I don't agree

"It's very different from adopting," Paulson agreed. "Everyone would rather have a baby from their own egg and their husband's sperm, but if that's not possible, the next best thing after that is that you get pregnant with donor egg."

"With adoption you get to be a parent once the baby is born but with donor egg, you get to be a parent from the moment of conception," he added.

The mother bonds with the child by carrying it for nine months, said Silber, "and whatever question marks she may have had by it not having her DNA are erased by this bonding process."
Taken from this article:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/couple-twins-25-years-vitro-fertilization-ivf/story?id=9574779&page=1

I think you are a parent of an adopted child the first time you "meet" that child, be it through pictures, through a surrogate ultrasound, or in person. I know that with Ché we bonded with his picture, the reports that came telling us how he was doing, and progressing.

DNA and pregnancy do not make you a parent by any means.

I know

You're all waiting with baited breath to hear the news. But I'm not sharing yet, although lots of people know the answer already.

I'll share soon though, just not ready yet.

On another note:

We visited Chicago over the long weekend and Che had a great time playing with his cousins. They own one of these:

But, those crafty people didn't put the big battery in it so it was just a really big radio, which still kept those three kids (age 4 and under) occupied for most of the evening. We had some great barbecue, smoked brisket, and smoked ribs. It was great, and Che really liked it too.

As always we left late, and Che fell asleep by the time we were on the toll road. It helped that it was dark and rainy, that he didn't have a nap that day, and that he was totally worn out. He slept until about 5 miles from home, when a loud thud to the car woke him. The thud.... a deer.

Luckily, Mike's superb driving skills really helped out as he braked and swerved, hitting the deer with only one side of the car. The headlight was a goner, and there were lots of dents and damage, but no one was hurt, and luckily the air bags deployed. I believe there was also talk about saliva being smeared down the side of the car. I called my mom, to tell her that we were almost home and Che grabbed the phone. This was the conversation:

Che: "Hi Nana."
Nana: "Hi Ché, how are you?"
Che: "I'm ok. We bumped into a deer."
Nana: "You did! Is everyone alright."
Che: "yea." at this point he got really sad... "but I think it was a reindeer."

He talked about that reindeer off and on for the next couple of days. We assured him that the deer's momma gave it a band-aid and kisses, and we're sure it's better. Of course in reality, that deer was hurting, since we only hit the back half, and I'm sure by now it's not living anymore.

It was an interesting incident by the way, but hopefully the talk of reindeer is on it's way out.

This wait...

is killing me. I think we've just stopped talking about it at home.

On other notes, Ché is becoming quite the little boy. No longer a baby, and quickly leaving toddlerhood. He is now dressing himself quite frequently, and I'm happy to say potty trained! Yippee!
In the past month we've had 2 accidents, one of which was yesterday when he couldn't open the door from outside and couldn't make it in the house. (that doesn't count as an "accident" in my book anyway. He was trying.)

He is also becoming very talkative, and likes telling stories. On of my favorite phrases that we hear quite often is, "like that you know." It's a very serious part of any conversation. Che is also big into making plans right now, as in "Here's the plan... I'm going to take a nap."

Mike will be leaving for Michigan to attend NABS, sadly not this NABS. hehe. He will be gone about a week, so we'll see if there is a return of toddler depression. We've been telling Che that Daddy will be gone, and he seems to understand, but we'll see what really happens come next Sunday. Last time when Mike came home Ché wouldn't talk to him.

Other than that though life's been normal, going to work, playing at home, going to bed, knitting, watching too much basketball (I'm glad that's almost over...)

Thought

Infertility is something that a lot of people don't understand. The concept isn't hard to understand, and a bit of basic science knowledge can help people understand the reasons behind, but I think it's the emotional side that people generally have a lack of knowledge about.

I believe that alot of people think that those of us (women) that suffer through infertility are jealous of pregnant women. It's true, at least for me. I feel a pang of jealousness, (then guilt) every time a loved one, or friend announces a pregnancy. It's compounded when I get the baby shower invites, or the updates to the pregnancy blog. (ack!)

