Oh the cuteness!

I could eat them with a spoon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM

Premature Mommy Thoughts

We only finished our last home visit with the social worker less than a week ago and already I’m a worrying mom.

Ideally we believe that a child under the age of five will be the best fit for our family, but we are willing to consider a slightly older child if the right situation presents itself. Because of that, and the fact that once our paperwork makes it to the state D*C*F*S offices, we could be called fairly quickly (especially for an older child) I’ve already started thinking/ worrying about the schools in our area.

I am a complete freak about education. I loved school growing up and just devoured every book I could get my hands on. While I realize that a child coming into our home may not have that same intense love of learning, I want them to have the opportunity to have a great, well-rounded education. Because of where we live, our child would attend the county schools. My knee-jerk reaction to that is simply, “Ummm, no.” The stereotype in my head is that county schools are poorly funded and that fewer of their students attend college. I am working to find out if that’s actually true, but I’m going to have to be shown some pretty compelling evidence otherwise to change my mind.

So that leaves us with two options.

I think it would be possible to send our child to city schools ten miles in either direction. One city is considered to be one of the best school systems in this part of the state. It’s a growing community with many families moving into the area. I think that would make it easier for our child to fit in as a “new” student.

The other option is where my in-laws live and where my husband grew up and went to school. The problem? That town is, without a doubt, the cliquey-est town I have ever encountered.

People are perfectly nice but if you haven’t lived there twenty years and don’t go to the right church, you aren’t getting “in”. I’ve been here over four years and not one woman from there has ever reached out to me in friendship. My local friends are from other surrounding areas. So, I definitely have concern about sending a child into that situation. Perhaps because my husband is from there, and his parents are well known and well thought of in the community, our child would have an “in”, but I don’t know if I’m willing to take that chance.

I guess what started me thinking about all this was an event we attended on Saturday night. Our niece participated in the local high school beauty pageant. When we arrived, it was like every other event we go to in that town. My husband was greeting people left and right and I was holding his hand and tagging along behind him. Once we were seated, I just people watched for a while and was struck by how alone I still feel in that community. The best way I can describe it is like this: When my husband and I get together with his family, the conversation is quite often about people I don’t know, events I didn’t attend, places I’ve never been, story after story about “back in the day”. There is absolutely nothing for me to add – no place for me to get a foothold. (That doesn’t bother me as it once did. I love to sit back and watch O & his family tell their stories. It makes me happy because I love each one of them.) My experience with R'ville feels just like that, except on a grander scale. I guess if I'm being honest, it hurts my feelings.

O absolutely doesn’t get it, both because he’s from there and is "one of them", and because he’s a man and men interact differently. Men are SO not cliquey.

The plus side to the town is that it's a wonderful community that supports its' school events, sporting teams, etc . . . a great small town atmosphere, if you're on the inside.

Blah blah blah – I don’t know that this post even has a point. Just thinking “out loud”, I guess.

But the good news? Our niece won best freshman talent and interview, and is one of two class representatives on the court. Isn’t she beautiful? I can tell ya, I didn’t look like THAT when I was 15!

No Snow Cream For Us

So much for my day of building snowmen and making snow cream and generally frolicking in a winter wonderland. Half an inch of snow does not a winter wonderland make.

Believe it or not, it actually used to snow 'round these parts. It wasn’t often, but we’d usually get a couple of “snow days” each year. I would bounce around the house with barely-constrained excitement until my mom could scrounge up the appropriate winter clothing for me. Once outside, I would sled on “hills” that were barely more than an incline and I would make snowmen covered with dirt and leaves, but the highlight was always the snow cream. I’d be sent outside with a big plastic bowl with instructions to fill it up with clean snow and bring it back in to Mom, who was waiting to work her magic.

The basic recipe is:

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large bowl of snow (about 3 quarts)

Blend milk, sugar and vanilla. Stir in enough snow to make the mixture an ice cream consistency. Eat immediately, have sticky fingers, and be happy for hours.

