By Scott Brinton
The Baldingers, of Bellmore, considered in vitro fertilization. But the procedure was expensive, costing $17,000, and didn't guarantee a child.
"It's quite emotional to accept the fact that you're never going to give birth," said Mindy, who is a CPR and first-aid instructor with the American Heart Association.
In 2000, the Baldingers, who were in their 40s, continued to long for a child. They decided to try international adoption. Again, the road was fraught with difficulty. The couple approached a Garden City agency that specializes in Asian adoptions. They were told that if they wanted a Chinese baby, the child would have a learning disability or birth defect. David already had a son, Justin, by a previous marriage. So, under Chinese law, the Baldingers were barred from adopting a completely healthy child. They also learned that they couldn't adopt a Korean baby, because they had to have been married for five years, which they had not been at the time.
"It got to the point where we were banging our heads against the wall," said David, a Kennedy High School graduate who grew up in Merrick and is now in the pharmaceutical business.
The Baldingers happened on a couple in the Oceanside condominium where they were then living. The couple had adopted a baby from Bulgaria, a former communist, now democratic, Eastern European nation of about 9 million people due north of Greece. The Baldingers' neighbors related the positive experience they had had with the Washington, D.C., agency that had arranged their adoption.
The Baldingers called the agency, and soon they were headed for Sliven, a hardscrabble town near Bulgaria's border with Turkey. It's a tiny, out-of-the-way place, with grim, gray apartment buildings in its center and farms spiraling out in all directions. On the roads, squeaky horse-drawn carts compete with clunky Soviet-era cars (think very old Yugos).
On a narrow Sliven side street lay the orphanage from which the Baldingers would adopt their daughter, whom they named Olivia. The home was clean, and had attendants to care for the children. But conditions were meager. Olivia lived with 75 to 100 other girls and boys who were divided into two massive rooms. Olivia, who was 14 months old when the Baldingers first met her almost four years ago, slept on a small plywood bed with a thin mattress in a long row of similar beds. She ate mostly yogurt and cheese made from goat's milk, which sustained her well. She was lucky. Many Bulgarian orphans begin life malnourished.
The Baldingers traveled to Bulgaria twice before finalizing Olivia's adoption. Mindy was taken aback by the number of children without families in Bulgaria. During her first trip to Sliven, she came to a realization. She had a purpose in life -- to pull one fortunate little girl from an otherwise dismal existence in which the best she could have hoped for was to get a mindless factory job when she grew up, working 14-hour days for next to nothing. At worst, the Russian mob might have kidnapped her and sold her into slavery, a fate that befalls thousands of Eastern European orphans every year.
"When I saw those little beds" at the orphanage, "I said it's all right" not to have given birth, Mindy said.
A growing trend
The Baldingers represent a growing number of Americans who are choosing to adopt Eastern European orphans. Before communism ended more than a decade ago, countries like Bulgaria were cut off from the West. But with the Iron Curtain shredded in the late 1980s and early '90s, Bulgaria -- and the doors to its 297 state-run orphanages -- were thrown open.
The European Children's Trust estimates that more than 34,000 children live in Bulgarian orphanages. According to the U.S. State Department, Americans adopted 198 of them in 2003. Most aren't true orphans, but rather were given up by parents too poor to care for them.
The Baldingers visited Olivia for the first time in the frigid temperatures and falling snow of January 2001. She was all that the couple had dreamed of -- curious and happy, with deep, attentive eyes and a beaming smile. She instantly captivated the Baldingers. They visited with her for nearly a week, then returned to the U.S. to await the day that they could return and pick her up. (The Bulgarian government requires that prospective parents meet a child twice before finalizing an adoption.)
Months passed, and the Baldingers grew increasingly anxious. They insisted on seeing a video of Olivia to make sure the adoption was proceeding as planned, and that she was still at the orphanage. In August 2001, their Washington adoption agency provided a tape. Olivia looked tired and bored. "She was starting to wear that institutional look," Mindy said.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, the Baldingers were suddenly concerned that they wouldn't be allowed to travel to Bulgaria to get Olivia. "We were just afraid the whole thing would fall apart," David said. But with help from U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer's office, the Baldingers pushed their final adoption paperwork through the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and at the end of October 2001 they were back on a plane to Bulgaria.
The day that the Baldingers collected Olivia and her handful of belongings was intensely emotional. Many of the other children wanted to leave with her. "All these other kids came up and held their hands" out, David said. "You just wanted to reach out and grab a bunch of them."
At home in America
Coming to America was a huge adjustment for Olivia. She didn't speak English. She had never sat in a car seat or stroller. She had never had contact with a pet, and the Baldingers have three dogs and four cats.
She learned quickly, though. Within months she started to speak English, and her innate intelligence became apparent. Today Olivia is every bit an American kid. Her pink-and-white bedroom overflows with books and dolls. She takes private karate, gymnastics and math lessons. And she's doing well in kindergarten at the Reinhard Early Childhood Center in Bellmore.
Olivia spends hours reading, coloring and playing with her mom. She loves to curl up with her dad and a bowl of popcorn to watch Yankees games. She's proud to don her Yankees jersey, and she likes to wear a baseball cap backward like her older stepbrother, Justin, who is 16.
"This is really some little girl we have," Mindy said. "Anything I put her in for, she does and does well."
In Bulgaria, Mindy noted, "There are so many wonderful children wanting to have a life."
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