But, honestly it's not the pregnancy that I'm jealous of. It's taken a lot of time for me to process this, and I'm finally able to pinpoint it. I'm not envious that people can get pregnant, but that they can have a baby. That's the end result of a pregnancy, and that's ultimately the reason for embarking on that journey. To have a baby.

Most people, I believe, don't get pregnant because they want to be pregnant. I believe they do so to have a family, to have a baby, a child.

So, it's 10 times harder for me to be around newborns, and babies, than it is pregnant women. Showers compound it because everyone is celebrating the impending birth of a new baby.

I think what says it best though, better than I can is this letter from Resolve, a national organization on infertility: (it's long! you've been warned!)

"I want to share my feelings about infertility with you, because I want you to understand my struggle. I know that understanding infertility is difficult; there are times when it seems even I don't understand. This struggle has provoked intense and unfamiliar feelings in me and I fear that my reactions to these feelings might be misunderstood. I hope my ability to cope and your ability to understand will improve as I share my feelings with you. I want you to understand.You may describe me this way: obsessed, moody, helpless, depressed, envious, too serious, obnoxious, aggressive, antagonistic, and cynical. These aren't very admirable traits; no wonder your understanding of my infertility is difficult. I prefer to describe myself this way: confused, rushed and impatient, afraid, isolated and alone, guilty and ashamed, angry, sad and hopeless, and unsettled.My infertility makes me feel confused. I always assumed I was fertile. I've spent years avoiding pregnancy and now it seems ironic that I can't conceive. I hope this will be a brief difficulty with a simple solution such as poor timing. I feel confused about whether I want to be pregnant or whether I want to be a parent. Surely if I try harder, try longer, try better and smarter, I will have a baby.My infertility makes me feel rushed and impatient. I learned of my infertility only after I'd been trying to become pregnant for some time. My life-plan suddenly is behind schedule. I waited to become a parent and now I must wait again. I wait for medical appointments, wait for tests, wait for treatments, wait for other treatments, wait for my period not to come, wait for my partner not to be out of town and wait for pregnancy. At best, I have only twelve opportunities each year. How old will I be when I finish having my family?My infertility makes me feel afraid. Infertility is full of unknowns, and I'm frightened because I need some definite answers. How long will this last? What if I'm never a parent? What humiliation must I endure? What pain must I suffer? Why do drugs I take to help me, make me feel worse? Why can't my body do the things that my mind wants it to do? Why do I hurt so much? I'm afraid of my feelings, afraid of my undependable body and afraid of my future.My infertility makes me feel isolated and alone. Reminders of babies are everywhere. I must be the only one enduring this invisible curse. I stay away from others, because everything makes me hurt. No one knows how horrible my pain is. Even though I'm usually a clear thinker, I find myself being lured by superstitions and promises. I think I'm losing perspective. I feel so alone and I wonder if I'll survive this.My infertility makes me feel guilty and ashamed. Frequently I forget that infertility is a medical problem and should be treated as one. Infertility destroys my self esteem and I feel like a failure. Why am I being punished? What did I do to deserve this? Am I not worthy of a baby? Will my partner want to remain with me? Is this the end of my family lineage? Will my family be ashamed of me? It is easy to lose self-confidence and to feel ashamed.My infertility makes me feel angry. Everything makes me angry, and I know much of my anger is misdirected. I'm angry at my body because it has betrayed me even though I've always taken care of it. I'm angry at my partner because we can't seem to feel the same about infertility at the same time. I want and need an advocate to help me. I'm angry at my family because they've always sheltered and protected me from terrible pain. My younger sibling is pregnant; my mother wants a family reunion to show off her grandchildren and my grandparents want to pass down family heirlooms.I'm angry at my medical caregivers, because it seems that they control my future. They humiliate me, inflict pain on me, pry into my privacy, patronize me, and sometimes forget who I am. How can I impress on them how important parenting is to me? I'm angry at my expenses; infertility treatment is extremely expensive. My financial resources may determine my family size. My insurance company isn't cooperative, and I must make so many sacrifices to pay the medical bills. I can't miss any more work, or I'll lose my job. I can't go to a specialist, because it means more travel time, more missed work, and greater expenses. Finally, I'm angry at everyone else. Everyone has opinions about my inability to become a parent. Everyone has easy solutions. Everyone seems to know too little and say too much.My infertility makes me feel sad and hopeless. Infertility feels like I've lost my future, and no one knows of my sadness. I feel hopeless; infertility robs me of my energy. I've never cried so much nor so easily. I'm sad that my infertility places my marriage under so much strain. I'm sad that my infertility requires me to be so self-centered. I'm sad that I've ignored many friendships because this struggle hurts so much and demands so much energy. Friends with children prefer the company of other families with children. I'm surrounded by babies, pregnant women, playgrounds, baby showers, birth stories, kids' movies, birthday parties and much more. I feel so sad and hopeless.My infertility makes me feel unsettled. My life is on