"Who will catch me if I fall?"

-Opening narration, "Nicholas Nickleby"- the 2002 motion picture.  Young Nicholas rises above his destitute situation to cobble a surrogate family from an eccentric band of misfortunates who grew to care for each other.  The story drives home how "family" is really about relationships, not genetics.

Some tips to maximize your chance of a successful Russian adoption experience:

1. Find a reputable adoption agency.  Don't just rely on an agency's cherry-picked list of references.  Go to web sites like frua.org (link below) to see forums and make connections with people who have done already to get a fuller picture of an agency. One caution though-- although institutionalized children typically DO have developmental issues, don't let forum horror stories discourage you.  If you read enough posts on sites like FRUA, you may come away convinced that any child you get is going to be a fetal alcohol train wreck with attachment disorder.  I suspect that the population of frequent adoption forum posters are skewed toward the subset of adoptive parents whose kids turned up with persisting issues.  Meanwhile, the rest of us parents are just cruising merrily along with fantastic kids like a typical family and have never looked back...

Make sure an American agency has ROCK-SOLID RUSSIAN CONNECTIONS based on the testimony of couples who have adopted through that agency recently.  If possible, find out what regions (oblasts) from which a prospective agency gets its referrals.  Is it an area where recent adoptive parents report sadistic judges or reasonable judges?  While each individual judge may be different, I get the sense that each oblast has its own general interpretion and implementation of Russian Federation adoption law.  You'd think that there would be one standard set of specific procedures and paperwork requirements across the country, but that is anything but the case. 

In the big picture, all your American agency does is assist you in cobbling together dossier paperwork, then makes a few international phone calls and/or FedEx.  The good ones will at least give you emotional support and travel tips.  Your agency, and the smoothness and success of your overall experience, is really only as good as its Russian operatives and their connections.  After a long and sad ordeal, my dental hygenist was forced to abandon hope of adopting a little boy she had met on her "first" trip (and who she came to consider as her son) because the local judge stopped providing court dates (and thus custody) for would-be parents who used her particular agency.  She was finally forced to go back over there to meet another child in a different region with judges that were less obstinate.  Meanwhile, little "Alexander" is still in the system, is now probably too old to be likely to adopted, and may be destined for a life of crime and substance abuse thanks to some judge that probably thinks to this day that she acted in his "best interest."

2. Spend the extra $1200+ in fees and travel expenses to hire an English-speaking native Russian pediatrician to fly to your city and evaluate your referral IN-PERSON.  Your translator can translate a regurgitation of a child's medical record, which will probably sound scary as hell.  However, what your hired pediatrician can give you (that the orphanage doctor can't or won't) is a big-picture PROGNOSIS in ENGLISH.  That is absolutely crucial.  You will probably need to make a decision about a referral ON THE SPOT in the sense that if there is a medical condition of a referral such that you cannot accept it, you will at least know right away, and they may be able to locate another adoption-eligible child while you are there.  Besides, there is nothing like a doc being able to physically examine a child directly in-person.  All sending video to an American adoption specialist physician can do most likely is either give some additional comfort, or to prompt you to decide NOT to take a referral-- based only on video, photographic, or chart evidence.  Meanwhile, you need to pony up an extra $6k or so to go back over again for another first trip.

3. Get the youngest referral(s) you can to improve the odds of a successful placement.  It has been the experience of many, including Anfisa our translator, that disrupted placements and other behavioral horror stories are disproportionately from cases where a child older than a toddler has been adopted.  Life in an institution is like a jungle, and kids learn fast to jealously and violently hoard what possessions they come to think of as theirs.  My heart goes out to the older kids, and many are adopted successfully, but often, the environmental and nutritional damage is already done.  Fortunately, there ARE special cultural exchange-type programs in development that present for adoption older children that have been selected by caregivers as being exceptionally resiliant and behaviorally normal.

4. Spend time to learn the 33 letters of the Russian alphabet, if not some actual Russian.  Russian is very consistent, and the language is full of "cognates," words that sound the same in English and Russian, but are simply spelled out in Russian characters, like "Taxi," "Photo," and even "Supermarket."  Unlike the French, the Russians have no qualms about keeping a foreign-derived concept or noun in its original sound.  Doing this will reveal a surprising amount of understandable words from the apparent gibberish.

Should I adopt two at once?

Back in 2004, Lori and I agonized over this one.  Would we ever have the money to do it all again if we only got one child?  Turns out we did, with a little help.  We decided on asking the Ministry of Education for only one child at the time because like many modern American couples, we moved far away from any other family members on account of a job (mine), and had no support system outside of maybe some friends from church who could babysit in a pinch.  More importantly, we were concerned over the social and developmental issues of "artificial twinning," obtaining two unrelated children born within 9 months of each other.  Some agencies will not even do this.  For example, it's really hard not to gravitate toward one child over the other when they're the same age if one is mellow and engaging and the other fussy.

With the increased paperwork difficulty and related expense in adopting from Russia at this time, I have changed my tune.  If you want to have two kids, and have some kind of social support structure or at least have a LOT of patience and familiarity with caring for very small children, then ask the Ministry for two kids from the same district (oblast) and be done with it.  Jack and Renee adopted two and they made it work since their boy was an infant and was toted around at the front of Jack's torso with a Baby Bjorn carrier.

If you adopt two kids at once, you are still only paying for ONE home study, set of background checks and fingerprinting (at least in our state), and will have the same travel expenses whether you adopt one or two.  You will probably have the same court hearing in Russia for both kids if you're patient enough to wait longer to have two eligible children become available at the same time in the same Oblast.  If the two children are not a sibling pair, you will probably have to pay double the agency fee and double the BCIS(INS)- related fees for immigration.  By adopting two at the same time, you will still save tens of thousands of dollars, and more importantly, you will save yourself the massive paperwork hassle of having to do it over again.  Finally, placements to foreign parents continue only at the whim of the Russian government, and there is no gaurantee that you could go back again for a second child down the road.  I would still avoid artificial twinning, though, and would suggest people ask the Ministry for a 2-3 year old and an infant, like Jack and Renee did.  If you're willing to accept a boy or two, the referral for two may come faster than you think!

Families for Russian and Ukranian Adoption (FRUA)