Oh, yeah, that.....baby thing.

Had a tense evening yesterday. I got a call from our adoption agency to prompt me to get our homestudy package completed. Again. They need a further info section - you know with more pictures and details about our lives. Apparently, we were shortlisted a couple of times, but with no further info pending, well.... they had to photocopy our homestudy report themselves. Of course, I apologized, I had been so busy with my show and I just let it slide. I felt so guilty. So guilty, and it's not real easy to make me feel guilty. Only my mum gets away with that. Like, oh, yeah, I should be more interested in this. I should have done this months ago, it's not like I have a job or anything. But I was a little more concerned about my losing weight and saving my marriage.

And then hubby told me he was going to go watch hockey at a pub. I gritted my teeth and muttered, but said nothing. Of course, I ended up calling him and told him that I was upset that he had gone anyway. I immediately had a craving for sweets, some sort of cake. I was freaking out and I needed comfort food. I settled for a lemon curd tart and a slice of pizza with salad. Oh, yeah, and a glass of wine. Oh, yeah and M&M's with peanuts. Sigh. I guess it's no wonder I gained so much weight over the past 4 years. I actually did start something though. Find out we don't have too many pictures with both of us in it. We have a lot of pictures of our dog.

I know why I have been putting this off. I've been enjoying putting my life back on track (I just shot one day on a new series called Caprica), enjoying doing creative work and I'm scared of actually having to deal with a potential adoption "situation". We just got our marriage back on track, and we're not having much stress right now. I don't want my life upset right now. I want a child but I don't want the emotional rollercoaster that seems to go along with the adoption process. I am reading these adoption blogs and I notice the real happy part doesn't come until the adoption papers are signed. Before that, all joy seems to be tempered with uncertainty and shell shock of actually getting a child.

I'm supposed to be providing further scintillating details about our lives without so much as a decent appraisal of the potential birthmother. Just sudden vague phone calls with due dates. It's the not being able to control the process thing that hits my alarm buttons. My dog is not feeling well (vet visit planned tomorrow), my mum is getting frailer and there's nothing I can really do about any of these things, either. Things I can't control, happening in rapid sequence, do not bring out the best in me. I stood in the kitchen and chanted my anxiety attack away that my inner Diva was threatening.

Okay, here comes some stuff for the Golden Box. Eating my face off will not help. Just chant, just breathe, all will unfold as it should. Do the work, be in the moment, all will unfold as it should.

"The Buddha wrote that one should become the master of one’s mind rather than let one’s mind master oneself. "

Gotta put that up on my bathroom mirror.

Show and Tell - The Golden Box

I missed the NaCoLeavMo because I was quite busy directing my show, etc, so I will do the Show and Tell thing. Of course, I will still comment as much as I can. (We closed last night. The show was great, the actors were terrific, well received, blah, blah, blah. ) This is my Golden Box. Not really remarkable. When we got married, I received a lovely present from a girl who was the girlfriend of a Buddhist buddy who was the emcee at our wedding. She is a pastry chef, and ensconced within was an ice cream scooper and a container of heavenly, homemade, chocolate fudge sauce. The sauce is long gone, but the box remains. I thought I would put a gift it in sometime and pass it along, but for some reason, I never did. I thought I could keep cards or keepsakes in it, but that never happened either. Instead, I put my grief in it. My disappointments, my humiliations, my despair. Just the worst stuff. The stuff I couldn't handle at the moment.

During my grief counselling, I was asked to put certain overwhelming emotions away until I could face them. She asked me if I had a place where I could put them. I had this empty golden box in my closet. So I put them there. I took it down, dusted it off and took a picture of it and then put it back. I like knowing that it's there. The fact that I put my nightmares in there meant that I didn't have to carry them with me. It could wait until I had some calm, some perspective. There's no real substance to them, it's just scary, hyperventilating emotions that serve no purpose other than to convince me that I'm weak, or stupid or incapable of being good enough.

I think everyone should have a box like this.

Okay, enough idiocy!

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=c8b5ccfd-8a3a-47d7-a750-9f40befd26d4

Yep. Apparently, this happens a lot. Okay, so funny, let's everyone go and post a baby for sale on Craig's List. What a trend to start, eh? Hey, I know - I'm going to post for a bi-racial baby, little girl, cute as a button, IVY league school potential, no strings attached - you know what would happen to me? I'd be roasted alive, vilified in the media and run out of my building, stripped from every adoption agency book!

I missed the sale on babies!

Yep, even Craig's List is getting into the baby selling business. Cutting out the middle man, who needs ethical adoption agencies, when you can just go surfing on the net.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=d41988d2-aded-48a9-a51e-e5ecc98fa944

Go ahead, read it, I'll wait. $10K for a baby. Well, that's cheap. A veritable bargain. Let me get my debit card. The phone number listed in the ad was from a stolen cellphone, the couple was known to police and have had addiction issues in the past. Well, who hasn't had addiction issues? No one's perfect. And so what if the police know them, they probably volunteered at the neighbourhood watch, and they probably used my cell that I lost last fall. And if you're worried about the adorable baby girl that was taken into government care, she'll probably be reunited with her mother today. It was all just a hoax, after all, no harm intended. Just a silly practical joke. Right? If you think about it, it's really funny! What new mother of a 7 day old baby doesn't get a little tired of her baby latching onto her breast? Come on, people, LAUGH!!!!