hold. Making decisions about my immediate and my long-term future seems impossible. I can't decide about education, career, purchasing a home, pursuing a hobby, getting a pet, vacations, business trips and houseguests. The more I struggle with my infertility, the less control I have. This struggle has no timetable; the treatments have no guarantees. The only sure things are that I need to be near my partner at fertile times and near my doctor at treatment times. Should I pursue adoption? Should I take expensive drugs? Should I pursue more specialized and costly medical intervention? It feels unsettling to have no clear, easy answers or guarantees.Occasionally I feel my panic subside. I'm learning some helpful ways to cope; I'm now convinced I'm not crazy, and I believe I'll survive. I'm learning to listen to my body and to be assertive, not aggressive, about my needs. I'm realizing that good medical care and good emotional care are not necessarily found in the same place. I'm trying to be more than an infertile person gaining enthusiasm, joyfulness, and zest for life.You can help me. I know you care about me and I know my infertility affects our relationship. My sadness causes you sadness; what hurts me, hurts you, too. I believe we can help each other through this sadness. Individually we both seem quite powerless, but together we can be stronger. Maybe some of these hints will help us to better understand infertility.I need you to be a listener. Infertile couples have a lot on their minds and need someone to talk to. Sometimes a good ear helps people get things off their chests. A good listener can help people express their anxiety, anger, and guilt; or help people work out solutions to problems. Without offering any suggestions, your attentiveness and interest may provide the comfort and reassurance I need most. Talking about my struggle helps me to make decisions. Let me know if you are available for me. Repeatedly remind me that you love me no matter what. I need to hear it so badly. Let me know you understand that this is very hard work. Help me realize that I may need additional support from professional caregivers and appropriate organizations. Perhaps you can suggest resources. You might also need support for yourself, and I fear I'm unable to provide it for you; please don't expect me to do so. Help me to keep sight of my goal.Let me know when you don’t know what to say. I need you to be comfortable with me, and then I also will feel more comfortable. Talking about infertility sometimes feels awkward. Are you worried you might say the wrong thing? Share those feelings with me. Ask me if I want to talk. Sometimes I will want to, and sometimes I won't, but it will remind me that you care.I need you to be sensitive. Although I may joke about infertility to help myself cope, it doesn't seem as funny when others joke about it. Please don't tease me with remarks like, "You don't seem to know how to do it." Don't trivialize my struggle by saying, "I'd be glad to give you one of my kids." It's no comfort to hear empty reassurances like, "You'll be a parent by this time next year." Don't minimize my feelings with, "You shouldn't be so unhappy." For now, don't push me into uncomfortable situations like baby showers or family reunions. I already feel sad and guilty; please don't also make me feel guilty for disappointing you.I need you to be honest with me. Let me know that you may need time to adjust to some of my decisions. I also needed adjustment time. If there are things you don't understand, say so. Please be gentle when you guide me to be realistic about things I can't change such as my age, some medical conditions, financial resources, and employment obligations. Don't hide information about others' pregnancies from me. Although such news makes me feel very sad, it feels worse when you leave me out.I need you to be informed. Your advice and suggestions are only frustrating to me if they aren't based on fact. Be well informed so you can educate others when they make remarks based on myths. Don't let anyone tell you that my infertility will be cured if I relax and adopt. Don't tell me this is God's will. Don't ask me to justify my need to parent. Don't criticize my course of action or my choice of physician even though I may do that myself. Reassure yourself that I am also searching for plenty of information which helps me make more knowledgeable decisions about my options.I need you to be patient. Remember that working through infertility is a process. It takes time. There are no guarantees, no package deals, no complete kits, no one right answer, and no "quickie" choices. My needs change; my choices change. Yesterday I demanded privacy, but today I need you for strength. You have many feelings about infertility, and I do too. Please allow me to have anger, joy, sadness, and hope. Don't minimize or evaluate my feelings. Just allow me to have them, and give me time.I need you to be strengthening by boosting my self esteem. My sense of worthlessness hampers my ability to take charge. My personal privacy has repeatedly been invaded. Enjoyable experiences with you such as a lunch date, a shopping trip, or a visit to a museum help me feel normal. Encourage me to maintain my sense of humor; guide me to find joys. Celebrate with me my successes, even ones as small as making it through a medical appointment without crying. Remind me that I am more than an infertile person. Help me by sharing your strength.Eventually I will be beyond the struggle of infertility. I know my infertility will never completely go away, because it will change my life. I won't be able to return to the person I was before infertility, but I also will no longer be controlled by this struggle. I will leave the struggle behind me, and from that I will have improved my skills for empathy, patience, resilience, forgiveness, decision-making and self-assessment. I feel grateful that you are trying to ease my journey through this infertility struggle by giving me your understanding."

