Baby home #1

It is 9:51 local time in Novokuznetsk, Siberia and as I review the day’s events, it is difficult to know where to begin. We arrived here on a flight from Moscow that departed late in the previous night. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the flight or of the early dawn travel, but hopefully my description will suffice for an imaginative reader.

We flew out of Moscow at 10:05 PM on Wednesday the 14th. We had the privilege of meeting two other couples who were adopting and were flying on the same flight as we were. This made for instant camaraderie amongst the only English speaking people on the plane.

Boarding the plane was in itself an adventure. Rather than the usual boarding ramp leading from the gate directly to the aircraft, we were loaded onto a bus resembling a subway car in its layout. We were driven into the cold night across a snow covered airfield, past rows of aircraft and baggage trains until we arrived at our plane. It was a large plane with three rows on each side of a center aisle. We walked through the hard-packed snow from the bus to the boarding stairs and were seated. The flight was four hours long and spanned four time zones in the easterly direction so our scheduled arrival in Novokuznetsk at 6:00 AM meant that another night’s sleep would be lost in travel. A very surprising thing occurred that thwarted even that meager amount of potential sleep. To our surprise, the Siberian Airways crew had a never ending supply of food and drink. I guess trading sleep for free calories seemed like a good idea at the time. The Russian speaking flight attendant that served up the main course made a heroic attempt to communicate to us the menu choices. They were, “fish”, “meat”, or “chicken”. Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

Upon landing in Novokuznetsk, we were faced with another trudge across the Siberian tundra, only this time it was in -30F temperatures in the pre-dawn darkness. This time, instead of a bus to take us to the terminal, we were greeted with a tractor drawn people trailer. I am certain that I have never felt more like livestock that at that moment. The terminal was a very humble structure but had generous amounts of the most valuable commodity in Siberia, heat. The baggage claim area was a different story altogether. The baggage was brought from the plane to an unheated building adjacent to the terminal. In order to claim one’s baggage, we needed to stand in line outside of this building and upon entering, find our luggage spread out on the floor of the building. An attendant at the door ensures that each bag taken out of the building is accompanied with a proper claim ticket.

After a short wait (our flight arrived early), the Gift of Life translator arrived with two vehicles for our trip to the Siberia Hotel. The drive to the hotel had a surreal feel that I will certainly not be able to adequately describe. It was not like anything I have ever experienced. The road to the hotel is a 20-30 KM stretch that could not have been more cold and barren feeling if it had been on the moon; yes barren, but not lonely. Our driver, in his haste to prove that he was a Russian (see yesterday’s post), passed all sorts of vehicles along the way, all billowing out huge clouds of exhaust steam into the artic air. Just when I thought there was nothing but ice and steam, out of the still dark night began to appear pedestrians; all heading in the same direction, walking on the edge of the road and each carrying a large handbag. Our driver told us that they were mine workers who work the many mines in the area. I promised myself that I would never complain about my commute again.

We arrived at the hotel, showered, and tried to rest for a short while before meeting for breakfast at 9:00. This picture was taken from our hotel room window just after dawn.

Breakfast was an unexpected treat in both its content and presentation. We met Olga, our translator and prepared to travel to Baby Home #1 after breakfast. Driving to the baby home, there was a sense of a certain inevitability that was drawing near. We were being driven, literally, to a point in time where our lives would be changed forever. It was planned that we would meet our little girl as soon as we arrived at the orphanage at 10:00 AM.

The baby home was very ordinary on the outside, but extraordinary in its very clean, well maintained and well decorated interior. Immediately upon entering, you are greeted with a small bench were you are to remove your shoes. I’m glad Holly packed slippers.

We then were taken to the director’s office where we were invited to leave our coats and bags in order to prepare for our first meeting with our baby girl. We were also asked to wash our hands.

Baby Home Art

And finally, after so many months, we saw her. She was carried in to us by one of the workers. We approached her cautiously in order not scare her, but it didn’t work. Her first reaction was to turn away and cry. Undoubtedly accustomed to this situation, the worker quickly placed her on the floor and began helping her play with some toys that had been prepared. The meeting room is a very nicely decorated but small room with many toys, pieces of children’s furniture, and even a couple of small birds in cages. It was a very comfortable and well equipped room well suited to its purpose. Once our baby was settled in with some toys, we began again to play with her slowly and cautiously so as to not frighten her. She very quickly became accepting of us as her playmates. The first real eye-to-eye connection that I personally made with her was through playing with a stacking tower toy. The pieces, each graduated in size and brightly colored, have a hole in the center for stacking on the tower. I took one of these pieces and brought it to my eye so as to playfully look at her through it’s center. Then I brought it from my eye to hers all the while keeping our eyes in line through the center of the piece. She really enjoyed this and we did it several times. It was great because I could tell that she was not so much looking at the toy piece but actually fixing her gaze on my eye as I was on hers. After some time of playing with the toys on the floor, we brought out a plastic wire-mesh ball to play with. I taught her that she could give it to me and that I would roll it back to her. She really enjoyed this and learned to throw it back to me. We played this game of catch for a little while. We carried her, she loves being rocked, she is very curious about everything in the room, she likes playing with daddy‘s beard, she likes blowing kisses to Meme, she is beautiful.

After this play time, we were told that we could meet with the orphanage doctor. She, through our translator, gave us a briefing on all the information they had on the baby’s history in terms various events in her life as well as her medicals. We were then allowed to ask any questions we had. Holly had prepared two pages of questions but had to ask very few of them because many had already been answered by the doctor’s briefing.

That was it, our first visit was over. We were to come back in the afternoon at 4:00 for another visit. At this point, we really felt as though all doubt and fear had been erased from our minds. That doubts we had were quite honestly due to a combination of our inexperience, our mistrust of the system, and the inherent uncertainty of such a process. The inexperience and uncertainty were real, but in our case, the mistrust was unwarranted. I believe that all the parties involved in this process from the orphanage to all the various agents of the adoption agency acted in good faith and were completely trustworthy. We are so happy with how things have turned out.