Local Woman At Home With Adopted Haitian Baby
INDIO – Lauren Garrott was in the final stages of adoption when the massive earthquake devastated Haiti last month.
A group of doctors and adoptive parents traveled to rescue about 150 orphans, like Jeannine, her prospective daughter. Garrott hadn’t heard ifJeannine was alive or dead,but then came the good news.She was a survivor.
Alot of red tape and a lot of confusion delayed their arrival in the U.S. That’s all over, and she’s here in the valley now.
“The paperwork was processed and they said, ‘Here you go’ and from then on I was a Mom,” says Lauren Garrott, who fornearly a month of waiting and wondering, finally sits with her daughter, Jeannine Allencia.
“It’s been absolutely a whirlwind. I went from thinking that I wouldn’t get her until somewhere around March, then thinking the whole thing would be delayed even further to guess what, you’re going to get her right now,” says Garrott.
“Her new name will be Janine Allencia Garrott. Legally it’s just Allencia, but we’ll be changing it to naming her after my mother Janine and keeping her birth name as her middle name.”
And, while Lauren is happy to have her child safely at home, she’s sad about the way it happened. Which is why she encourages everyone to continue to send help to Haiti.
“Getting her because of the earthquake. That part of it will always sit badly in my heart. That’s not the way I wanted to get her. I’m glad she’s here because she’s safe and it does alleviate a lot on the part of the orphanage to have all those kids out of there…people want to say this is the one silver lining on the cloud here but it’s not even a glimmer of a silver lining. There is no silver lining to an earthquake that has devastated that many people and that many lives,” says Garrott.
