bloggin

i must say, i have thought about this blog for a long time and i want to be an advocate for open adoption on this blog but i really struggle with protecting my little girls story as it is her story. how do other mom bloggers do that. how will you explain it when they are old enough to understand and ask.

continued

i pooped out last time and never talked about all that did change in the past year.  a key friendship in our lives, a friendship i thought we would grow old with changed pretty much immediately after A was born and has slowly and might i add painfully, deteriorated over the past year and recently ended and i am not sure, with the exception of one incident, what i could or would have done differently.  

before A was born we socialized with these women and their children all  the time.   during the winter they would come to our old apartment for sunday dinner, i would talk to one of them almost every night when she drove home from work.  when A was born one of them came and stayed with me while we waited for the interstate compact.   A's dada is godfather to the eldest daughter.   we babysat their children and guarded them, worried for them as if they were our own.     we also reveled in the fact that all our children would have unique stories and they would have each others as peers and support as they grew up.

for the first 6 weeks after A was born she had  reflux, during which time she cried every night for hours and hours.  needless to say this made being a brand, spanking new parent even more difficult and worrisome.   even once she was treated and was a happier more rested little monkee we had made a decision since it was december in nyc not to cart her around out to restaurants and such at night, nor did we entertain as much as we did prior.    over time as her sleep habits became more regular  we pretty much changed our lives to work with her schedule and worked to protect her bedtime.    at the same time since we live in a nyc apartment it made entertaining somewhat difficult especially a family of four so needless to say we saw our friends less.

the frustration on their part built up over time until finally there were discussions and arguments, the main gist of which were  "you have changed, this is not at all like what we expected it to be like when you had a child, too much has been lost, you act like you don't trust us" etc. etc.   i completely agree things have changed, but i never thought this is the way it would be forever, i never thought it would eventually be the end of the friendship. 

ugh, even writing about it exhausts me physically and emotionally.  i have to finish another time.

the year since

while reflecting on all the changes that led us to A, i have also had an acute awareness of all the things and relationships that have changed since our girl was born.  no matter how many times i have babysat for other peoples children, and no matter how much i may have been warned: nothing, i mean nothing prepared me for the constant worry  i would have for my own child.  i worry all day, everyday about how she is, how she will grow up and how will i be a good parent to her.   

before

i have spent a lot of time reflecting lately...thinking about the future, the past and how different life has been since my little girl came along.     i don't know if i have written much about this but the 18 months before A was born  were filled with a lot of changes, many of them loss of one kind or another.   prior to june 07 the obvious loss had been the creeping realization that we may not conceive a biological child, at which point we started considering donor eggs.   after all that we went through to use our donor we did not conceive with the first cycle and i can truly say i was devastated.  all in the universe seemed aligned with her for this to be "the one". 

I didn't want to leave the house or do anything for weeks.  on round 2  with one of the frozen embryos, i did get pregnant; miscarriage #1 followed.  We took the summer off to rest and heal.  

august  (07) i started to train for a 1/2 marathon that my company was a major sponsor of to benefit breast cancer research and patients.  i loved being able to run and train again without the hinderance of an ivf cycle and the constant worry of trying to get pregnant.   long story short, while training i became pregnant, stopped running and at 10 1/2 weeks (october 07)  lost the pregnancy and needed a few months to rest and recuperate.

december 07 my mom who has survived breast and lung cancer was hospitalized for two weeks with double pneumonia, not a good thing when you are already down one half of a lung.   Then a beloved family pet of 17 years passed away.  Putting that kitty to sleep was one of the saddest things i have ever witnessed in my whole life.  

in february of 08 we met our adoption attorney and started to compose our profile.  a few weeks later at the end of april, while couch shopping at abc carpet and home on a beautiful sunday afternoon we received a call from my mom that my dad, who none of us had seen in a long time, had a heart attack and was in the hospital in the bronx.  he never left the hospital again.  i was there when he coded, asleep in the cicu waiting room.  i still regret my choice not to sleep in his room that night.  the gift in this was that we had 21 days, while he  slowly faded, to reconnect and say all the things we had not said in a long, long time and some things never at all..like "i'm sorry".  

it was a really long year.

end of summer

i am so excited it is almost the end of August for so many reasons...