It helps to have Mike, someone that understands to the best of his ability what's going on. So for that I'm grateful.

It's going to be a busy weekend...

We got the go ahead from Dr. Jarrett.
We do a trigger on Friday, then a "busy" weekend...
I will have an HcG check next Thursday, and a possible HcG booster.

Things apparently looked good enough to go.

On another note...
Father's Day is Sunday. It's going to be a hard one. Any suggestions on how to make it easier for my Mom.
She had looked through old things, and pulled out cards we had bought for Dad, and made for Dad in years past. It's going to be rough.

Dateline: To catch a Baby Broker

On Sunday, Dateline NBC had a show on showing the adoptions in Guatemala. It was "appropriately" titled as shown above. ahem.

This is the same show that does "To catch a Predator" shows, which I find a bit awful.
Anyway, they stuck with the same theme: undercover cameras, fake agency, and direct questioning when the farce was up.
It was interesting. And by interesting I mean, neat to see some of the buildings we saw when we visited Guatemala. There were shots from the hotel where we stayed, and of the American Embassy, as well as the airport.

Funny though, they didn't actually show all of those places. At the airport, a slight pan to the left would have revealed the massive amounts of people waiting behind cattle fences for their relatives. Stepping off of a plane in a foreign country is intimidating enough, but to see hundreds of people smashed against cattle fencing just makes it that much more shocking. And the embassy! Oh my, again, another pan to the left would have shown the hundreds of indigenous people lined up under corrugated metal waiting to get into the embassy. It had to have been so frustrating when all the white people carrying Ladino, or Mayan children got into the embassy before them, even though they'd been waiting hours and sometimes overnight.

The show was just odd. They interviewed 4 families, whose adoptions were rough to say the least. I feel for these families. I really do. 2 of the families weren't able to finish the process, one found out that the child they were going to adopt was kidnapped from her family. That's awful, we all know it's a problem. The other family was referred twins, that were already promised to another family, again, awful! However, the common thread between the 4 families? One lawyer, who was coincidentally banned from working with the US embassy. So of course, what does Dateline do?
They set up a fake adoption agency, and meet with him as though they are interested in working with him. They bait him with questions to see what he would say, and throughout several days of talking he does say some pretty unethical things. No one should be working with this man.

So, the question? How did these 4 families start working with this man? Answer: The agencies in the United States that these families were working with, were working with the lawyer. That to me is atrocious. I don't understand how an agency in "good standing" could working with someone like that. Someone willing to doctor documents to get rid of child molestation charges, someone willing to pay women off for their children.

Of course this episode started millions of little conversations in our house, and there are a lot of questions that came up, and a lot of unanswered things.

