the waiting continues
We received a photo of our baby in mid January, but because of new laws in Russia requiring orphans to stay on an adoption registry for 8 months instead of the previous 5 months in order to make the children available to other Russians for adoption, we will not be meeting Sonia ( our baby) until mid May at the earliest - And that's if she isn't already adopted by a Russian Family. The irony is that Russians do not adopt because of poverty as well as social stigma against adoption. If they do adopt, they would adopt newborns.
President Putin changed the law in order to give the appearance of encouraging in-country adoption. It is embarassing for a country when they can't take care of their own children. So in effect, the law is an attempt to save face. The unfortunate consequences is that children are lanquishing in orphanages for longer and longer. It is obvious that the Russian government doesn't care too much about it's children.
We will not take Sonia home until our second trip to Russia which will be 4-8 weeks after our first trip. So she may not be in the USA until the summer ( August?). So it's a long waiting game. I feel frustrated and angered by these delays - If I had known any of this before, I would not have chosen to adopt from Russia. We were given the impression that Russia was one of the easier countries to adopt from, but that is proving to be a fallacy.
The other thing is that we have received little to no medical information. We know that she was born in a hospital and in all likelihood, many blood tests were performed, but they have given us only one diagnosis -"perinatal encephalopathy". this is a diagnosis given to almost 95% of the orphanage population which frequency makes the diagnosis meaningless.
According to Eric Downing, MD in his paper " Russian Adoption Medical Report Interpretation", "While the diagnosis itself sounds alarming to both medical and non-medical individuals, it does not fit a precise western diagnostic category. Western physicians can easily imagine what it might mean, bt they do not know, and without further information the diagnosis will be difficult for them to deal with. Perinatal encephalopathy does not correspond to the western diagnosis of cerebral palsy...encephalopathy might also be diagnosed on the basis of a number of physical findings - such as quivering of the chin and fingers when a child is crying or irritability..." So the diagnosis is fairly meaningless and difficult to translate into an American medical diagnosis.
So we wait for mor useful medical information such as head circumference and length of body so we can trace whether the baby is growing normally. These are the kind of things that will help us. The photograph, although cute, is hard to read medically. So they will either provide us with another photo or we will have to take the photos ourselves when we go to russia and email them back to the "orphan doctor", Dr. Jane Aronson.
So our wait continues. We entertain ourselves by fixing up Sonia's room, buying her toys and preparing for our trip. It's strange knowing that one's life is about to change, but waiting for that to happen.
President Putin changed the law in order to give the appearance of encouraging in-country adoption. It is embarassing for a country when they can't take care of their own children. So in effect, the law is an attempt to save face. The unfortunate consequences is that children are lanquishing in orphanages for longer and longer. It is obvious that the Russian government doesn't care too much about it's children.
We will not take Sonia home until our second trip to Russia which will be 4-8 weeks after our first trip. So she may not be in the USA until the summer ( August?). So it's a long waiting game. I feel frustrated and angered by these delays - If I had known any of this before, I would not have chosen to adopt from Russia. We were given the impression that Russia was one of the easier countries to adopt from, but that is proving to be a fallacy.
The other thing is that we have received little to no medical information. We know that she was born in a hospital and in all likelihood, many blood tests were performed, but they have given us only one diagnosis -"perinatal encephalopathy". this is a diagnosis given to almost 95% of the orphanage population which frequency makes the diagnosis meaningless.
According to Eric Downing, MD in his paper " Russian Adoption Medical Report Interpretation", "While the diagnosis itself sounds alarming to both medical and non-medical individuals, it does not fit a precise western diagnostic category. Western physicians can easily imagine what it might mean, bt they do not know, and without further information the diagnosis will be difficult for them to deal with. Perinatal encephalopathy does not correspond to the western diagnosis of cerebral palsy...encephalopathy might also be diagnosed on the basis of a number of physical findings - such as quivering of the chin and fingers when a child is crying or irritability..." So the diagnosis is fairly meaningless and difficult to translate into an American medical diagnosis.
So we wait for mor useful medical information such as head circumference and length of body so we can trace whether the baby is growing normally. These are the kind of things that will help us. The photograph, although cute, is hard to read medically. So they will either provide us with another photo or we will have to take the photos ourselves when we go to russia and email them back to the "orphan doctor", Dr. Jane Aronson.
So our wait continues. We entertain ourselves by fixing up Sonia's room, buying her toys and preparing for our trip. It's strange knowing that one's life is about to change, but waiting for that to happen.
posted by mamainwaiting at 7:31 AM
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