I gave up counting how many Kleenexes I went through during Sunday night's Dateline NBC piece on Lisa and Hythem Salem and the children they adopted from Russia. If you saw it, you know already that it is that kind of piece. If you didn't, then you can catch large chunks of video from the segment on Dateline's Web site.

But in going through the Russia Adoption forum yesterday, I found a surprise: A thread on adopting biological siblings that was started even before I put up the post that Dateline was re-running the Salem's story.

It was started by an adoptive mom who learned--she never says how--that the biological siblings she adopted in 2005 have a younger sibling still in Russia. She doesn't give ages of any of the children, so I can't immediately determine whether the younger child would have, or should have, been in the records of the court hearing on the older children. She needed help to deal with the news and the forum members were quick to reach out with ideas.

Learning of bio siblings still in orphanages is not as uncommon as you might think. When I traveled to Russia for my first adoption back in 1999, there was a Mormon couple in my group who had been planning to adopt two young sisters. But just before they left Utah to head to Vladivostok, they learned that the sisters had a younger sibling in another orphanage in the region. And when they got to Vladivostok, there was still another surprise waiting for them: a little brother in yet another orphanage. They brought the two oldest girls home in December, and then returned the following February for the two youngest children. In just three months, the size of their family doubled from four children to eight.

Good adoption agencies work hard not to split biological siblings, often by providing subsidies to defray adoption costs. They will also send out urgent e-mails and letters to prospective families when the oldest child in a group is close to turning 16, which would make the child ineligible for adoption under U.S. law.

But, as with the Salem's children, not all sibling groups go into an orphanage at the same time and they may not all go to the same orphanage, since babies are placed in separate homes from the older children in Russia. Many families learn of biological siblings when they are preparing for their court date and see, for the first time, how many other pregnancies the birth mother had. Other parents who have adopted once begin their second adoption by asking their agencies to inquire whether any biological siblings to their child have been identified in orphanage care.

Your agency should be a resource as you as you explore a sibling adoption in Russia. There is also a good sounding board in the Sibling Group Adoption forum on this site.