Mark's Stech Family
Hello to everyone who reads this. We are the Stech family (Sean, Roberta, and, of course, Mark). We're writing this in March 2008, about 6 months from bringing Mark home to the US. Like most of the other families who have shared their stories on this page, all we can say is "Wow, what an adventure the last 12 months have been". Roberta and I have been married since April 1998 and decided to wait two years before beginning a family. We figured that, since we'd be in our mid-30's by then, we'd have enough time. How wrong we were. After trying for unsuccessfully for three years to conceive, we finally decided to find out why it hadn't happened yet. After a battery of test from different doctors, we finally had our answer: Roberta was fine, Sean had the infertility problem. Needless to say, we were devastated by this news. To make matters worse, Sean's mother had died from breast cancer about 6 months before we found this out. Being her only child, she had hoped that Sean would have made her a grandmother before the end, but it didn't come to pass. We tried several months of fertility treatments, all to no avail, so we decided to explore adoption. We choose a local agency, which specialized in domestic US “open adoptions” and went through all of the Phase One home study courses that were required, but every time we asked for a status on our case, the case worker either didn't get back to us, lost paperwork that had to be resubmitted, or kept pushing the dates farther out. We tried to switch to that agency's foreign adoption program, thinking that since we were already clients that the switch would be easy, but it wasn't. The agency informed us that we would have to resubmit all of our paperwork and fees for a foreign adoption and basically start from the beginning again. This was not what we wanted to hear so we decided to leave them and search for another agency.
Six months after leaving them, in March 2006, we had our first meeting with an Adoption Ark coordinator. What a difference! It literally was night and day. All of the questions were answered on a spot. All of our home study classes we took would transfer over and be counted, so 1 ½ years spent with the other agency was not in vain. We signed up right then and there. Over the next few months we met several times with the home study representative as well as our case manager for all of the paperwork that had to be filled out. Sunday, May 20, 2007 - the day that changed all of our lives forever! We prepared for our first trip to Russia We met another lady from our area, who was going to meet her daughter for the first time, and another couple from North Carolina who was going to meet their daughter for the first time and who had also adopted their son from the very same orphanage two years before. What a coincidence! Arriving at the hotel in Novokuznetsk, we all rode to the orphanage and after being invited into the director’s office, we began to read about the children. Words can’t begin to describe the feelings we had when we first saw Mark. We knew that he was ours and was for us. After many tear filled moments we went to the play room and spent time with him, which went entirely too fast. The next day we played with him some more, which again went extremely too fast, and it was extremely difficult leaving him behind. The drive back and the flights back home were unbelievably long. For the next three months we got the second round of paperwork done and did odds and ends on the house. We finally got the court date of Monday, 9/17/2007. Flying back was filled with anticipation, and although we didn’t travel back to Russia with the same people as we did with the first time, we met a great family from Indiana who had the same court date. On that Monday, we all went before the judge and were pronounced “parents”. What a great feeling that was. On Tuesday, 9/18/2007, we made the trip to the orphanage and standing in the waiting room outside of the director’s office, we could hear the voices of other couples who were meeting their children for the first time. Everything from the previous 3 months came flashing back and it seemed like it we were just there yesterday. Then it was our turn. Mark came in and he seemed to remember us and gave us both big hugs. We had only a few minutes to change him before we had to drive back to Kemerovo. Saying our goodbyes, we had our first car ride together and that night we found out in the hotel room that he was walking! He fared pretty well with his first plane rides, as well as with the all of the appointments we had. When we got him home his eyes were wide open, just like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing – his room, his bed, his toys, his clothes, his home. Roberta spent 6 weeks home with him before going back to work at the day care center he attends. Oh how he loves day care! After two “baby showers” it was time for his first Thanksgiving, his first Christmas, and soon his first birthday party in the US. To say that he enjoyed them would be an understatement. He is so happy and playful it is unbelievable. It’s hard to believe that our little boy has only been with us for 6 months – it seems like it has always been this way. I guess that is what is meant by being a “forever family”.