Because people can’t leave well enough alone, there are now all sorts of variations using chocolate milk mix, fruit, heavy creams, even an egg for an eggnog taste. Just say no. There is nothing better than plain old snow cream. In fact, May*field Ice Cream has a snow cream flavor. They know what’s good.

But with a paltry half inch, no snow cream for us today. Stupid stupid weathermen!

Four Letter Word

The weather man said a 4-letter word this morning - a 4-letter word that sends otherwise sane and rational people in my part of the world into a milk-and-bread-buying frenzy. Yes, there is a possibility that we may get SNOW!

As a good Southern girl, I too made my required trip to the grocery store this afternoon and the shelves were already emptying in anticipation of tonight's storm. How much are we expecting, you may ask yourself?

One - two inches, and oh by the way, the expected temperature for Sunday is about sixty degrees so if we're snowed in, it shan't be for long. I'm just hoping to have enough to make snow cream! Mmmmmm!

Anyway, the most exciting news of the week by far was our final home study visit with the social worker, completed on Tuesday afternoon. These home visits have been so much easier than I'd anticipated. I think it helps that we really like and feel comfortable with our worker, and that she's an "old pro" at this, so she's not hyper vigilant like I'd imagine a first-time worker would be. We went through our home safety checklist and other than getting a letter from our local Gas Board stating that our unvented fireplace logs aren't leaking some dread noxious gas that will kill all of us, we are DONE! I can hardly believe it.

I first looked into the foster/adopt classes through the state last summer. It seemed as if there was one snafu after another getting registered. We were just days too late to sign up for one class, another was postponed and we never got a call letting us know when it was rescheduled even though I left six messages. Several surrounding counties weren't having classes until well into the new year. We attended an orientation in our county but we were the only ones there so the class was cancelled.

It felt so much like a continuation of all the fertility treatment shit. We'd get our hopes up that we could finally, finally just get STARTED only to have the rug pulled out from under us time after time.

But we did get started and now, six months later, we can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. All that's left is for our worker to finish writing her report and submit it to the state, along with our foot-thick stack of paperwork and our scrapbook. Theoretically if that review goes okay, we'll be entered into the state's computer database and we will officially be an adoption resource for our state.

To be honest, there is a part of me that's waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for something to go wrong. I still half expect a phone call saying that there's been a mistake and they won't be able to process our application. I can see clearly that my fear of hope stems directly from the time I spent in the world of IF. Those experiences changed me, probably forever in some ways. But there is definitely some excitement and yes, some hope to balance out my fear. Those hopes keep me pushing forward, buying kids' books by the stacks and daydreaming about the day we get the GOOD call letting us know that there's a child who will be coming to our home to stay.

I have to go now. I have to figure out what to make with all this milk and bread. French toast anyone?

Not Alone

Spring is coming – tra la tra la! I have a bad case of spring fever. Buttercups are blooming all over the yard and some of our flowering shrubs are just starting to show a little color. I have been wandering around making plans to enlarge flower beds and buy roses – lots and lots of roses. We’ve already planted two peach trees (Georgia Belles, the most wonderful tasting peaches you’ll ever slice up and put in a pie!). I even have a very respectable case of poison oak.

Last spring O & I raided the site of long-gone house on the backside of the farm. We brought back piles of 100+year-old bricks and fieldstones from the home’s chimney that had fallen decades ago. We lined the flower beds around our house with the bricks and I made a fieldstone pathway with the larger stones and used the smaller ones to line other beds in the yard. Just beautiful! Except I got what my doctor termed “the worst case of poison oak” he’d seen in years.

So it’s February, spring is just around the corner, and what do I need more than anything? I need more fieldstones and bricks. At least this time I didn’t sit squarely in the middle of the poison-oak-covered brick pile. I did, however, still manage to get some on my arms and around my waist. So I may be itchy scratcherson for a while, but at least I’m itchy scratcherson with some beautiful bricks and fieldstones!