Okay, we've all heard worse, it's not against the law for people to be stupid. Or deceitful. Or greedy. Or cruel. It's just that I just sent off a whole new batch of profiles to the adoption agency and DH just completed all the effing immigration paperwork that once again asked questions that not even the your mortgage banker has (well, maybe). Sigh. How truly worthless must you feel about your self to actually post that ad? Even as a hoax, which I'm not entirely sure it was. I don't know. You know what's really funny? When I heard that report on TV, it actually hurt ME a little. It hurt me because I felt pity for them. It hurt me because it reminded me that even stupid ass people who purposely abused their bodies can have a baby, but not me or any other woman out there who actually worried they ate sushi or unpasteurized cheese last week. It hurt me because being good enough or healthy enough or smart enough or whatever else enough is not even the point. I pray that baby's life gets better from now on in.

How to make friends and influence people

Do any of you ever get "solicited" to put your blog on some sort of health/wellness community internet site? I've had 2 so far, one from Verve Earth and one from Trusera. What do you do with these things? I don't really need a bajillion people on my site, but as you know, our blogs actually help and encourage people to not feel so alone.... what do you think? Not sure if I have the time to keep that up.

Fishy situation

Well, that "situation" we were looking for more details on has dissolved. We got a follow up phone call from the agency and it looks like it could have gone south on us. The birthmother had 2 kids already, wanted $1000 a month and she was due in September. The director had a suspicious feeling about it. Like maybe she was just angling for financial support for the summer. We deferred to his better judgment. Remember that Dateline news show when they tracked a deranged woman who had promised a several couples her baby, and then took all their money and cut off all communication? One couple gave her several hundred dollars and the cameras tracked her spending it in Wal-Mart on baby clothes, etc. In the end, I don't even think she was pregnant. Yeah, didn't want that to happen to us. You're not allowed to pay for living expenses like that in Canada. Health care is ensured, so that's not a concern. And you don't have to pay a hospital bill after giving birth.


Hubby has gone over our profile and suggested we remove mention of my Buddhism because we don't mention his religious beliefs. He's a raving atheist. I countered that in lieu of that, we brought up his athleticism. I don't really have any hobbies other than blogging and sitting on patios with refreshing alcoholic beverages. He thought Buddhism might be considered too out of the norm for Christian agencies. Said if we were looking at it from a marketing angle, then we should be trying to "catch more fish" so to speak, then when we meet the birthmother we could be more specific about our beliefs. I pointed out that I had already blogged about that some time ago and sent him that link (as he does not read my blog, well, not after one particular post). We still haven't revisited that issue in any great length. I guess I could, just to be accommodating, but it's in our homestudy package. I don't know. I think he's wondering why we're not getting more inquiries (on account of we're so fabulous!) It also could be that we're in Canada and depending on which state the birthmother is from, it might be considered too far to consider.

I'm not worried, things will unfold as they will. I'd like to think that this will be the last summer as non-mum. Remind me of this when I start to panic and get all insecure and neurotic and worry again, okay?

Raising awareness

I just have to share this little bit with you that I got from A Road Less Travelled. From the National Post article.

Also this comprehensive article from Chateleine: http://en.chatelaine.com/english/health/article.jsp?content=20070213_095702_5452&page=1. It also mentions that Ontario covers IVF if you have bilaterally blocked fallopian tubes. Does anyone know if that is still the case because later is says it was delisted from the provincial health plan?

"Accepting infertility is an enormously emotional and difficult challenge
for any couple," she says. "The biggest hurdle to overcome is gaining the
ability to see that this is not the end of the world, that there are other
options, and that each can provide a satisfying and rewarding
future."

Accepting and moving on is indeed a mighty mountain to climb, both
couples say. And even when the decision is behind them, those who choose to
remain child-free will always have a sense of loss and longing, Dalit Hume
says.

"It is not something you can ever completely get over," she says. "You
have to accept that a continuing sense of loss is natural; motherhood and
fatherhood is hard-wired into us. What you must do is understand those feelings
will be part of your life always, and then find other raisons d'etre."

I guess that since we decided to adopt, I've occasionally felt guilty for mourning the loss of our own biological child, even though that was never going to happen. I still craved the intimate experience of pregnancy and childbirth that other people seemed to have. There are days when I think my life is fine without kids and I can barely manage to walk the dog sometimes and then there are times when I just sit and think about holding a baby to my chest, breathing in that lovely scent from the top of their heads. I think of stinky diapers and sleepless nights and then I think of showing them some incredible animal or teaching them to ride a bike. Seesaw. DH, for some strange reason, has been showing me articles of surrogacy in Canada and reminding me that I had great eggs. Great 44 year old dusty eggs, I remind him. He must be on that same seesaw.

Got another phonecall about a possible "situation" - yes, we threw our hat into the ring. Seesaw.