finally got there. I truly don’t remember why it was so late, but I know that it was dark when we got there and all I really remember were these large pipes that wound themselves around the city. The Maternity Hospital was old and dark. The doctor and several nurses met us when we got there and we wound our way up some stairs to a room with about 6 clear baby “baskets”. There were three babies, two boys and a girl. Two lay swaddled in blankets in their baskets. The third, my daughter, had been dressed in a onsie with little red and green crocheted booties. I expected her to be tiny, but she was 3-1/2 months and had grown. The doctors and nurses had taken good care of her.
They handed her to me, and while a bit surreal it felt absolutely perfect. She smiled at them as they talked to her in Russian. With her chubby little cheeks, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
I had to leave her for the night. The sisters and I went to a local motel. It wasn’t the typical hotel we would find here, but it had a bed and I did the best I could to sleep. The next morning we returned to the hospital with the clothes that I had brought for her that included the hat that I was told I especially needed as the Kazaks were never without a hat. I diapered and dressed her, wrapped her up in her blanket and we headed back to the airport for our plane back to Almaty.
We lived in our apartment, she and I alone, for the next two weeks. We slept, we ate, we watched British television, we strolled the sidewalks a bit, and we just hung out and got to know each other. For those two weeks we waited to go back to Kokshetau for our hearing where the judge would officially make her mine. The day we went back to Kokshetau, Astana stop and then train overnight to Kokshetau…I left my new baby girl with babysitters that the sisters had set up, and went back to the airport with a couple who had just arrived in Almaty to go get the little boy I had met on my last trip.
When we got to the maternity hospital, I got to watch as they met their son for the first time. We ate lunch, soup as I recall, at the maternity hospital and I help one of the other newborns…so tiny, while we waited to go to the courthouse. The judge was a woman, dressed in a very regal robe and hat, and I stood in front of her with one of The Sisters, as she spoke in Russian. I don’t remember what questions she even asked although there weren’t many. When she was done speaking, the Sister walked me back out in the hallway and told me that all was approved. I started crying. It was the only time I stopped my “mission” to just enjoy the moment.
The couple, the sister, and I went out to eat that night and we all did a shot of vodka to celebrate. To this day, every November 22nd, we do a shot of vodka to celebrate Adoption Day.
We went back to the airport, the couple and their baby, the sister and I to get back to Almaty. But as happens in Kazahkstan, the airport didn’t have any fuel and we couldn’t get an airplane. The train was the only other option; a train right out of an old movie with no heat and rural Kazahk people and it seemed as if we were living decades ago.
While all of the paperwork was processed, the documents translated into English and her Kazahk passport completed we lived in our apartment for nine more days. It was more nerve-wracking than the rest of the time because all I wanted to do was get home, but I needed the word that it was okay to go.
We flew back through Moscow as we needed to go to the American Embassy to get the paperwork that would allow us back in the States. The room was full of families who had adopted in the region trying to get their paperwork. We were very close. I got my packet of papers and headed for an overnight in a Moscow hotel, a much improved setting than the hotel in Kokchetau but still just a stop on the way home.
We got to the airport the next morning, all our bags packed with our papers in hand. Somehow you feel like they’re not going to let you through and on the plane, but they did. The flight we were on was nicknamed the ‘baby flight” as there were lots of families going back to the states with their new children. I got lucky. The plane was full, but I got a seat near the restroom in the back with an empty seat beside me so I didn’t have to spend the full 10-hour flight with a baby on my lap. I also had a very nice woman sitting across from me who would hold her while I had to visit the facilities. She slept most of the way back and we landed in New York.
We survived the trip back through customs and I started to truly believe that no one was going to take her away from me. We boarded a plan back to Chicago where I knew my parents and sister would be waiting. I changed her into a cute new outfit so she would be all ready to meet her new family. She spit up as we had to buckle up for landing. And if I hadn’t mentioned it, I had gotten a horrible cold in the previous few days, so when we landed neither of us looked or smelled to great.
But it didn’t matter. We were home, happy, and ready to start our lives.