Adoption - or how to love children, without limits
If giving birth to a child is a natural act, then adopting a child is a divine one. Today we will bring you three successful stories about adoptions in Romania.
In order to adopt a child, the prospective parents-to-be should attend a training course. They should be healthy and produce letters of recommendation, bearing the name and signature of the relative, neighbor or friend who makes the recommendation. They should also provide a paper to certify that they are able to adopt a child, and to prove that they can afford taking care of a child. The training course lasts two weeks, and the certificate is issued within 60 days. When all legal and technical conditions are met, the future parents can choose either to wait to be contacted by the Child Protection Directorate or to start searching for a child on their own. The old, large-scale foster centers in Romania have been shut down, and consequently one can find children who can be adopted, (and who have been legally declared “abandoned”) only in the homes of foster parents - most of them people in the lower income bracket, who are paid by the state to take care of children, until they are adopted. There are also family-type homes and charity organisations that bring up children until they are adopted by a family.
In the town of Campina, in the Prahova Valley, there is a house where catholic nuns take care of 40 children, starting from infants up to children of 4 to 5 years old. The home itself is a square-shaped hall with two rooms on each side. The children are very well taken care of and have everything they need from a material point of view: clean clothes, toys and food. Additionally, they are under the constant care and attention of the nuns. The center is called “The House of Hope”, and it is run by nuns from the order of St Joseph of Aosta. Liliana Csaki is a prospective parent who went to the care-center , in the hope that she will find a girl to adopt: ”In one of the rooms housing the infants, I saw a fair-haired, perfectly round little head. I told myself: look, this is a child I would like to take home with me. We were invited to another room, where we met nun Marissa, who seemed harsh and cold to me, in the beginning… She asked questions about us: who we were, what we wanted and why we wanted to adopt a child. I was overwhelmed by emotion, I was already crying and I said we wanted a child, any child, provided that he or she was healthy. She asked somebody to bring Laura in. When Laura was brought into the room, I realized she was the baby I had just seen. They gave her to me, I held her tight in my arms and the child instantly clung on to me. She was 8 and a half months old at the time and we were allowed to take her home, in only 4 days’ time. “
We don’t choose our parents, this is true. But let’s how parents choose their children, when they have the opportunity to do so? Liliana says she simply knew that baby would be her child. It was love at first-sight. Three years later, when she adopted a second child, Liliana had to ask not only for her husband’s but also for Laura’s opinion: ”I first saw David when he was only 4 days old. He was a very small baby, born prematurely and weighing only 2 kilos. My first impression was that he was very small. I held him in my arms. In both cases when I wanted to adopt a child, I told myself that I would only hold in my arms the child I would take home. Otherwise, it would have been an unfair gesture to the others, as if I would have given them hope in vain. I was alone when they gave me David to hold. The next day, I went there with my husband, and the same thing happened. We made a decision on the spot. We were asked if we needed time to think about it and we replied that we had already made a decision. David was our child, since the very first moment, when I took him in my arms.”
The first meeting between Mihai and his parents took place in a much colder place than the House of Hope. Irina Enache met her son in an office of the Bucharest Child Protection Directorate. “The foster mother brought him, a little infant of 2 and a half months, swaddled in a blanket, just having woken up. He was looking at us, saying nothing, with not so much as a frown on his face. I took him in my arms and asked myself : God, what is there in store for this child? And I asked him, in my mind, I told him “you are so wonderful, what will happen to you, what will the fate of a child be whose mother does not want him, or who maybe did not have the means to bring him up? I‘m talking to you! I told him. I had the impression then that then baby started to look at me differently . Then I gave him to my husband to hold, but he had no idea how to hold such a little infant. In fact, we didn’t need too many visits there. In a couple of days, it was the baby’s name day, according to Orthodox tradition, so we brought him a present, a little outfit for a boy, because the foster mother previously had a girl and he was always dressed like a girl. The day he turned three months old, we took the baby home.”
