does anyone else hate the word blog?

i’m just curious. i’ve been thinking some lately about why i haven’t felt like writing much. its not that things aren’t happening worthy of being written about, its just that i can’t convince myself its worth the effort of writing it down. and also i wonder, does it need to be shared? for what reason? there are fifty million billion blogs out there on parenting alone, and part of me doesn’t want to add to that unless i have something to say that a stranger might want to read, or benefit in some way from hearing. i am capable of keeping a paper journal, so i have to ask myself- why do it here?

some of it is time, too- my life feels very full right now, and when i am done with the experiencing of one thing, there’s no time to process (in writing) before i’m on to the next.

but also, i don’t like the word blog. like, i really don’t like it. maybe that’s a block too? probably not, but i’ll throw it out there because the excuses aren’t really adding up to much.

i’ll list here some topics that i started to draft, and never finished. if someone really wants me to write on one, let me know- and perhaps i will:

-why i think of sticking with one child, even though we always planned on more.  and also, why i probably won’t.

-more on my awesome nephew, who i am visiting once again

-why i came very close to but didn’t adopt my cousin’s daughter, who is now in foster care awaiting adoption

-my acupuncture mentor, and an amazing talk he gave on “the most precious deepest wound”

-a recent pregnancy scare, and what it brought up. wondering if i would be able to go through an abortion or not. and a lot more on that one…

-many, many amazing stories about my amazing son

So you see, i could really be a great blogger when you look at all that potential. I just wanted you to know.

 

Protected: my dancing boy (the one doing the grand plie)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

 

my first nephew, and biological connections

my adorable, beautiful, perfect first nephew was born saturday, and i have been over the moon about it ever since. even though i have many dear nephews and nieces who were born to first cousins and siblings-in-law, and many children of friends who i love very much, this is different. this is my nephew, son of my only brother. (well, i have 2 others brothers- but they are 3 and 5, and so hopefully not producing children soon. otherwise we got issues to say the least.)

my nephew is also the first child so close to me who i am biologically related to, since wendell and my younger brothers were adopted. so i’ve been curious about that, about how that would be. i wondered whether when i saw him there would be this flash of instant recognition that would somehow influence how quickly i fell in love. i wondered if i would feel i knew him, on that basis. (truly, this was a curiosity rather than anything else. i have never wondered if i might love my child more- or less- if he were biologically related to me. i believe strongly that this isn’t the case and anyway, its actually an unknowable thing. but i’ll tell you that if there is some greater state of love, i’m not really interested. my heart is already too stretched from the growing.)

since this is something people think and write about, i’ll add that i have never worried about whether the grandparents will love my brother’s baby more either. maybe it helps that my father has 2 adopted kids, but i just don’t see things in such a way as to worry about this stuff. and honestly if they did, that would be ok with me- take some of the pressure of of me having to make sure they get visits all the time! my mom especially. i’m kidding here, but only partly. wendell is a special kid, and everyone wants a piece of him all the time, which is mostly a very good thing.

but back to that curiosity about instant love based on biology (as it relates to children not your own)… when i first held my nephew, i thought my heart would explode with love. it was instant for me, but it wasn’t about his resemblance to my brother, i don’t think. this little baby is clearly his own self- born from his wonderful mother and father, but himself. it was very cool to see the flashes of my brother in him, because that kind of stuff is just somewhat amazing and somewhat surreal. i love my brother more than i think any sister could, and i think that’s what was so powerful about holding his baby for the first time.  it was the knowing that this baby is his now- his responsibility, his charge, his love… and since i have been a mother for 3 years now, i know what that means, and what a goddamn big deal it is. i know also how lucky this little baby is, since he has the best father in the world. second to wendell’s, of course..

it’ll be cool to see how this little one grows to look like his parents- and maybe even me!- but that sort of stuff is really separate from love.  i think, though, that when you have your kids that way, it gets inextricably tied up- and how could it not? its the way your kid came to you- how could you not think that your love for them is based on that? that’s why i understand biological families thinking families like mine are somehow less real. for a time when wendell was a baby, i felt biological families were less real- simply because i couldn’t imagine anyone loving their kid more than i did, and adoption was how my family was formed. faulty logic i know, but young mother’s brains are addled, aren’t they?

independent of all this biology and adoption stuff, it is a wonderful thing to feel so happy for someone else in a totally uncomplicated way. i love and adore and worship my brother, and now he has a son. that’s some good stuff.