I’m feeling much better about the prospect of not having a biological child (again). I had a rough couple of days last week, though. I think the worst part was that I just felt really alone. My non-IF girlfriends love me and would absolutely have said all the wrong things. My girlfriends who have been through IF treatments would have understood but I really couldn’t formulate much to say other than, “Oh my God I may not have a baby” and “You have got to freakin’ be kidding me” and “No REALLY, I may not have a baby - how is that possible?”. The person I really wanted to talk to was my husband.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know how much I love my husband. He truly is the most wonderful man I’ve ever met, but as much as he loves me and wants me to be happy, he doesn’t really “get it” either. He wants to. He tries to. But he just doesn’t.

I knew from the moment we met that O would be a fantastic father. He’s great with kids. So yes, he’d be happy for us to have a child and has been supportive as we’ve pursued IF treatments and worked on getting licensed to become adoptive parents. If we have a child (either bio or through adoption), O would do everything within his power to create a wonderful life for our son or daughter. I have no doubt about that. But if, for whatever reason, that doesn’t happen for us, O would be fine with that. He is very content with our life together as it is now. We both know how lucky we are to have found each other and to have the marriage we have.

I don’t think O really ever pictured himself as a dad. In one respect I am so grateful for that. I don’t have the guilt associated with MY infertility shattering HIS lifelong dreams of having a biological child. But on the other hand, it makes it difficult for him to understand just how deeply-felt my desire to be a mom is and what a loss it would be to me if that doesn’t happen.

Most of the time I go through my life with the faith that this is all going to work out – that I will, someday, some way become a mom or will make peace with it if I do not. But on the occasional days when my sprits are low, I want to be able to talk to my husband, my best friend, and feel as if he “gets it”.

What I need to keep in mind, though, is that we come from very different places on this topic and that he can love, support, and even understand my sadness without having to feel the same way himself. Maybe that’s what I’ve been looking for all along and why I’ve felt so “un-heard”. I’ve wanted him to feel the same urgency, frustration, heartache that I feel about this topic.

He simply doesn’t. I can't expect him to.

I am most definitely NOT alone. He listens when I need to talk. He holds me when I need to cry. He tells me how much he wants to make it all better for me. He jumps in with both feet as we prepare to become adoptive parents.

How could I possibly expect more than that?

Isn't that strange?

I’d say that the odds of me deleting this post before I ever hit the “publish” button are pretty good. Why should this time be any different than the other 20 times I’ve sat down to update this blog since Christmas?

I’m not quite sure where the writer’s block is coming from. I guess part of it is that I’m not really sure what to do with the blog. I started it over a year ago just as O & I were referred to an infertility specialist. This was such a wonderful place to just get it all out – all the sadness and fear and frustration of being infertile in a super-fertile world.

But then we decided to call a halt to IF treatments for a number of reasons and to go in a different direction. Through the fall we took classes to get certified to foster / adopt through the state. That process continues, though it is hopefully soon coming to a successful end. It has come with its’ own set of frustrations and ridiculous situations but we’re still “in the game” and very hopeful that a child will make its’ way to us soon.

I’ve been hesitant to talk too much about my foster-to-adopt frustrations here because I think it would be pretty easy for “locals” to find their way to this blog. I’ve mentioned my name, my husband’s name, and the area where we live. I know of at least one member of our extended family who has likely found my little corner of the internet. If that person knows, I’m betting that several people know.

So that has left me wondering . . . do I shut down this blog and begin another? Do I password protect it? Do I simply journal on my computer and not blog at all? I haven’t quite arrived at an answer but I do know one thing . . . Someday when we have our child in our home, I’m going to wish that I’d taken the time to document this journey, so that’s what I’m going to do. For now, I’m going to do that here.

