When Everything Falls Apart: Or So THIS Is What It Looks Like To Lose It

So. I can honestly say that April is NOT better than March. Not by a long shot. This past week has been one of the most challenging of my life, and I have been struggling to figure out how to put it into a post (or a hundred) because there are just SO MANY LAYERS.

I have been talking a lot with my students about reading, and how yeah, we could blow through a book pretty quickly just doing the physical part of the reading, but that books have LAYERS and reading like a critical thinker involves discussion, and connecting to other books and events, and digging deeper into the whys and what ifs and what-would-you-do-differentlies of characters and events. That I want them to be deep readers, not shallow ones. But, you can't be a deep reader if you don't get the plot, the basic timeline of events.

So today I think I will put the plot out from this week, and delve  deeper into the incredible onion that is what my life has become...later.

Probably easiest to do bullets, a bit of a summary of the clusterfuck that was this week.

Monday: 
- Monday started at 3 am. As in, I woke up at 3, lay there in the dark hoping to fall back asleep until 4, and then finally turned the light on and read my book. Bryce was sleeping downstairs because he coughs all night and was trying still not to get me sick, so it didn't bother anybody. At 4:40 I felt so nauseous and icky that I thought maybe I needed to eat something. So I went downstairs and ate a banana and had a glass of water, in the dark, over the sink. I tried to go back to sleep at 5, but by 5:45 I realized I was just laying there in the dark and I may as well get up, so I did.
- I was SO TIRED all day, and a little loopy. The day was okay, just a bit of a runaway train where I didn't feel I had a second to catch my breath. But I came home, and made a delicious chicken enchilada casserole, and went to bed early hoping that tomorrow would be different.

Tuesday:
- I slept a little better and made it through another fast-paced school day.
- We went to get our taxes done, and I did not leave school in a timely fashion so that I could have a nice quite moment at home first, so I rushed through feeding the cats and eating a snack and grabbing the folder of paperwork for our CPA.
- After our taxes, which were relatively uncomplicated due to a complete lack of psychotic medical bills from IVF and no adoption placement (we keep track of our adoption expenses every year for when the credit comes later with the big fees, hopefully -- we can't take advantage until we have the whole sum due to our individual circumstances). We went to get Indian food as a treat.
- Mmmm, delicious Indian food. I did not get it spicy. But alas...I started having the heartburn issues that I'd hoped the Prilosec would avoid (and up to this point, it had) from the Prednisone.
- The heartburn got worse and worse until I couldn't go to sleep until after midnight, because it felt like my ribcage was being crushed. A heating pad and some massage helped, but I was so uncomfortable. And so I didn't sleep well.

