Microblog Mondays - Assumptions about choice

We are finally in the last stages of this interminable election. There are quite a few women I know who are voting for Trump or a third party candidate.

The women who are voting for Trump--all of them that I have spoken to which is in no way a scientific survey--cite the Supreme Court and anti-choice views as their reason.

When life begins--at conception, at sometime in utero, at birth--I don't know, I don't pretend to know.

When I did IVF and I saw those little dots on the screen--they were real to me. I was overwhelmed at how protective I was of those little dots. They were mine. When the IVF failed I was so despondent I can't put it into words.

That being said, I can't and won't use my beliefs and how I felt to say how others can and should feel.

I should say this. Pro-life is not the right term.
Anti choice is.

If you are voting for someone so that he will put forth justices that will force women to have babies that they don't want, and it doesn't bother you that he has no problem sexually molesting these self-same women--you are not pro-life, you are anti-choice.

If you do not see that there should be mandatory maternity and family leave, you are not pro-life you are anti-choice.

Please understand that, according to the Jewish religion, when the health (physical or mental)  of the mother is in danger the pregnancy must be terminated. Not should, not can, must.  If you can't embrace that because of your religion, you are not pro-life, you are anti-choice.

Do understand, if abortion is outlawed--there will still be abortion. It will just be unsafe.

Towards the end of her life my mom opened up about her college friend, Julie. She died because she had an unsafe abortion. My mom said that Julie was her best friend in college. Had she lived, I would have called her Aunt Julie. She was taken away from me because men in the 1940s didn't want to trust women with their own bodies. I would have liked her, my mom said. When I think of mom in the afterlife I like thinking of her with Aunt Julie, eating chocolate and drinking wine. She died horribly.

If you want to force women into this situation, don't you dare call yourself pro-life. You are anti-choice.

The Cave 2005

Heeding Mel's oft repeated bit to make backups I went back to my first IF blog. I reread the posts about possible pregnancies, fertility treatments, a hailstorm of friend pregnancies and some bad stuff that my family said about adoption.  

Then I read this post. 
When I think of the post I wrote yesterday, I know it might seem like I have never been there. Now I'm happy but I never suffered. 

I suffered. 

Here is the proof that I know whereof I speak. Here is the proof that I walked the path some of you are now on and I get it. I grok it. I know. 

2005

I've heard infertilty compared to islands and once a cave.  

Today I think the cave metaphor is more accurate. Sometimes everything just hurts. It generally happens around the time I get my period, but still I have these times where I just need to go into my cave.  

It's dark in the cave. But that's okay. I don't deserve sunshine. Sunshine is for people who's bodies work the way they are supposed to. Sunshine is for babies, not women who can't have them.  

It is wet in the cave. Tears, blood make for a wet atmosphere. Maybe it's the blood of a miscarriage or chemical pregnancy. The blood of countless periods that came even though I was sure this time that I actually was pregnant. The tears that happened during doctors visits. During tests while nurses berate me for crying. Telling me that this doesn't hurt when it felt like I was being raped with chemicals. Tests that are embarrasing, humiliating. I have to make a joke just to get through the day. Going to a second RE to be told that everything the first RE did was wrong and I spent money, time, and pain doing a treatment that was never going to work anyway. Tears when everything around you is breaking into little pieces. Friendships, marriage, sex.  

Sometimes I have company in the cave. Sometimes my husband is there with me, but more often I am alone. Reaching out across a sea of computers to touch others who have their own caves. Others who know that the cave is lonely but you can't be alone. You ache to be with others but only others who know what it is. They know what you want and how you are hurting.  

It has to be a cave because only stone can absorb the anger. And I get so angry. I try not to. I try to be okay, but when I need to go into the cave I bang my hands on the rock until they bleed. I am furious. I am furious at every woman who ever harmed her child. I am furious at everyone who ever gave me assvice.
"Just Relax."
"Have you ever thought about lifting your legs in the air after sex?"
"Why don't you just adopt?"  
"You aren't meant to have children until you recognize Jesus Christ as your personal savior."  
"You won't have children until your husband converts to Judaism."
"A low-carb diet helped a friend." 
"Become a vegetarian."
"You're just too fat to have children."
"Well of COURSE she doesn't have kids, her husband would have to sleep with her to do that and can you imagine anyone being that hard up?" (Overheard at one of my jobs from hell)

The cave is filled with every doubt I have ever had about myself. If I gave more to charity, If I was a better person, If I was a better wife, if I SOMETHING it would happen.  