I plan to take the time to recap our foster/adopting experience thus far but today my mind is really on IF.

I have a history of hyper*plasia, which is a thickening of the uterine lining. Left uncontrolled, it can become endo*metrial can*cer. That’s why I take monthly pro*vera to generate a period. Even with the pro*vera, my lining still tends to be a bit thick. This last period I had a tiny bit of spotting just before and after my cycle. Most women wouldn’t give it a second thought but with my history, I thought it best to get to my gyn and have it checked out. My visit Monday went well. The ultrasound did show a thicker lining, but I was still well within “normal” limits for a pre-menopausal woman. Big sigh of relief. Anyway, we talked about maybe changing up my medication and decided to suppress my periods instead of trying to generate “bigger, better” ones. It sounded fine to me. I clearly can’t get pregnant without medical intervention so why not? She said that it should hopefully thin out my endometrium and just keep everything stable. If not, there may be a D&C in my future.

We went on to talk about options for the future and she said if we were certain about not having biological children, she could do an abla*tion of the uterine lining which (from what I gather) means lasering it to basically stop any future periods. But she said that in order to do that, you had to be “sterile”. She went on to discuss different sterilization procedures including one that didn’t involve invasive surgery.

I have to tell you, I thought I was okay with our decision to not have a biological child but that conversation scared the living shit out of me. The word “sterile” reverberated through my body like few things ever have.

I really have been pretty content with our choice to walk away from fertility treatments. I’ve certainly had my moments . . . receiving a baby shower invitation from a formerly IF family member who stopped communicating with me once she got pregnant (don’t get me started on THAT!!!), hanging up the phone and crying my eyes out after learning of a girlfriend’s pregnancy, feeling irritation with each and every Hollywood pregnancy announcement. Seriously, how are they even MAKING movies these days with everyone so busy creating life?

Anyway, those have been some bumps in what has been a fairly smooth road. We are so thrilled at the prospect of giving a home to a child who needs one – of that child becoming OUR child. But clearly somewhere in the background there has been the unconscious thought that maybe “one of these days” we’ll call the RE and start things up again.

Let me make it clear - we have no plans to do so. In fact, the thought of it literally makes my stomach clench. It was such a horrible time for me – the constant reminders of my body’s failure. I don’t even know how we’d begin to afford it either because as my 40th birthday approaches, we’d probably have to go right to IVF.

However, as I was walking through the parking lot after my appointment, the thought kept running through my mind over and over, “Oh my God, I really may never give my husband a son or daughter! There really may never be a little person running around with O’s blue eyes and sweet spirit and my dark hair and stubbornness!” It sounds ridiculous but I was completely floored by that thought. Isn’t that crazy?!?! I am a pretty self-aware person. I realize all of the following things:

I do not ovulate.
No ovulation equals no pregnancy.
Seemingly, any chance we have for making babies would, at the very least, involve numerous doctors, nurses, needles, meds, procedures, and an enormous amount of $.
We are not willing to put ourselves in financial jeopardy to pursue IF treatments.
Lack of available funds means no doctors, nurses, needles, meds, or procedures.
We are not seeing a RE and I am, in fact, taking meds to completely STOP my period.
No period definitely equals no pregnancy.
I will be 40 in less than two months.

You would think that it would have dawned on me somewhere along the way that I’m not going to have “maybe someday” baby unless something changes dramatically and quite possibly not even then.

I just cannot believe it.

Isn't that strange?

One of a Million

Just one of a million reasons why I adore my husband? He spent the last few evenings putting up our outdoor Christmas lights and decorations and finally finished up tonight just before dinner. After we were through eating, he said, "Let's go drive around the block and look at our lights!" So I went into the laundry room to grab a sweatshirt and he just raced out the door to the car. When I got out there, I realized that he'd been in such a hurry because he wanted to have a Christmas CD playing in the car when I got there to make it perfect for me.

I do love him so!