1. i love, love, love fall...boots, sweaters, turtlenecks and jeans and things i have knit
2. warm breezes start at night that slowly drop a degree or two each week and  give way to cooler breezes, leaves changing and the smell of fall and colder weather in the air.
3. we are finally having our kitchen updated starting friday
4. we had a great summer
5. most importantly, my daughters first birthday is rapidly approaching and i get to celebrate her life and the incredible  gift i have been given in being her mom.
   

it has been so wonderfully busy here...A started to crawl, wave bye bye, hold her bottle, pull herself to standing in her crib and have a wee bit of a temper all in the same week.      my work travel has been hectic to say the least, 6 nights away between June and July and another 8 in the next 5 weeks.   thank God for my aunt and my mom who sit for A when i am away.  no one besides family has ever put my little girl to bed and that luxury makes me very happy as a working mom...although leaving her never gets easier.  among all my other new found fears i developed upon becoming a mother is that her first words will be "mommy go bye-bye" or "bye-bye momma".  

wow

I can't believe it has been four months since I have posted....it's OK though, I don't think anyone except my husband reads so it is probably fine. Anyway interestingly enough my last post was March 9, one month to the day before our finalization and I think I may have flipped out just a wee bit as that day approached. I absolutely had no reservations in my heart about anything happening to disrupt our family but I still was a little weirded out as the day approached. So bless my husbands heart he agreed to go see a counselor with me from Spence Chapin who works with families pre and post adoption, although this was mostly my issue he did attend for 4 sessions.

I am not sure what I was really worrying about but what I went in to discuss was how my Birthmom,  was going to process the finalization, and how we would build the relationship without the pre-defined agency contacts of our first six months as a family.   I was truly worried about her grieving process and how to ask her about how we should communicate moving forward.  

Anyway, several sessions and one very supportive husband later I was feeling much better and enjoyed the permission to focus on my family and not worry so much about the moving forward part as it would  inevitably define itself...which it is doing.   

So that accounts for 6 weeks of my time off from this blog. 

you never think it is going to be you

I remember the first IVF cycle. I was so sure it would be my one and only; because, well of course I would get pregnant straight away... it was always that way for me. Not "always that for me" as in things came easily, not at all, but rather "always that way for me" as in always some work and then I was successful. Success may not look like what I thought it would at the onset, but it was success and I was always happy. I was always a late bloomer why would this be any different. I didn't really choose a career until I was almost 28 years old, prior to that I graduated college worked in a gym and was a bartender, but when I did finally get a career it was a good one; it has been my career for 17 years now, and it has been rewarding. I didn't meet my husband until I was 38 years old, married at 41. So of course I thought "late bloomer". I am not going to get pregnant on my own but will have to do this thing (IVF) and I will reap my just reward of pregnancy and family.. Right?? By the way, the fact that I was 41 years old and trying to get pregnant didn't really scare me all that much until my doctor kept telling me it was my age that was the only problem.

After the first cycle failed, I was pretty sure I needed to meditate more (TM), yeah, that had to be part of the answer. I had to make sure I was visualizing enough. Most importantly, I needed to get up, dust myself off, go for a run and get right back on that horse. Perseverance has always worked for me, so I just needed to make sure I didn't cry "uncle". Well, 4 stimulations, 4 retrieivals, 4 transfers, 4 not pregnant phone calls, 1 donor, 2 donor transfers, two more not pregnant phone calls, two of the top ten IVF centers in the US and oh yes one pregnancy all by myself, while training for a half marathon, later I wasn't crying uncle, but I was willing to walk away and pursue my goal of being a mom and not just being pregnant.

There were so many points along the way where I could not believe that this was happening to me. I was unable to imagine what part of the formula, surely there had to be one, that I didn't have right. Was I not sitting on the couch enough? Should I stop sitting and just lie down for two days instead? I was dumbfounded this was going to be the only thing where success in some way shape or form did not arrive. And now being 44 soon to be 45 bothered me.