It is not always so easy. Oana Melinte said that the day when she could not take Eric home, was the most difficult in her life.: “We were promised that the day when we took the adoptive parents certificate, we would be allowed to take the baby home. We found Eric in a foster home two weeks ago. We went to take him, we were so happy, we had prepared everything, the milk, the little baby chair for the car, baby clothes. We went there to have our papers signed but we were told : “what do you think, that we can give you the child immediately?“ That’s when we thought we had lost him. But he was our child . We had no idea what to do to bring our child home. We went back to the Child Protection Directorate and we talked as calmly as we could, because at that moment, I was so upset and frightened, because I thought they did not want to give me the child; I could not even hear the explanations they gave me. There were some legal procedures to comply with and I simply wanted to take my baby home without any other formalities. I was blind, I could not understand anything else. I am sure that if you want something good to happen to you, you have to work hard for it. We worked hard and suffered, but now we have the most beautiful child - he is a real treasure!”
The efforts some couples go to in order to have a child are difficult to describe, and especially difficult to understand for those couples who have no problems having a child naturally. Parents usually only have to wait for nine months before they are able to take their child in their arms. They do not have to attend special courses and are not questioned by the authorities regarding their financial situation regarding raising a child. Choosing to adopt is not something that you should do out of charity, out of pity or on a whim. “Love for children is unconditional - either you want a child and then you forget you did not give birth to him or her, or you simply want to perform an act of charity - and then it would be better to donate some money towards a humanitarian case”, says Cristina, a new adoptive mother.
Liliana Csaki shares the same opinion :
“These children are born for us. In a way, they are predestined, this is my opinion. Many times we were told that we are extraordinary people, that we are doing such a fantastic thing; other people tell us: “You were so charitable!” I do not feel different as compared to other mothers. For me, the fact that I was not the bearer of my child is just a technical detail because these have been my children since the moment I took them in my arms. I do not think that if I had given birth to my children, I would have behaved differently towards them. I love them just like any mother loves her child.”
In order to adopt a child, the prospective parents-to-be should attend a training course. They should be healthy and produce letters of recommendation, bearing the name and signature of the relative, neighbor or friend who makes the recommendation. They should also provide a paper to certify that they are able to adopt a child, and to prove that they can afford taking care of a child. The training course lasts two weeks, and the certificate is issued within 60 days. When all legal and technical conditions are met, the future parents can choose either to wait to be contacted by the Child Protection Directorate or to start searching for a child on their own. The old, large-scale foster centers in Romania have been shut down, and consequently one can find children who can be adopted, (and who have been legally declared “abandoned”) only in the homes of foster parents - most of them people in the lower income bracket, who are paid by the state to take care of children, until they are adopted. There are also family-type homes and charity organisations that bring up children until they are adopted by a family.
In the town of Campina, in the Prahova Valley, there is a house where catholic nuns take care of 40 children, starting from infants up to children of 4 to 5 years old. The home itself is a square-shaped hall with two rooms on each side. The children are very well taken care of and have everything they need from a material point of view: clean clothes, toys and food. Additionally, they are under the constant care and attention of the nuns. The center is called “The House of Hope”, and it is run by nuns from the order of St Joseph of Aosta. Liliana Csaki is a prospective parent who went to the care-center , in the hope that she will find a girl to adopt: ”In one of the rooms housing the infants, I saw a fair-haired, perfectly round little head. I told myself: look, this is a child I would like to take home with me. We were invited to another room, where we met nun Marissa, who seemed harsh and cold to me, in the beginning… She asked questions about us: who we were, what we wanted and why we wanted to adopt a child. I was overwhelmed by emotion, I was already crying and I said we wanted a child, any child, provided that he or she was healthy. She asked somebody to bring Laura in. When Laura was brought into the room, I realized she was the baby I had just seen. They gave her to me, I held her tight in my arms and the child instantly clung on to me. She was 8 and a half months old at the time and we were allowed to take her home, in only 4 days’ time. “
We don’t choose our parents, this is true. But let’s how parents choose their children, when they have the opportunity to do so? Liliana says she simply knew that baby would be her child. It was love at first-sight. Three years later, when she adopted a second child, Liliana had to ask not only for her husband’s but also for Laura’s opinion: ”I first saw David when he was only 4 days old. He was a very small baby, born prematurely and weighing only 2 kilos. My first impression was that he was very small. I held him in my arms. In both cases when I wanted to adopt a child, I told myself that I would only hold in my arms the child I would take home. Otherwise, it would have been an unfair gesture to the others, as if I would have given them hope in vain. I was alone when they gave me David to hold. The next day, I went there with my husband, and the same thing happened. We made a decision on the spot. We were asked if we needed time to think about it and we replied that we had already made a decision. David was our child, since the very first moment, when I took him in my arms.”