There are days I can stand the sunlight. Days I can leave the cave behind me. I send away to adoption agencies. I look at countries, at children. I realize that I can be a mother and my parenting will be just as valid. Days I see a child in my arms and she has almond eyes, not the blue of me or my husband. But she laughs in my arms and calls me mama. She takes my hand and says 'Mama come see.' And I know, I do know, that she will keep me too busy to go back into the cave.  

But she's a dream right now. And my other dreams have turned to shit. I can't believe with the innocence that I had that I will have that child. I can't believe that everything will work out all right, because I believed that once, and I wound up here, in this cave.  

I sometimes think that the worst part of the cave is that I am the only one who is able to crawl out of it. No one can come and lift me out of the depression. I have to decide that I want to leave the cave. I have to pull myself to my feet and walk my bruised and battered soul out into the sunlight. But the cave is safe, and I am safe from the slings and barbs of my own psyche and society that decides that a child's face can sell anything. A society that values the children far more than they do the parents is painful to me. Hiding in the cave is good. But I don't want to be here. And I inch myself to the mouth of the cave and it is dark and the stars shine down on me. I once believed my child was up there, waiting for the right moment to have me hold him or her. But now they are stars, and the night air smells sweet. And I can stay at the mouth of the cave for a bit, and wait for the sun to rise.

Two years ago--yesterday.

Yesterday we celebrated our 2nd family day.  I wrote this article about it and I thought I would share it here. 

It was the most important day of my life and all I could think of was, Would I make it to the toilet

My husband, Dave and I were in China in a van going to our hotel to see our child for the first time. We had been told that we would meet our baby, the day after our arrival in Nanchang. I had it all planned. I’d have a bag of Cheerios for the baby. I knew I would sing “Baby Mine.” I would wear red—the color of joy in Chinese culture.

Why I should have expected this day to go as planned when nothing whatsoever in my motherhood journey had done so, I don’t know. First we went through fertility treatments. The medical establishment has innumerable ways to take the “sex” out of “sexy”—leaving me to wonder “y?” Was I fully a woman if I couldn’t bear a child? How was my marriage to work when sex became a chore—and someone other than the two of us made the schedule? After yet another doctor’s office called to tell me that the latest procedure hadn’t worked, the decision to adopt wasn’t so much a decision, as a level of defiance: I was going to be a mother.  We chose China.

If I thought fertility treatments had been invasive, the adoption journey brought invasiveness to a whole new level. We cleaned up our messy home and prayed that a speck of dust wouldn’t take our dream away when the social worker visited. We asked our friends to write recommendations for us. How many parents today would have children if their friends had to write references for them? We were fingerprinted so many times that it might have been cheaper had we built our own crime lab. We were “Paper Pregnant” and remained so for close to seven years.

Then we got the call, an email with sporadic information, and a picture. A little girl who was born the day I had miscarried my only pregnancy, was to be our child. She was sitting, unsmiling, against an orange background. She was wearing a pink outfit with yellow socks. She was the most beautiful baby we had ever seen. Another three months of hacking through the bureaucratic red tape and we were in China, our daughter’s birthplace.

 The day before we were supposed to meet our daughter, Dave and I, and another couple that would be meeting their soon-to-be-adopted daughter got off the plane in Nanchang, China.  We were assured that our guide would find us—and it was easy to see how. We were among very few Caucasians there. Our guide, Claire, introduced herself, helped us get our luggage, and told us, almost parenthetically that our babies would be waiting at the hotel and we had to get into the van quickly.  I stared at her. Was she trying to maybe make a joke? The other soon-to-be mother smiled and made joyful sounds. She obviously processed this better. My brain was a blank. I looked at my husband and I saw he was just as scared as I was. Then, of course, my body got into the action. I needed to use the bathroom.

In most of China a toilet consists of a ceramic hole in the ground with a place to put your feet. This is supposed to be excellent for your colonic health. If you’re a Westerner needing to defecate, it is the devil itself. I had used one, but I wanted to go to a Western toilet in the hotel.  I was hoping I would make it.

I tried to imagine our baby, soon to be renamed Lotus in my head. Was she walking? Did she have a temper? The information we had was eclectic and maddening. It said that when she got sick she got well quickly—but not what she had recovered from. It said she liked music—but not who sang it to her. It had the measurements of her anus—and I had some degree of pity for the poor worker who had to record that bit. All that info and I didn’t know her. What did she like to eat? What made her smile? Laugh? What made her fist her hands? Would she like us? Would I like her? Would I make it to the hotel to use a bathroom or would I embarrass myself before I met her?

