If you see a triple stroller lumbering along the sidewalk in Tribeca, don’t mistake the dark-eyed toddlers inside for typical additions to the local baby boom.

Lorenzo, 2, and Leo and Julia, both 21 months, are recent arrivals from an adoption battle fought 2,000 miles from home.

The three children finally settled into their new Warren Street apartment in May following a 18-month struggle  between their adoptive parents, Ellora deCarlo and Gary Cooper, and the Guatemalan government, whose onerous new adoption policies and bureaucratic bottlenecks conspired to keep the children in the country.

Determined not to come home empty-handed, the couple spent half a year residing in their children’s orphanage.

With all the myriad adjustments that suddenly come with three active toddlers in the home (“Ellora and I have achieved levels of exhaustion that we never thought possible,” said Cooper) the couple declare themselves “overwhelmed but blessed.”

“There were so many times we thought we were going to lose a child,” deCarlo said.
DeCarlo, an actress, and Cooper, a photographer, had not contemplated adopting more than one child when they went to Guatemala in October, 2007, first only to get a feel for the country by working a week with Habitat for Humanity.

“I said, ‘Let’s see Guatemala, let’s build some houses, let’s meet some kids and see what happens,” deCarlo said.

The couple toured an orphanage, Semillas de Amor, in the town of Parramos, where first they laid eyes on 6-month-old Julia.

“I’m just looking at her and thinking, ‘That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” deCarlo recalled.

Then there was Leo, also 6 months. He was sleeping, his face hidden, and Cooper felt compelled to pick him up.

“There was something about him,” he said.

That night they made the decision: they would adopt both children. After signing the papers that would begin the adoption process, they met Lorenzo.
“He had an aura about him that just radiates,” said deCarlo. “It still does.”

Returning home, the two intended adoptees still in Guatemala, the couple e-mailed everyone they knew, hoping to find a home for Lorenzo. But soon word came down that Guatemalan lawmakers were about to meet to change the country’s adoption policies.

At 8,000 children a year, more children were adopted from Guatemala than from any country other than China. The government had found that kidnapping and corruption were behind some of them and a crackdown on all adoptions was in the air.
Now the rush was on to complete the complex paperwork on Julia and Leo and, with no one stepping forward, now Lorenzo, too.

“Gary said, ‘Can we do this? This is crazy,’” deCarlo recalled. “And I was like, I don’t know but I feel like the issue is, can we afford not to do it?”

The couple flew to Guatemala and signed the papers for Lorenzo, six weeks before lawmakers there tightened restrictions that would all but cut off new foreign adoptions. Presumably parents like deCarlo and Cooper, already in the pipeline, could complete the process.
They returned monthly to visit their three children, all five staying together in a hotel room. But months went by and still the adoptions were not granted.

Under the country’s new policy, jurisdiction over adoptions had shifted from one agency to another, and both vied for authority.

Birth mothers, who had already been interviewed once, had to be found and brought to authorities for multiple interviews—some lasting as long as six hours—to prove they had consented to give up their children. An interview gone wrong, or one missing document, could suspend the process indefinitely, and separate child and parents for months.

The worst news came in May 2008, while Cooper and deCarlo were in back New York. Guatemala officials arrived at the orphanage and seized four children over “missing” paperwork that was at the lawyer’s office. When the director, an American woman, resisted, they returned two days later with an order to take away all the children.
The courts stepped in, freezing the order but also prohibiting the children from leaving the country, or even the property. “The court basically said, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, freeze everything. Kids stay at the facility while we figure this all out,’” Cooper recalled.

The couple moved to Guatemala in May and for the next six months they spent hours daily with their children as well as navigating, with their lawyers, a seemingly endless morass of bureaucratic obstacles.

“It would be impossible to end an adoption,” said deCarlo, “but they can put you through the wringer for years.”

In November, Cooper organized a meeting in Washington with Congressional staffers, seeking help not only for themselves, but the estimated 900 children also caught in adoption limbo.

Over the following months, Cooper and deCarlo lived in a converted storage area in the orphanage so all five could be together as a family. Tenacious efforts, in concert with their lawyers, finally led to the release of their three children.

“All of a sudden the storm cleared and we were on our way,” said Cooper. But Lorenzo was the last child approved for adoption, he said. After him, all cases were frozen.

Last month, Cooper and deCarlo marched in Washington with other parents, many whose children remain in Guatemala, still caught in the system.

“We have renewed energy to get involved,” said Cooper. “By now [Guatemalan policies] are getting to be like child abuse. It’s preventable and we should do everything we can to end it.”

For info, go to guatemala900.org.