Adopting Alex

f you asked most parents to describe their experience of an international adoption, they’d probably respond with words like, “it was…complicated, convoluted, bureaucratic, frustrating…tedious.”

I’m probably not typical.

I would describe my experience of an international adoption from India as an adventure…an exotic foray into an ancient Asian culture.

Our story begins in ways similar to most couples that choose to adopt. We were infertile. After nine miscarriages, we made the decision to adopt a child from the country of my husband’s birth. My husband, George, is from Bangalore, in the southern part of India. Adoption from India seemed a natural choice to build our cross-cultural family. Unfortunately, adoption is a foreign concept in the Indian community and my 72-year-old mother-in-law was slow to offer encouragement.

Despite these sentiments, we forged ahead. By May of 1997, we began the long process of international adoption with Wide Horizons for Children, a 22-year-old adoption agency in Waltham, MA. Our caseworker, Homai Schmidt, was an Indian woman from New Delhi. Homai would coordinate the process of international adoption between an American couple, the orphanage in Pune, in the west of India, the Indian government and the INS.

Homai encouraged us to initiate adoption under The Hindu Adoption Act. The Hindu Adoption Act assisted non-resident Indians who lived outside the country in completing the adoption of an Indian baby. My husband was a non-resident Indian who was living in the U.S. and had recently acquired his green card. The time was ripe for an international adoption.

After the beginning, the process was very similar to most other international adoptions. We wrote our autobiographies, endured a lengthy home study complete with home inspections and family histories. We underwent thorough physical exams including an AIDS test and of course, we were fingerprinted by the FBI.

But that’s not what made an impression of me…my fingers, maybe, but not my heart.

George and I made the decision to travel to India and escort our child home. It was this journey that changed my life. After 9 months of endless paperwork, drafting affidavits of financial solvency and adequate health insurance, we received a referral for a 4 month-old baby boy named Amod. Amod is a Hindi name meaning precious.

Three months later, on May 11, 1999, we arrive in Pune, in the west of India near Bombay. We hail down an auto rickshaw, or three-wheeled motorized taxi, in the heart of this dusty city. Our auto rickshaw speeds down unpaved roads and swerves around sitting cows at the heart of every intersection. We dodged veiled women and servant girls wrapped in threadbare saris balancing bamboo baskets on their heads.

We arrive at SAFOOSH, the hospital and orphanage where our Amod was born three months earlier. Jyothi Rungi, Amod’s Hindu caseworker, meets us at the hospital entrance. Wrapped in a colorful silk sari and adorned with a red bindi on her forehead, Joythi escorts us to her office. We pour over Amod’s medical records in this tiny cement-walled office, painted a dull hospital green and poorly lit by blinking fluorescents. I hear a little cry and look up to see a thin, dark-faced nurse holding Amod at the door.

As my eyes settle on baby Amod for the first time, I experience an unexpected jolt of…panic! A series of disjointed thoughts swim through my head. He looks so frail…is he healthy? Why is his hair matted down on his head? Why is he so tiny? Why is he dressed in shorts that are too big for him? Why isn’t he smiling…doesn’t he like me?

After frantic conversations with the social worker and nurse, I am reassured that Amod is a normal and healthy baby boy who will just need time to settle into a comfortable routine with his new Mom and Dad.

In a whirlwind of papers and forms, Amod’s social worker takes us on a brief tour of the orphanage. We enter a long, tiled room with 50 cribs lined up on each side. A cluster of tiny nurses in white saris flutter between cribs changing and feeding the babies. This was where Amod had spent the first seven months of his life. Now, he’d be coming home with us!

We return to the office to learn about Amod’s birth parents. We see a picture of Amod’s birth mother with her parents. As a 17 year old girl attending university, Amod’s birth mother had become unexpectedly pregnant. She chose to put her baby up for adoption. At the age of 19, and with our permission, Amod will be able to see her picture.

Jyothi walks us thru a Hindu farewell ceremony. Spreading red henna along my parting hairline, she leads me, George and Amod in a circle for the blessing. As I soothe Amod, we’re packed into an auto richshaw at the hospital entrance and sent home to George’s cousin in Pune.

That first night with the baby was unsettling for us all. Amod cries constantly and refuses to be consoled. He has an ear infection and is running a low-grade fever. Infectious conditions were common in Indian orphanages, but completely treatable.

Early the next morning, we took a flight to Bangalore, in the south of India to meet with George’s mother, brothers, nieces and nephews. In a flurry of flowing silk saris, curried India meats and Darjeeling teas, baby Amod was embraced by loving relatives. A whirlwind of family visits, picture- taking and baptismal preparations began.

With the loving care and doting attention that only an Indian family can give, Amod was showered with gold jewelry, silk kurta (CUR-TA) pajamas and stuffed animals and rattles made only in India. We establish a daily routine of bathing Amod in a bucket in the tiled bathroom. Indians do not have bathtubs. They fill buckets for soaping and rinsing. His aunts begin to feed him milk, rice and dah. Dah is a lentil, high in protein and easy to swallow when cooked with milk and rice.

As our social worker predicted, Amod was not easily soothed during that first week. He needed a period of time to adjust to a white woman who speaks English. Even his Indian aunts speak Malayalam, a language of southern India and not Marathi, a western language spoken in the orphanage.

After Amod’s christening, we became frequent visitors to the Indian Embassy for review of our guardianship documents. After one week, we did get a passport for Amod to travel home to the U.S. Amod would become Alexander six months later when the adoption became final. We’d always call him Alex.

We boarded an international flight home. Although Amod was clinging to us and starting to smile, he slept fitfully in an infant crib. Twenty-two hours later, we landed in JFK. We arrived home in Connecticut at 4am. I paused at the doorstep with Amod in my arms while George snapped a “Welcome Home” picture.

We finally brought Alex home.