The first meeting between Mihai and his parents took place in a much colder place than the House of Hope. Irina Enache met her son in an office of the Bucharest Child Protection Directorate. “The foster mother brought him, a little infant of 2 and a half months, swaddled in a blanket, just having woken up. He was looking at us, saying nothing, with not so much as a frown on his face. I took him in my arms and asked myself : God, what is there in store for this child? And I asked him, in my mind, I told him “you are so wonderful, what will happen to you, what will the fate of a child be whose mother does not want him, or who maybe did not have the means to bring him up? I‘m talking to you! I told him. I had the impression then that then baby started to look at me differently . Then I gave him to my husband to hold, but he had no idea how to hold such a little infant. In fact, we didn’t need too many visits there. In a couple of days, it was the baby’s name day, according to Orthodox tradition, so we brought him a present, a little outfit for a boy, because the foster mother previously had a girl and he was always dressed like a girl. The day he turned three months old, we took the baby home.”
It is not always so easy. Oana Melinte said that the day when she could not take Eric home, was the most difficult in her life.: “We were promised that the day when we took the adoptive parents certificate, we would be allowed to take the baby home. We found Eric in a foster home two weeks ago. We went to take him, we were so happy, we had prepared everything, the milk, the little baby chair for the car, baby clothes. We went there to have our papers signed but we were told : “what do you think, that we can give you the child immediately?“ That’s when we thought we had lost him. But he was our child . We had no idea what to do to bring our child home. We went back to the Child Protection Directorate and we talked as calmly as we could, because at that moment, I was so upset and frightened, because I thought they did not want to give me the child; I could not even hear the explanations they gave me. There were some legal procedures to comply with and I simply wanted to take my baby home without any other formalities. I was blind, I could not understand anything else. I am sure that if you want something good to happen to you, you have to work hard for it. We worked hard and suffered, but now we have the most beautiful child - he is a real treasure!”
The efforts some couples go to in order to have a child are difficult to describe, and especially difficult to understand for those couples who have no problems having a child naturally. Parents usually only have to wait for nine months before they are able to take their child in their arms. They do not have to attend special courses and are not questioned by the authorities regarding their financial situation regarding raising a child. Choosing to adopt is not something that you should do out of charity, out of pity or on a whim. “Love for children is unconditional - either you want a child and then you forget you did not give birth to him or her, or you simply want to perform an act of charity - and then it would be better to donate some money towards a humanitarian case”, says Cristina, a new adoptive mother.
Liliana Csaki shares the same opinion :
“These children are born for us. In a way, they are predestined, this is my opinion. Many times we were told that we are extraordinary people, that we are doing such a fantastic thing; other people tell us: “You were so charitable!” I do not feel different as compared to other mothers. For me, the fact that I was not the bearer of my child is just a technical detail because these have been my children since the moment I took them in my arms. I do not think that if I had given birth to my children, I would have behaved differently towards them. I love them just like any mother loves her child.”
posted by Andreea Demirgian at
5:11 AM
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