The Adoptive Process

Welcoming Home a Child

By Ron Hollowell

Amy Cousens of Hambden Township will never celebrate a Mother’s Day quite like the one she experienced six years ago. It’s safe to say her two daughters will always make the occasion a special one for their mom, but Mother’s Day 2002 has been indelibly etched in Cousens’ memory for a very special reason.

That May afternoon she and her husband, Steve, introduced their new daughter, Grace, to her Geauga County home. For the previous 11 months, the Cousenses had undergone extensive home studies, interviews and exhaustive travel schedules to adopt Grace from her native Kazakhstan, a former Soviet-held country.

Today Grace is a thriving second-grade student at Hambden Elementary School and she is a doting big sister to Elise, whom Amy conceived four years ago. Watching the precocious nature of their daughters – and how well Grace adjusted to her new home – is a blessing for which the couple is grateful.

“We waited a year and a half before we could bring Grace home because adopting a child can be tricky,” Amy said. “The process to adopt Grace was a lengthy one, but it was so worth it. We definitely have some stories to tell her when she gets older.”

Working together

Once a couple decides to move forward with the adoption process, Holly Spencer- Trueman, an adoption navigator with Adoption Network Cleveland and herself an adoptive parent, advises they work together to participate in all aspects of the process – from beginning to end. She said there often is one spouse who is more enthusiastic about pursuing adoption.

“My husband is the one who is so vocal about this,” Spencer- Trueman said. “He was ready to adopt before I was done grieving our infertility, so he just kept a folder about it on file until I could go forward. He has always said he wants to be able to tell the children that we both were equally as invested in bringing them home to us.”

The Cousenses realized they wanted to adopt a child just after they were married. When they began their initial steps toward adopting a daughter, they had their sights set on a girl of Chinese descent. They encountered a roadblock in their pursuit to adopt a child from China when portions of their dossier were set to expire. The primary concern was that Steve had to be 30 years old by the time the couple was scheduled to travel – he was 29 at the time – which delayed the process.

After discussing options with their social worker, the Cousenses received a video clip of Grace and immediately fell in love with her. The process to adopt a child from Kazakhstan also was a bit simpler for the couple to pursue.

“When we saw the video, what could we say? We felt it was God’s plan for our family to adopt Grace,” Amy said.

As the process unfolded, the Cousenses had to undergo wide-ranging background checks, be fingerprinted and have a thorough home study conducted.

“We had our water tested and a fire inspector worked with us on plans for fire escape routes,” Amy said. “The home study was very extensive.”

Meeting Grace

With their hearts set on adopting Grace, Steve and Amy Cousens embarked on a month-long trip to Kazakhstan to prepare for Grace’s homecoming. Steve, who is employed as a pilot for Continental Airlines, is quite adept at international travel. The couple left Cleveland on a 24-hour flight that took them to Chicago, to London, to Azerbaijani and finally to Kazakhstan. They met up with an interpreter and found an apartment. Then they began to immerse themselves in the culture and ways of living as Kazakhstanians.

“We were finally able to visit the orphanage to see Grace,” Amy said. “We had two hours of supervised visits with her each day. After a week or two, we were able to take her outside to a park where we were with other families. Eventually she was able to stay with us in our apartment.”

Once Grace came home to Hambden Township, she had some difficulty adjusting to her new way of life, but with some assistance from a pediatric occupational therapist, she quickly learned how to adapt to her new family.

"We keep in touch with families who have adopted children from overseas,” Amy said, “but we’re a busy family. I think different families have different needs and personal preferences. We do some teaching with her about the culture of Kazakhstan so that she maintains an exposure to where she was born.”

Keep an open mind

Many adoption agencies talk to couples who have been unduly influenced by what they hear and read about the adoption process. Couples tend to be fearful that if they adopt a child domestically the birth mother will come back to them and try to reclaim the child. Others are fearful of adopting an older child because they may be unable to shape them as they get older. Some couples are not comfortable with international travel.

Spencer- Trueman and her husband originally were going to go to Vietnam to adopt a child. They initially opposed a domestic adoption for fear of the birth family contacting them. In the end they adopted a child domestically and the couple now has an open adoption with their daughter’s birth mom and birth siblings.

“When we added to our family again, we weren’t sure that we should adopt a child of another race, which I’m sure doesn’t seem to make sense to some people,” Spencer- Trueman said. “But we now have two biracial siblings we adopted from a public welfare system. So you see, our process evolved enormously from where it began. This result usually happens when couples keep themselves open to all they learn along the way and don’t allow themselves to be informed only by fear.”

Any type of adoption requires a lengthy process – and be wary if an agency promises you anything different, Spencer- Trueman said.

“Adoption requires the ability to willingly allow people into your business so-to-speak,” she said. “There are background checks, personal questions and then it always involves a lot of waiting. The waiting is often the worst as it is a remarkable period of inaction and lengthy paperwork, classes and interviews.”

The Cousenses and Truemans can share the virtues of adoption with others from their own personal experiences. They know that when couples decide to make a difference when no one else can the process becomes very real.

Ron Hollowell resides in Hambden Township.