Wednesday: 
Oh, Wednesday.
- I showed up a week early for Literacy Committee, which means I got to school early after a bad night's sleep (but then had time to get ready for the day in a more relaxed way).
- Everything started to go wrong in the library, where we were doing booktalks for the last round of the independent reading assignment for the year for the English class I push into.
- I was feeling sweaty to begin with, and I had gotten an extra cup of coffee at lunchtime because I was so tired (mistake), so I was jittery from the meds and the caffeine.
- The librarian who is in for my friend who just had her second daughter introduced the author visit we have coming up by showing a picture of her smiling and looking pleasant and then said, "You might think she looks like a MOM! Well that's because she IS!" (Uh, what the fuck does that have to do with anything? How do you LOOK like a mom?) and then at the end of the period a book was booktalked involving people in a protectorate who have to sacrifice a baby girl to a witch in the woods every so often for their community's sake, and I might have leaned in to a student who has asked me about "my baby" frequently and whispered, "Maybe I need to go be a witch in the woods, maybe then I can have that baby" and instead of looking at me horrified like I was starting to lose my mind, he said "I can start that rumor for you, Mrs. T" and then I backtracked and said "On second thought that might not help my case." (This is the first unraveling)
- I went to lunch and heated my food and cried while I relayed what on any other day would have been a stupid comment I could ignore.
- And then someone well-meaningly asked if we had considered international adoption. And she was the seventh person in five days to ask me "What about international?" or "What about an older child?" and every time I get asked that question I feel like I have to justify my choices and explain because it seems that to others we somehow made the WRONG choice, and it shaves a slice off my soul. Because WE MADE OUR VERY WELL-THOUGHT OUT, RESEARCHED CHOICES FOR A REASON. And DOMESTIC ADOPTION IS OUR CHOICE. And IF THAT DOESN'T WORK OUT WE ARE DONE AS A FAMILY OF TWO. That is the part people are having a hard time with, that there could be an end to this whole journey without a baby. Except I can bet that it's way the fuck harder for us.
- So anyway. I was not set up well for a repeat performance of the library shenanigans, and I lacked the cojones to go tell that nice library leave replacement that her comments felt stabby to me, so I just went and thought I would dissociate a bit, and think on my own book talk I'd give.
- It did not work. I was already getting sweatier and sweatier (thank you, Prednisone), and she decided this time to say the mom comment but when she said she was in for my friend it became a whole thing where a student said "I thought she already had a baby" and I said "This is her second baby" and the librarian said "I have FOUR babies" (who are all adults by the way) and I may have said louder than I intended "I HAVE NONE." (unravel unravel)
- I made it through my book talk although was pretty speedtalky and I could feel that I was literally sweating through both my shirts. So after that, when I could see myself passed out on the floor, I left the reading room and drifted into the main library and asked the wonderful ladies who staff the desk for help. "You are NOT okay" one of them said. "Nope." I said. "I think I just need to sit in front of a fan." And so they set me up in the corner with a bottle of water and a fan and I tried to dry out my sweater and not look so sheeny, and they made me stay until the end of the period when I felt I needed to help my students find books.
- I went to the bathroom during homeroom and discovered I COULD SEE MY PULSE in my eyeballs. Which isn't normal. I felt dizzy, and lightheaded, and sweaty, and my lips were numb.
- I went to teach my 9th period class and said, "I'm just going to set things up here and then go down to the nurse I think," and one of my students said, "Um, maybe you should go RIGHT NOW, you don't look so good." and my lovely teacher's aide agreed and so I went to the nurse.
- My blood pressure medicine has been working great, but it was not working on Wednesday. It was 157/95, and when the school nurse does the stroke tests on you over and over again, it's a little disconcerting. My pulse was high and she thought I was hyperventilating. She was concerned about the high levels of Prednisone for so long. She had me call my doctors and call Bryce to come pick me up and I tried to relax and lay down and she asked if maybe I was feeling anxious and I unloaded a lot of grief on her. To some extent, when people say "I had no idea you had so much going on" it can make you feel better, but I am at the point where I feel like "That is because I HAVE BEEN SHOVING IT ALL DOWN AND PRETENDING TO BE A FUNCTIONING HUMAN. Ha ha, you fell for it."
- Bryce picked me up and we went home. Poor Bryce, he has missed so much work thanks to his own health (he's getting better, just really slowly) and my eye. And now this. Oh, and I was supposed to have my post-observation conference at 3. Clearly that was canceled. My assistant principal took a look at me and said, "Do you need a sub for tomorrow? Why don't I get you a sub for tomorrow?" and I said, "Nnn...YES. Yes I will do that." And then I rattled off all the students who I needed to get in touch with and who were in some form of crisis and he stopped me and said, "Sometimes I tell teachers to care a little more about our students. I'm going to tell you to care a little less. Just a little." Obviously I can't NOT care about my students, but he was like, "um, you first right now."
- My primary care doctor called and said they wanted me to go to Urgent Care for an EKG, just for peace of mind. (How an EKG could be peaceful is still unclear to me.) So we went. Luckily Bryce had his laptop for getting a presentation done, because the EKG went swimmingly but my blood pressure was now in the 160s (it had dropped to 130s/90 by the time I left the nurse's office), I was still sweaty, I was dizzy, all the heartburn and pressure...it made them uncomfortable enough to say they wanted me to go to emergency. Because it was probably the Prednisone, but wouldn't it suck to drop dead of a heart attack in the night because it wasn't? OH HOLY JEEZUM. I said I was hungry and hadn't eaten, could we stop for a quick bite first, and she said, "No. You need to not eat or drink. Go straight there. We'll call ahead and let them know you're coming." Because THAT'S not concerning at all.
- I got pulled into triage pretty quickly and guess what? My blood pressure was 178/108. Bryce was in tears at this point, I was all freaked out, and then there were a whole bunch of bloodtests run to make sure even though my EKG was great that there weren't enzymes that would indicate a cardiac thing.
- My veins suck (actually, I'm supposed to say "my veins are shallow" according to the nurse), and thanks to all the opioid epidemic I don't want people thinking that my veins suck because I shoot up (um, no). So I told the nurse my shitty veins were due to five and a half years of IVF. And then while she was drawing blood and attempting an IV that eventually went in my forearm she asked me... "have you thought about international?" And I found myself explaining again, justifying again. And then she said, "Well, I hope you both know that there's a plan, you just don't know it yet, and there's no reason why nice people like you shouldn't become parents." (unravel)
- And then, even though she was sticking me with needles at the time, I took a deep breath and I said, "Actually, we could be really nice people and this could not work out. We are actually SO VERY FORTUNATE in so many arenas of our lives, that I wonder sometimes if we have TOO MUCH and it almost wouldn't be fair to have a child, too -- that we have the beautiful life just not this piece of it. You don't always get to have everything. Everyone doesn't get everything." Thank you, Loribeth, for recommending The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy because it really stuck with me and those her words. "Everyone doesn't get everything." The nurse didn't really know what to say after that other than to say "Well, you have a great attitude" and then I realized Bryce was crying on the other side of the partition. Because when your everything is in pain and in the ED, life is scary.
- Quick summary on ED stay -- nothing was cardiac, it was all gastric side effects of the Prednisone, and so they gave me this cocktail of Maalox and lidocaine and benadryl (unfortunately at the same time as pushing some pepcid through the IV, which resulted in some hard nauseau not unrelated to the fact that my bed was in the hall next to the MEDICAL WASTE room and so buckets of shit and vomit were paraded past us every so often and the smell was so bad the nurses took to spraying every five minutes) and pushed fluids and then I got sent home with instructions to follow up with my eye doctor. And then they said that they did not think I could lower my prednisone dose because scleritis is so serious. That I would need to talk to them about what I could take to mitigate the side effects, including increased anxiety.
- I slept like a rock for 7 hours.