 

 

hello, walls

(no reason for that entry title. i just love willie nelson.)

i haven’t felt much like writing on this blog lately, and i even wrote in my old fashioned journal this week. but a lot of really wonderful things have been happening around here. i have my first nephew, a sweet baby boy who i will get to meet tomorrow and am crazy happy about. i have a lot of thoughts about that, and adoption, and how i expected he would look familiar in his pictures simply because he’s my brother’s son. but he doesn’t… well, now he does because i’ve looked at his picture 5 million times i love him so much. but he really just looks like his own self- as unfamiliar as wendell was to me at first, and as immediately lovable, too. 

and wendell started ballet class this week, too, which was awe-some. so, so much so. its at a real bonified ballet school, the one i went to, actually. so that after class we went up and watched an adult company class. it was mostly men in that one, and i love that he is getting to see big, strong powerful men do such graceful things with their bodies- and be affectionate with one another, too. we were both riveted watching for an hour. as for himself, he really is a total natural. he can truly do anything with his body that he chooses, and what a gift is that?

but, anyway, we’ll see if i keep this blog up. i wanted to poke in and say hi to the few reading, but i haven’t felt the urge to write here like i was before.

happy summer to all-

 

i’m back

the appointment with my (too) young, hot neurosurgeon went as well as i could have hoped for, i suppose. nothing has grown in any apparent way, which is great, but its still a bummer to have to talk about unwanted things in your body to begin with. at least i don’t have to think about any of it for the next 6 months, when i have to go up there again.

i feel wiped out though.  if i had my way, i’d crawl into a dark cave and sleep the memories of last week off. but life- especially life with a 3 year old- doesn’t allow for that. and maybe that’s a good thing. today i was ready to get back to work- i only work part time mondays and wednesdays, but those days wendell goes to preschool. well, he woke up with his first fever in months, so that plan was out. i stayed home in the morning (and am at work now, while my husband is home). and it was actually very nice. there aren’t so many days my little boy will just fall asleep on my chest at 11 am. so i do cherish that part of it, sorry as i am to see him sick. it always brings back babyhood memories…. and the funny thought of a much larger child still insisting he should sleep on my chest…

i’ve been thinking a lot about this potential child number 2, and wondering if we’re meant to be parents to (just) one or more, but am really not sure. it surprises me that i even consider it, but i do. another post coming on that soon-

 

so, what time’s the waterboarding appointment?

Yesterday was another grueling day at NIH. I think you wouldn’t believe what I went through unless you saw it, but in any case: I was put in a chair in a tiny cylindrical room, then strapped down, somewhat like you would be in an electric chair. I had goggles on my eyes, and earphones on my ears. It was like Tron meets the space shuttle meets the electric chair. OMG. So! Fun! It would be fun for a 7 year old boy, I think.

But then they closed the door, and there was complete darkness. And then they started spinning the chair. In different directions, and at different speeds. Seriously, this really happened to me as part of a government financed study. I am not making this up. It was to test my vestibular nerve. 

i couldn’t see anything but i could hear them talking about me through the earphones, and at a certain point, I started crying- which of course no one knew. and then I became very sorry for myself and started crying more. when they asked if i could continue, i couldn’t get the words out and they opened the chamber and saw the blubbering mess i was. which was actually a good thing, i think, because these tests are just too much. i know they want a lot of information, but if i can’t hack it and i’m asymptomatic, patients who are debilitated will really have a hard time. so that’s good information for them. they need to pare down.

in the end they were very nice and responsive to my feedback, so i think my breakdown was a good public service. tonight my dear husband and son arrive, and tomorrow we get all the results. but i’m not too nervous because whatever happens, its better than the sci-fi spinning chair from hell.

 

a lab rat

..is what i feel like. i’m exhausted from having my body tested more ways than i can count, and its only day 1 of 4. the good news is my hearing tests appear to be the same, as do other tests i’ve had before. but all the new tests (some involving fun experiments where they blow air in your air to make you dizzy and nauseous! woohoo!) showed some pathology. the bad news is actually not really new news. i do have the disease (its called neurofibromatosis type 2 for those interested), and so of course something is going to show up somewhere. i have no noticeable symptoms (hearing is good, balance is good), but on these crazy nuanced tests, it shows that yes, my vestibular nerve is kind of wonky. since i’ve never had the test before, its possible it was always that way, and would always be with someone with NF2. i’m also the first person in this study to have these tests (a brave pioneer! ha!), so they don’t know how i compare to others with the disease yet.  

they treat me like i’m the perfect patient because i’m so subclinical/ asymptomatic. i’m a good baseline to see where the disease goes from here. (um, how about nowhere?), and in my regular life, that’s how it feels. so doing all these tests is surreal in so many ways. surreal because the tests are just, well, surreal. and surreal to be reminded in a really. intense. way that i have this rare and potentially serious disease, when i feel and look and am so healthy. and could continue to be so for years and years… we just don’t know. none of us does know, of course, its just that i have this one piece i DO know. sort of.

and i miss wendell. oh, how i miss him. he and my husband were here today, but had to go back home (2 hrs away) until thursday night so i can do all this crap. i am pining for him. for the first time today, i avoided a child in a store because i thought it would make my heart hurt more. ow.

so i’m sending out love tonight for all of us missing our children, for whatever reason.