We arrived at the hotel and I ran full-out to the Western toilets—in time! Afterwards, I walked to the ornate lobby of the hotel. The sun streamed in as I looked for Dave. I’d be lying if I said I remembered the expression on his face—all I saw was the little girl he was holding in his arms.  She still didn’t have much hair. She was wearing a long sleeved striped shirt in 95-degree weather and, her face was very red. That might also have been because she was screaming her lungs out. She didn’t seem to be afraid, more pissed off. I ran to my husband and held my arms out for our baby.

He placed a screaming weight of about 20 pounds into my arms. I started jostling, hoping to comfort her, and she screamed louder. I opened my mouth to sing and every song I’d ever learned went out of my head. I would have been hard pressed to do the ABC song.  I jostled more and her crying got even louder. I held her closer and she screamed right in my ear. Finally I heard myself singing:

“Oh stop your crying, it will be all right.

Just take my hand, hold it tight.

I will protect you from all around you.

I will be here, don’t you cry.”

As the next words of “You’ll Be in my Heart” from Tarzan came out of my mouth, my daughter stopped crying. My blue eyes met her deep brown ones, and she kept eye contact. I tried to put all the love I felt into my eyes. My voice broke as I sang about how she would be in my heart. I felt Dave’s arms come around us as we became a family of three. 

Who I Am Now

Hi,

This is for all the people who might not know me--and are arriving for IComLeavWe.

Who am I anyway?
Am I my resume.
That is a picture of a person I don't know.

I am, the mother of Lotus, the most beautiful child born in China--or anywhere else on the planet. We adopted her a few weeks after her first birthday. She is now nearly three, talking up a storm and refusing to nap with the best of them.

We adopted her after 12 years of infertility hell. This included IVF, IUI, and one miscarriage. That miscarriage happened, coincidentally--or not so coincidentally--on Lotus' birthday. We waited seven years to adopt a non-special-needs child from China. I have no issue with those who didn't choose to wait. I have no issue with those who adopt a special needs child. We are all parents.

I was let go from my job of ten years nearly a year ago.  Am I still bitter? Kinda. I'm trying to find where I fit in career wise and get money. So much of who I am was wrapped up in my career, I am still finding out who I am.

Mostly though lately, I'm a daughter who is grieving the loss of her mother. I didn't know how grief can touch everything. While I am much better than I have been, I still stifle the urge to call her to tell her something that Lotus did.

So, welcome to my blog. Glad to meet you.

More later.

February 4, 2013

It was two years ago today. 

Because of a wonderful woman named Rumor Queen and her website I knew that our wait was coming to an end. I knew that our "date" was in the referral batch. I had been calling our agency daily--twice daily to see if there was any news. The answer was always the same, "as soon as we know something, you'll know something."  It was said with gentle patience by a wonderful person, Julie, who had a kind voice and a sweet sense of humor.  

I had waited a weekend and it was a Monday. I was at work. I had already called the agency twice. The second time Julie said that the mail had come and there was no packet from China. She was so sorry, but it was going to be another day. I was polite on the phone, I said I waited six years, what was one more day. 

I hung up and I was so furious that I couldn't stay at my desk. I went downstairs and walked around the building so I could calm down. I cried a little bit. I got back to my desk and tried to concentrate on my work when my cell phone rang. I looked at it and saw it was the agency. What could they want? It wasn't going to be today. I was less than polite when I answered the phone. 

"Hey," I said in a grumbly tone. 

"Hi," Julie said. "Can I ask, is this your first child?"

What the ever loving hell did she need to know that for? I thought. 

"Yes." I replied in a growl. 

"Well, congratulations Momma, it's a girl!"

I'm told I screamed. I don't remember screaming. I remember falling off my chair to my knees.

"She's healthy." Julie said as if I wasn't turning into a blubbering wreck. "She's nine months old and she is beautiful." I cut her off because I promised D that we would see the picture together. I called D and screamed through the phone, "It's a girl! We got the referral!"  He said "I'm on my way home right now!!"

I ran and told my boss and got on my way home. Nine months old, I counted. She was born in May--around the time I had my one and only pregnancy and miscarriage. I got in the house and D was cleaning the kitchen so he wouldn't open his email. 

Together we opened the document and saw her face. As I'm going to try to maintain her privacy, I'm not posting the whole picture here--but I'm showing one of the things that struck me. Her little hand--it needed someone to hold it. From this day forward, D and I were to be that someone. We were going to hold her hand when she needed it--and sometimes when she didn't.  I also noticed her feet--this had been taken three months before, in December, when it was probably cold--and someone had put these yellow socks on her feet, to keep her warm. Someone cared to keep her warm. Then we looked at her birthday, she had been born on the day I miscarried. 

We called grandparents and siblings and friends. We were so over the moon that the paper pregnancy of six years had come to this conclusion. There would be new dates and a trip to China, but February 4th is when I became a mom.