Thursday:
- I recovered at home. I read and watched some episodes of "13 Reasons Why" which I highly recommend (the book and the TV series). I graded tests. I talked to my eye doctor, who said that she could have me taper maybe every 5 days instead of every 7, but if I saw ANY redness whatsoever, I was to bump it back up. I'm on all these steroids so that the scleritis inflammation doesn't come back, because if it does we have a problem. And I will be seeing a rheumatologist. So they REALLY want to kick it for good now. So, I am stuck with the steroids although for a slightly shorter time period, although it is a little nerve wracking to think that I could be shaving time off at the expense of my eye. But I cannot, cannot function like this with the side effects. Did I mention my ophthalmologist was on vacation when she called me?
- The school nurse called to check up too, and was a little horrified that I have to stay on the Prednisone with what it's doing to my body, but of course for the sake of my eye continue.
- I got a lot of texts from my teacher friends who were worried about me.
- I spent two hours on the phone with a very special friend, who knows first hand what it is like to have your life not quite go the way you had so carefully planned as she lost her husband, who she'd been with since her teen years, to cancer last year. She told me about a book called "The Body Keeps the Score," about the effects of stress on the body. That she fears this autoimmune flare is my body saying it can't take any more stress. What stress? What is stressful about living in limbo for nearly a decade? For hoping and having that hope crushed, over and over and over again? She suggested maybe I should take a few days, take some sick time, honor that my body is shutting down in response to all we've experienced and how hard I've worked to "be okay."
- We went to pick up my gastro cocktail at the pharmacy and got some pizza (non-tomato based for me because I was scared of heartburn) and picked my car up at school. The conversation was very much about how out of balance everything is. How if pursuing this goal is going to cost me my health, maybe we should revisit timing and D-day. No stress there.
- I did not sleep well.

