At first there were tears.

And then there was the gut-wrenching worry that made it impossible to eat or sleep very well in the days following the earthquake in Haiti.

Then Dexter resident Cheryl Ankenbauer found the resolve to stop crying for the young Haitian girl her family is in the process of adopting and start working.

“I cannot explain it. My love for her is not something I’ve conjured up in worry. God has put in my heart a mother’s love for this child,” Ankenbauer said. “I prayed and said, ‘God, you’ve got to give me the ability to function.’ And it was this miraculous change.”

The Ankenbauers are among hundreds of American families spending their days faxing documents to the U.S. State Department, making phone call after phone call and searching the Internet for any resources they can find to expedite the process of getting their future adoptive children safely home.

Cheryl Ankenbauer said she’s not the type who might normally adopt a child. She and her husband already have two children, 8 and 13 years old. But in August 2008, a family friend had sent out requests asking people to pray for a 13-year-old Haitian girl, Rosena, an orphan.

She was desperately thin and her parents had both died. But she had such a look of joy on her face. The Ankenbauers couldn’t get her out of their heads.

On August 23, 2008 - Cheryl’s birthday and their wedding anniversary - they sent an e-mail to Rosena’s orphanage to begin the process of trying to adopt her. They traded photos and cards with Rosena as they went through the adoption process, which they expected to wrap up sometime this year.

That process, Cheryl Ankenbauer said, has included a home study to examine the safety of the home and the stability of her marriage, criminal and financial background checks and investigations of Rosena’s background to verify her family situation. It produced mounds of paperwork.

It is that documentation which has reportedly been lost in the rubble of many of Haiti's orphanages.

There have been reports of initial troubles of getting aid to orphanages, including food and clean water. There also is continuing concern about conditions because, by many accounts, there are few buildings safe enough to house the orphans indoors. There are also concerns about the spread of disease and violence in the country, and there have been huge increases in orphans who need care in Haiti.

The situation had families and advocacy groups pressuring the U.S. government to speed up the work of getting orphans already in the adoption process into the country and out of dangerous conditions.

A national child advocacy group, the Joint Council on International Children’s Services, has been organizing efforts and began taking information and communicating the latest updates to adoptive families.

However, other international child advocacy organizations have also raised concerns that moving the adoption process forward too quickly or while lacking all proper documentation could unnecessarily put children at risk of being taken into human trafficking networks or being permanently separated from family members who are still alive, but cannot be found.

Not knowing how to get Rosena into the country, the Ankenbauers called the office of Rep. Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek, for help. They were among three Washtenaw County families in Schauer's district who did so, Schauer said.

"This is a top priority," Schauer said. "We want to be sure these children being adopted by American families can get up here as quickly and safely as possible."

On Friday, he made a stop in Saline to pick up a petition asking the State Department to remove adoption barriers for these Haitian children. The petition was signed by more than 1,000 Saline and Ann Arbor high school and middle school students. Saline sophomore Kathryn Wong, a family friend of the Ankenbauers, spearheaded the effort.

Schauer said while progress may seem slow, it does appear progress is being made.

Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department announced it would offer humanitarian parole to any child who, like Rosena, was already in the process of being adopted.

The Ankenbauers recently received confirmation the department has received their documentation, but do not know what will happen next. In the meantime, they have been able to receive regular updates by Twitter, e-mail and about six or seven blogs they check regularly.

"They are still sitting at the orphanage, sleeping out in the damp and cold," Cheryl Ankenbauer said. "But they are getting aid."

But the waiting game is frustrating, she said. It has been an exhaustive effort trying to pull together the right papers and following up on the process, while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy for her kids.

The family has an extra bed in the loft room their daughters already share, waiting for Rosena to join the family. And they've tried to together the clothing she might need when the girl finally arrives.

But that too brings some apprehension, she said.

"I do worry," she said. "What am I going to teach this 13-year-old who's been through all this?"

Tina Reed covers health and the environment for AnnArbor.com. You can reach her at tinareed@annarbor.com, call her at 734-623-2535 or find her on Twitter @TreedinAA.