Daily Breeze
June 15 2013
Arianna rising: Rancho Palos Verdes couple’s adopted Armenian daughter
keeps on battling
By Kristin Agostoni Staff Writer
The last time Lauren Mahakian Spiglanin visited Yerevan, Armenia, she
and her husband, Tom, had just become parents of a nearly 9-month-old
baby girl they had adopted from the state-run Nork orphanage.
During visits, they’d take their baby, Arianna Rose, outside to a
weed-filled yard with construction debris lying around – the only
outdoor spot for prospective parents to interact with children at the
center.
Today, that same space has been transformed because the couple raised
their own funds to build a new playground.
After they brought Arianna home to Rancho Palos Verdes, the Spiglanins
drummed up more than $10,000 in contributions – just about $2,700
short of their goal – that have bought the orphanage benches, flowers
and a wading pool and water play area to help the children weather the
country’s hot summers.
And since adopting Arianna in August 2009, their lives have been
transformed as well. They’re now the parents of a 4 1/2-year-old
preschooler who loves Dora the Explorer, visits to the Long Beach
aquarium and dinners out at The Red Onion.
But it hasn’t been an easy journey for the family, which was profiled
last March in a front-page Daily Breeze story. After the adoption was
complete but before they left the country, the Spiglanins learned
their baby girl’s complicated medical history had apparently been
concealed by the facilitator who assisted them.
Lauren Spiglanin said they initially were told that Arianna was born a
month premature and that her birth mother had died of a brain
aneurysm. But there was more to the story.
She said the facilitator waited until their last night to leave an
envelope at the hotel. Inside were medical records indicating the
birth mother’s placenta had become detached, affecting Arianna’s
supply of oxygen. The papers said the baby – the couple later learned
she was born more than two months’ premature – had heavy asphyxia and
acute breath insufficiency.
“Basically,” her mother explained, “they’re saying that it’s cerebral palsy.”
A pediatrician they visited after bringing Arianna home told them her
condition was caused by a midbrain injury – one requiring countless
doctors’ visits and therapy sessions to help their little girl learn
sit up on her own, strengthen her abdominal and neck muscles and, they
hope, eventually talk more clearly and walk.
They’re now working to achieve the latter goal – getting Arianna out
of her purple walker – by the end of the year, Spiglanin said.
“Hopefully, by November we can burn the thing,” she joked. “The main
thing is just strengthening her spine and her neck.”
In a little over a year, Arianna has made strides in her physical
development, her mother said. In March 2012, she was proud her little
girl could briefly sit unassisted.
Now, Spiglanin challenges her to do that – she can go for as long as
six to seven minutes, she said – and also lift her head up on her own.
“She can maneuver herself off of a chair,” she said. “She’s fallen off
her bed. It’s like she thinks she can get up and walk on her own.”
And Arianna doesn’t like being stuck in the stroller, which is an
indication that she wants to do more for herself.
Frustration can come in the form of temper tantrums.
And although Arianna says just a few words clearly, she talks and
babbles often. Thanks to Dora the Explorer and her travel adventures,
the couple recently “did the happy dance” when Arianna added the word
backpack to her vocabulary, her mother said.
At Valmonte Early Learning Academy in Palos Verdes Estates, the
preschool Arianna attends from 9 a.m. to noon Monday through Friday,
she receives physical, occupational and speech therapy.
“They have my blessing,” Spiglanin said. “Work her hard.”
And school has also helped Arianna make friends, said Coryanne
Sennett, who works as a substitute class aide at the preschool and
also serves as the girl’s caretaker, bringing Arianna home from school
when her parents are working.
“I just had an almost immediate connection with Ari,” said Sennett,
24. “The other kids love her. She’s a little flirt.”
And the help she gets at school comes on top of weekly speech and
physical therapy sessions at Torrance Memorial Medical Center and
visits to Lotus Wellness Center in Orange.
There, Mala Moosad, an acupuncturist and registered nurse who
specializes in alternative medicine, said she focuses on stimulating
acupuncture points on Arianna’s back – a technique meant to evoke a
response from her brain and send signals to the nervous system.
“We do something called energy balancing, kind of like reprograming
the brain,” said Moosad, a doctor in her native India. “She started
improving pretty fast. She’s doing much better … Ari is a sweet
girl. I’m hoping that she will walk and talk.”
In fact, it was Moosad who told Spiglanin that she believes her little
girl will be able to walk by her 5th birthday, which will come on Nov.
28.
In the meantime, they’ll continue to see Moosad, whom Arianna
apparently enjoys visiting.
“When I do the treatment on her back,” Moosad said, “she doesn’t want
to get up from the table.”
Spiglanin credits the “combinations of therapies” Arianna has been
receiving with helping her development. And had it not been for her
accepting a full-time job as the store manager of Torrance’s Remedy
Pharm – a compounding pharmacy on Hawthorne Boulevard that offers
homeopathic and eco-friendly products, nutritional services and more,
including intuitive readings – she would have never found the center
in Orange, she said.
Spiglanin was referred to Moosad by the Remedy Pharm’s owner, Nilesh
Bhakta. They make the drive every Friday, she said, adding one more
appointment to Arianna’s already busy schedule.
But come October or maybe May 2014, they’re hoping to get a vacation of sorts.
Spiglanin, Arianna and Sennett are planning a trip to Armenia to visit
the orphanage and see the new playground built with the support of the
Paros Foundation.
The nonprofit based in Berkeley works to raise awareness about the
Armenian culture and partners with groups in the country involved in
the arts, children and people with disabilities.
The foundation sent volunteers from the United States to the orphanage
to help with the project, cutting down on labor costs. It’s now
complete, although Spiglanin said she’s hoping for some finishing
touches, such as more flowers.
Last year, taking Arianna back to Armenia wasn’t even in the plans;
among her mother’s worries was how her daughter would get around on
cobblestone streets with her walker.
But now she’s ready and believes her little girl is, too. Said
Spiglanin: “I’m anxious to go and I want to see the progress. I think
Ari will be up to it.”
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_23463012/arianna-rising-rancho-palos-verdes-couples-adopted-armenian