Raising Arianna

Ariana Spiglanin, 3, plays on the mat during gym class at The Little Gym in Torrance. Photo by Alene Tchekmedyian

When Lauren Spiglanin realized she couldn’t get pregnant, she and her husband, Tom, decided to adopt a child from an orphanage in Armenia. Three years ago, she got the call she’d been waiting for – a baby girl was born. Arianna was born a month premature – her birth mother had died of a brain aneurism a week after giving birth.

“That’s all I ever wanted, a little girl,” she said.

What followed the much-anticipated phone call was a two-and-a-half year process, full of visits to Armenia, mounds of paperwork and some unanswered questions about the baby’s medical records.

After the adoption was finalized, the night before the Spiglanins were flying home with their daughter, an envelope was left for the couple at their hotel.

Arianna’s full medical records were revealed – she had cerebral palsy. Her birth mother’s placenta was detached during her pregnancy, depriving Arianna of oxygen for an unknown amount of time. Cerebral palsy is caused by injuries or abnormalities to the brain and can affect nervous system functions like movement and learning.

Things started to make sense. When Spiglanin first met Arianna, the baby girl was bundled in multiple layers of clothes – she suspects the orphanage was attempting to conceal her frailty. Spiglanin had noticed that Arianna had trouble sitting up on her own and holding her head up. At the time, doctors told her that Arianna just needed stimulation and perhaps physical therapy.

“We were deceived,” Spiglanin said, as she took her smiling, gurgling Arianna out of her walker, placed her on her lap and fed her a water bottle and a pink Starbucks cake pop.

Soon after, Spiglanin, a strong-willed woman with an aura of confidence, got laid off from her job with the city of El Segundo. It freed up time to start what she calls, “mommy’s boot camp.” Spiglanin obtained a walker to help Arianna strengthen the muscles in her abdomen and neck. Every week, Arianna goes to gym class at The Little Gym in Torrance and aquatic therapy in Huntington Beach. At the mall, Arianna learns to walk up the steps; while grocery shopping, Arianna learns to keep her head up in the grocery cart; at the park, she learns to hold the chains on the swings. “Anything that we do, I make it into an exercise,” she said.

Arianna is a hard worker and doesn’t give up, Spiglanin said. “If we’re in the car driving to aquatic therapy and I’m listening to Dr. Laura, she won’t stop screaming until I put on Dora,” Spiglanin said. On Nov. 28, Arianna’s third birthday, she started pre-school.

Currently, Spiglanin is raising funds to construct a water park, “Ari’s Playground,” at the Nork orphanage in Armenia. Spiglanin and Arianna will travel there in spring for the ribbon cutting ceremony. “There’s no place for these kids to play there,” she said, adding that the current playground is a field of weeds.

Raising Arianna has taken its toll on Spiglanin. “You ask yourself, ‘Why?’” she said. “This is my only kid. I kind of went through my depression… It’s very hard, going to gym class, seeing other moms with their little girls and boys, the same age, and their little kids interacting, and mine is, but isn’t.”

Therapy has helped Spiglanin overcome feelings of depression, she said. At the end of the day, she’s focused on Arianna’s well being. “I want her to be self-sufficient,” she said.

“I’ll have moms come up to me and say, ‘I applaud you,’” she said. “I don’t want be applauded. She’s my kid. She looks like me, she acts like me. She’s me.”

For more information on or to donate to Ari’s Playground, visit www.tomandlaurenshow.com/paros.