1.) How did these people choose their agency in the United States? Mike and I bet that it has something to do with the promise of quick time lines. We had a long process, one step that was supposed to be 2 weeks, ended up being 12 for us. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. You just can't do a process like this(for the first time) in much time under a year. It just can't happen.

2.) Why would these agencies work with this lawyer? I don't know. I just don't know the answer, to this, but again, I think it's because he promises things quickly, and is willing to do anything to bring a match to families. "you want twins?" and he responds, "I can have you twins tomorrow, boy or girl" Really? There are that many twins just floating around, come one. Seriously.

3.) Why would a couple work with this agency again? Um, yea. One of the couples whose adoption fell through (The little girl who was kidnapped) there still working with the same agency. Why? The agency has all their paperwork and money and they don't want to rock the boat so to speak! Excuse me?! Rock the damn boat, get your money back, and your paperwork if you didn't keep a copy for yourself, and get to an agency that is ethical! I can't even begin to fathom the line of thinking here.

Aside from this show showing the absolute worst side of Guatemalan adoptions, it also didn't do a good job in saying that the percentage of adoptions that fail or go wrong is so slim compared to the thousands of ethical adoptions.

Another thing to consider about this whole spectacle? The American Adoption System. It just isn't that different. Corruption, greed, and lack of ethics can be found in our system too.

For another interesting view and more information visit Guatadopt. It's a very informative site that we visit often for news and updates.

Idle thoughts...

While waiting for Winkflash to upload my backlog of pictures.

Pictures.
We take a lot of pictures. There are still currently 235 waiting to upload, and that's been going on since 8:30 this evening. Winkflash offers these great hardcover books every once in a while for a flat rate for up to 100 pages. We currently have two of Ché pictures, and since they are offering it again, I thought it was about time. I looked in the last book and the last time we uploaded anything was June, so we're a bit behind. The sad part is that the 235 pictures are the ones weeded out and don't yet involve Christmas time, or other peoples' pictures. I'd be broke if I had to develop all these, and put them in albums.

Child Violence.
Maybe it's the current field I work in, but I've noticed a lot of child centered violence lately. Not children being violent, but adults being violent towards children. A few examples are such:

The children in Washington D.C. that no-one stood up for, The 4 children thrown off of a bridge, the boy shot while taking his piano lesson by a stray bullet, and the boy who says his mom burned him in the oven.
Sadly, these are the saddest things I've seen in the 7 months that I've worked in my current field. I could go on for days about the things I've seen parents do to their kids and the things I've seen children do in desperation.
It saddens me that the world has come to this, and I know children have been getting hurt for centuries, but it truly seems as though we've hit a low. We're wasting our future, and we're damaging any chance we have of making the world a better place and if we don't cut it out and help the people who are affected by violence, and the people that cause violence we are headed down an awful road.

And in all honesty, the parents and caregivers of the people that hurt these children, while they are the responsible parties, need just as much if not more help than the victims themselves. In our county, the incidence of generational abuse is sky high. If we look back in records, chances are the parents that are hurting their kids now, were hurt as children. Sexual abuse is on the rise and the history there is frightening. Children who are abused are more likely to abuse other children while they are still children, or to go on to do abuse as an adult. When are we going to grow up as a nation, and say enough is enough and start putting our money in places where it really matters?
For some interesting but eye-opening reading visit here:

Child Help
or
Child Welfare Information Gateway

Feel compelled to help?
Try here:

CASA
or
Kidspeace

And now, I'll step down from my soapbox for my last idle thought:

Potty.
Recently Ché has begun really fighting diaper changes. We've been doing the potty thing, which involved getting it out, explaining what it is and why we have it, etc. Ché will even use the potty, and has had success from both "ends" on many different occasions, but lately he is revolting on both. Of course the favorite answer is "no" to everything, but honestly the whole bathroom bit he is really adamant about.

Ché will generally use the potty before a nap, and before bed, but trying to get him to go during the day is like pulling teeth. He is just to busy to bother going. We even tried the thick cotton pants and regular underwear so that he knew when he was wet, but he didn't care. Pull-ups were just too much like diapers so that didn't work either.

Do you all have suggestions?