Chapter Sixteen

Eyes Opened Wide

    The next day, Sunday, the director was at the orphanage.

    We were escorted into his office, medications and gifts in hand, and waited patiently for somebody to bring Cyril out to us to get him out of there. 

    We had with us a beautiful Polo snowsuit that Daniel’s mother had given us, a handknit hat with a tiny pom-pom at the top, socks, and a lovely pale blue outfit with the caption on it “Baby You Can Drive My Car” which my mother had purchased for him.

    It was quite an experience getting him dressed out of the stiff orphanage clothing he was wearing.  He seemed a bit more on that day, and it was a comedy sketch with Lena and I changing him, Daniel with the camera filming it, and Cyril screaming his head off.  

    Again, when we undressed him, he was wearing a diaper (How things might have been different had we taken it off right there in the orphanage director’s office).

    However, once the pale blue outfit was on him, he quieted down; once in the warm wool hat with the white pom-pom at the top and the blue Polo snowsuit, he looked like a tiny papoose!  

    We couldn’t wait to get him out of there. Lena presented us with his schedule, written in Russian which we could understand. 

    We were ready to go, and without looking back, we hustled the now-quiet Cyril into the waiting Toyota SUV. He didn’t sleep once in the vehicle, but both Daniel and I were quiet and still, feeling a fulfillment that neither of us had ever felt before.  Cyril was finally with us!

    Once back at the hotel with the baby, we decided to feed him. Daniel plugged in the hotpot-like pitcher to boil up some bottled water we had brought along. Once boiling, we poured approximately 12 oz./200 ml of powdered Similac formula and waited for it to cool down.  

    Cyril had begun to fuss a bit, so he was definitely feeling hungry! When the formula had cooled down, we put a bib on him and placed the bottle to his lips. 

    He ate very, very slowly. Judging from the videotape we took, the baby took 30 minutes to drink his bottle. 

    We didn’t think this was too unusual, but how slowly he ate did concern me.  I knew that in most orphanages, that there was a certain time table given to the children to eat; once the time was up, the food was taken away. 

    If Cyril took this long to finish just one bottle, at nearly eight months old, had he been getting adequate nutrition during his tenure at Dom Rebyonka No. 2?

    And as he fed, I heard his intestines rumbling. The baby pushed his feet to his chest while I held him.  

    Underneath my hand I had been cradling him by the butt. I could then literally feel his diaper filling up with liquid excrement. Something was moving through this poor thing, but we had been led to believe that diarrhea was normal for these kids, often due to parasitic infections like giardiasis, so be prepared! In essence, the food was running right through him.

    The point came where Cyril stopped sucking on the bottle. He was finished eating.  We really would have to get some more solid food into him, and had made arrangements to go shopping with Lena the next day for some baby provisions in town.  

    I said to Daniel, interrupting our conversation about Russian nouns and verbs, “I hate to say it, but it’s that time – time to change the baby’s diaper!”

    He mock-groaned as we both prepared for what we now expected to be but the first of many repetitions of a defining ritual of our new roles as parents.

    There was nowhere else to change the diaper, but in the bathroom, on the floor with a towel laid out to place the baby on. 

    Luckily the entire hotel room was very warm, so it wouldn’t cause too much discomfort to Cyril. Daniel went into the bathroom and laid a towel down on the floor, and I carried the baby in, placed him on the floor and proceeded to take off his “Baby You Can Drive My Car” pale blue outfit. Then it came time to take off his diaper and the baby really began to howl and shriek.

    Once we saw what the diaper was hiding, we saw why the baby was shrieking. 

    We were absolutely horrified. Horrified. 

    I stood up, put my hand to my mouth and walked out of the bathroom in shock and illness. I really thought I would pass out. 

    Daniel knelt by the shrieking baby.  Cyril had pulled his legs way up to his chest and continued to cry and shriek. 

    Runny green excrement began to trickle out of his body with every cry and onto the towel which he lay on. My God, what had they done to him at that orphanage?

    All over his bottom, in the cracks of his legs and covering his scrotum was a diaper “infection” the likes of which I hope never to see in my life again.  

    The skin around his buttocks was black and beginning to flake off and die in some areas. What lay beneath some had become hard, thick and red.  

    Truly, if this condition had been on a baby in the United States, you would have called the Department of Social Services or its equivalent on the parents for neglect.