Read part 1 of this blog entry, here.

I was talking about whether or not to contact Little J's birth mother...

I have mixed feelings about going that route. Because the children were removed from the home it's a little different than if she/they had to relinquish him. I have no idea why they were removed. Were they being abused? Neglected? Were they on the streets? Who the heck knows? I imagine it's similar to the feelings that people who've adopted from foster-to-adopt have about their children's first parents...if they know the story they might be able to decide, but if they don't - is that really a can of worms we want to open?

I think we will open it, if only to get more information. For all I know it was her husband (Little J's bio-dad, now deceased) who was the problem in the family. But maybe not. I don't know how the laws work over there, but I've been told that in order for children to be removed things have to be pretty bad...

But back to my list of resources:

Another person, Tony Carruthers (again, e-mail me for contact info), who is a non-Russian citizen living in Russia, can also perform a search. Tony actually goes to the region to search for the family; Victor does it all by mail. Tony has also quoted me a price of $2000 - something we can't afford right now. Victor's prices are far less (but again, it's all through the mail).

Here's a website that does something similar. I haven't heard anything - good or bad - about this website's services, however, but that doesn't mean much. I think if you're interested in making contact this way you should investigate all the possibilities.

There's also a listserv that may prove useful: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BirthParentContact/. I don't belong to it but I have heard good things about it.

You can also check out the resources on reunite.com, a website of adoption.com. There's a section on International searches, and while it doesn't have much on searching in Russia it does have lots of good information about searching in general.