Bringing Back Baby : Adoption: An abandoned Romanian infant thrives in the care of a new mom.

Three months ago, Shirley Suffern brought the malnourished baby she had adopted in Romania home to Camarillo.

At seven months, Alyssa could not sit up by herself or crawl or make eye contact. Her legs had atrophied from disuse. And she never cried.

But those days seem long past, Suffern said this week, as Alyssa sat on the floor pulling playfully on the ear of the family’s cocker spaniel.

“You can hardly believe the ordeal when you look back, because she’s so healthy,” said Suffern, who found herself caught in a bureaucratic web that delayed the little girl’s arrival for six weeks.

Suffern and her husband, George, decided to adopt a Romanian baby in March after seeing a television story that showed sick and abandoned babies in state hospitals and orphanages. The Sufferns adopted Alyssa through Romanian courts, but the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to issue an entry visa.

The INS denied allegations that it had clamped down on the immigration of infants whose parents were still alive in response to a television news program about the selling of Romanian babies.

But Suffern, who had expected to complete the adoption in two weeks, was in Romania nearly two months before intervention by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and the White House allowed the 46-year-old high school teacher to return home with her baby.

The trying times were more than worth it, Suffern said, remarking on the progress that the plump little girl with soft brown hair and large hazel eyes has made.

“I feel embarrassed when I say this child was starving from malnutrition,” Suffern said. “What a joke!”

When she came over from Romania, Alyssa measured 25 1/2 inches and weighed 12 pounds. Now, the 10-month-old is 27 inches and 17 pounds. Suffern said she has spent a great deal of time doing exercises with the baby to strengthen her legs, help her crawl and encourage her to sit up.

For the first months of her life, Alyssa had been kept tightly wrapped in blankets with her hands strapped to her sides so she would require less care, Suffern said. Her development was stunted.

But this week, Suffern awakened to coos of delight from the baby crib, where Alyssa had managed to sit up on her own for the first time. The day before, Alyssa had crawled halfway across the family room to investigate a telephone cord.

“She’s learning to pat-a-cake, she waves goodby and she says, ‘Hi,’ ” the proud mother said.

Suffern continues to correspond with many of the 60 couples that she met in Romania, all of whom were caught in the same predicament. Bound together by the experience, they exchange pictures of their adopted children and hope to meet again later this year.

In the aftermath of the couples’ highly publicized tribulations, the INS has granted special visas to almost 200 people who wanted to bring adopted Romanian children into the United States, INS spokesman Duke Austin said.

The immigration service also has detailed the circumstances under which foreign children may be adopted and immediately admitted to the United States. The details are listed in flyers distributed to every adoption agency in the country and in materials handed out in Romania, Austin said.

Children qualify as orphans under INS regulations only if they have no living parents or if they have been abandoned, INS officials said. Romania has outlawed the sale of babies.

Suffern said she has been unable to forget her experiences in Romania, where she waited in long lines to get bread and visited the U.S. Embassy over and over again in hopes of leaving the country with her baby.

She often thinks about the conditions at the Romanian hospital where she found Alyssa. “That will always haunt me,” Suffern said. “Seeing those babies in cribs and no one to hold them.”

She said she sometimes thinks about the difficult lives of Alyssa’s natural parents. She saw the young couple, who have six other children, when they appeared in Romanian court to complete the adoption.

Alyssa’s Romanian family lives without heat or running water. They abandoned the child in the state hospital two weeks after her birth because they did not have enough money to care for her, Suffern said.

Suffern keeps photographs of Alyssa’s parents and will share stories of Romania with her, she said. “I hope to tell her about her country, and yet give her a life in America.”