 

paws

paws

Originally uploaded by henebry

 

testing

i have to go up to DC next week for medical testing, and its starting to give me a bit (a lot?) of anxiety. the condition i have tends to result in benign tumors on the brain and spinal cord, and while the small few i have haven’t grown in awhile, its really just a matter of time until one does. i think. and i don’t want to have surgery. i don’t want to be away from my child for any length of time for such a sucko reason. i don’t want to become deaf (a hallmark of this disease is that tumors grow on the hearing nerve). i don’t want to change my yoga practice. i don’t want to not be able to walk and run in the woods. and so much more. even though illness teaches so much, its just more fun being healthy. it is.

but this forward looking anxiety is distracting me from my life in the present. i’m pretty good about not letting it trip me up until the time gets close but, well, the time is close. odds are that things will be fine, but anxiety doesn’t give a crap about odds, does it? and the truth is that there’s a chance things will be changed. its also true that i will deal with whatever happens, and it will be fine.

on the plus side, my neurologist is hot, and i’ll get to visit with girlfriends in DC.  

 

(not exactly addressing) second choice vs second best

Dawn and others have written about this whole second choice vs second best thing in adoption recently, and I wanted to get some thoughts down, too. Trying to write a non-frivolous post for once.

In my case, I did try for a pregnancy, but not for very long. Its not a good idea for me anyway due to a medical condition, so we always knew we would adopt at least once, if we were able. I didn’t care about having a biological child, but I wanted to experience pregnancy. And I’m not saying it wasn’t hard to let go of that pregnancy dream, but for whatever reason, I was able to, really able to… and after not terribly long. At the time it felt long, but it was actually less than a year. Perhaps because I knew pregnancy carried its own risks for me and my biological child, it was actually a relief to let those go. Once we did, I felt profound gratitude- and like I had been protected by miscarrying the one pregnancy I had. It was as if I hadn’t been paying attention before to what my true path was, and then I woke up. I’m sure if I had had that child I would have loved them beyond measure and felt that the risks were worth it, but now I can feel thankful I didn’t have to make that tradeoff.

Its clear that to me I am meant to parent THIS child*, and also to be a mother through adoption. Some of that is the spiritual path that adoptive parenthood has been for me, and some of it goes beyond my own kid… and is more about adoption reform and ethics. I’m glad i’m an adoptive parent because I think i’m supposed to help make adoption better. A LOT better. Like many, many less adoptions happening better. Maybe that means that we’ll never be parents to 2 kids from birth, but that’s another tradeoff i’m ok with. There aren’t a lot of areas in which I condone magical thinking, but how my kids come to me is one of them. And I really believe that if its meant to be, it will. (We do talk about adopting much older kids from foster care later, but that’s a different issue.)

But back to the original issue, which I haven’t addressed at all… It does feel natural to me that people would try for pregnancy first because hell, if it goes right, its a lot more straightforward of a process. And involves sex, not paperwork! I mean, really. Duh. Turning to adoption second doesn’t seem odd, or bad, or indicative of anything like less love for the child. They are just 2 different ways of building families, each with different consequences for different people (and adoption obviously has a lot more consequences for a lot more people.)

But I do have to admit being mystified by all the fertility stuff. A few rounds of clomid, I get. (Not for myself, I have to say…. but I think I understand why people do it.) But 6 rounds of IVF? 8 years of fertility treatment? This actually, truly baffles me. It looks like hell, and the dear friends I have watched do it suffer so much from the effort. It used to upset me, and make me wonder what the hell they must think of our adoption, if they were clearly going to the ends of the earth to avoid anything but pregnancy. It looked like some crazy ass gambling. But what I came to realize is that each person has to find their own path to parenthood; one person’s path has nothing to do with the other. Each path usually involves some kind of hardship, and it kind of just depends on what kind of hardship you’re up for. Me, I wasn’t up for the hardship of pregnancy. But the complex and intricate losses of adoption? Now that I can take! (I’m being only partly facetious here.) Now that I don’t take it personally, I just feel sorrow for the people going through all that hellish fertility stuff. And as a health care practitioner, more than a little concern about what’s been done to women’s bodies. But I digress…

I guess I do wonder what those folks who go through fifty years of fertility tell their adopted children. Part of me does think there’s a difference between trying and trying. But maybe not. We can give our kids tools to process all the many real and imagined losses they will have, but in the end they’re the ones that have to live it. And there ain’t a damn thing we can do about that, no matter how hard we try.

*edited to add a self correction: i am NOT saying that if i was meant to parent wendell, that J was meant to give him up. i don’t believe god, or fate, or the forces that be are mean like that. i’m just trying to express how being his parent makes me feel. if i really want to be specific about it, though, i believe i would feel that way about any child.  its just that he happens to be the one- and man is he special.