Friday: 
- And here we are, at the point of ultimate unraveling. I should have listened to my friend. I should have called in. BUT, I didn't. And there are some things to take away from that.
- I helped Bryce get up early as he had a business breakfast event thing to go to and (gasp) had to leave before 7. So I got to school around 7:15ish.
- I had anticipated being barraged with "how ARE you" and concerned questions, as schools are not good places for secrets, and I wasn't really keeping any of this unraveling a secret anyway. The physical part at least. I wasn't disappointed. It was all with love, but it took me 30 minutes to get to my classroom to set up and I ran out of time before needing to go down to Guidance to work with a student who is highly enjoyable but also highly challenging. I was exhausted.
- I ran into my principal in the hall, who reached his arm out and said, "hey, I was filled in on what happened Wednesday, are you okay?" and I just froze. "I...I don't know how to answer that anymore. I don't think so. No." He pulled me into his office and let Guidance know I wasn't going to be able to work with the student, and then I completely fell apart.
- He was amazing, and this is a topic for a different post as it was involved and highly personal, but the upshot was that he said how strong I was, how much I've been through and yet I still come in every day (well not lately apparently) and give everything my all, that I am a truly gifted teacher and seeing me with kids is something special. (Um, holy shit that was very flattering and validating for this piece of my identity.) But that when it looks like I am struggling, something is very, very wrong. And then everything came tumbling out. How great I am at pretending to be a human-like-substance. That I fill everything up so I don't have to think about all my losses and grief and the incredible pit that is this piece just not coming together, not yet. That I utterly destroyed my body in the IVF part of things and I wish wish wish we had started adoption sooner because my stamina is just not as strong as it once was and I don't know if I can keep doing this to myself. That I am an actress and probably missed my calling because every day I come in here and put on my mask that says "I am SUCCESSFUL! I have GOT THIS! I can DO! IT! ALL!" when really I am a pile of goo inside and now my mask has shattered and I don't know how to put it back together or if I really should even try since it is pretty much a lie. I AM NOT OKAY.
- Now you might be like, "oh shit, she's going to lose her job," but that's not the case. I LOVE my job, and he said they LOVE me in it. He wants me to figure out what I need to do to be okay. He did not tell me  "DON'T GIVE UP ON YOUR DREAM!" He just hugged me and held my hand and said "I'm so sorry this is so unfair, I'm so sorry you've been through so very much." He got it. And that was a beautiful gift.
- He told me to go home. Like an idiot, I said, "Imma negotiate with you." I wanted to teach my 2nd and 3rd period classes, my small Reading and English classes. Because I am in two new units AND I AM MISSING EVERYTHING. And I wanted to reassure them I was okay. He agreed, but only because I was adamant it would make me feel better and I could do it (and I took a deep breath and reconsolidated my goo and put my mask back on which must look pretty damn creepy from the outside when you've been let into the fact that I pretend daily). So I did.
- We were in the library, and I had students picking out their last independent books. I had worked with the librarian (who was out) and one of the other staff to come up with 6 books for each student, and I set up that they should browse and get to know their books for 10 minutes and then take out the one they want (or talk to me about a new one if we were way off base, which we weren't). They wanted to know who the new librarian was, and I said "well, you know Mrs. __ is out because she had a baby, so we have a new librarian for the rest of the year!" and one of my sweet, sweet students, who is so excited at the thought of me "getting my baby" said, "And soon YOU will get your baby and we'll get that call and you can all hang out together with your babies and everything will be great!" and then one of my other students said, "Why is Mrs. P crying?" and I couldn't look behind me because my lovely teacher's assistant was leaking her feelings out of her face. (unravel unravel unravel)
- I survived that though, although before the kids came in I had taken to singing and jumping around to the LEGO movie song "Everything Is Awesome," which has sort of been my sarcastic mantra for a while but now I was full on cheer-dancing it and singing it at the top of my lungs...which gave some people pause.
- Anyway, I survived the library and my kids all got awesome books and there were minimal tears shed.
- English was a little more frenetic as I tried to do more with my new unit on The Crossover, following the most depressing yet beautiful book ever Out of the Dust. I think my oozy cracks were showing a bit by the end of 3rd and while we accomplished a fair amount my level of energy was, how shall I say, overcompensation-level.
- And then I completely fell apart.
- I found that you can't make jokes about having your Britney moment and "keep me away from the clippers, HA HA HA HA HA" because people will take you seriously. I love my hair too much to do that to it but I suppose there is some truth to feeling like everything has just spiraled out of control.
- I will have you know that Prednisone is the devil and it amplifies everything bad. And my level of sadness and anxiety and sense of loss of control (that I never really had) came to an incredible fireball of crazy yesterday. I had a teacher come and take those tests off my hands because I was almost done grading them but wanted them done before I left... And then they had someone make sure I really left. I heard the words "You have been so strong and I think it's all catching up to you" more times than I can recall. I was told it is amazing I haven't dissolved into this goo sooner. I may have said really loud and shouty, "You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have BUTTERFLY MEME well you know what I CAN'T! BE! STRONG! ANY! MORE! I am OOZING all OVER the PLACE!" There were no students present. Just being clear on that. I was told if I used the word "ooze" one more time there was going to be vomit and so I said "at least I didn't say MOIST" and then off I went to go home.
- Except they wouldn't let me drive home. I was driven and our school psychologist followed and I got home and they wouldn't leave until someone agreed to come stay and I didn't want Bryce to miss more work so I called my special friend from the phone call before and was like, "Guess what...should have listened to you and stayed home an extra day..."
- I discovered that I scared a lot of people. In a "we are worried about you" kind of way. I found that just as scary as the stroke tests is when people are SERIOUSLY asking you "do you have thoughts of harming yourself?" The answer is NO. I may have spirally thoughts and I may have had the most erratic day of my life, but I LOVE MY LIFE and my brain is not lying to me and telling me not to. If anything all this is making me realize that I need to reevaluate things so that I can actually live my life better and balance hope and reality in a way where HOPE DOESN'T TRY TO KILL ME. So I was getting frustrated with those sort of questions, but as the school psychologist said, "If it was just you, I wouldn't be worried, but it's the Prednisone. That turns your brain into an enemy sometimes. That is what is worrying me."
- So I spent the day talking with my friend and eating the delicious salad she brought and lighting candles and listening to classical music and coloring from my amazing Jenny Lawson book, You Are Here, which when I bought I bought because I love her and liked the drawings and then realized it spoke to me more deeply than I wanted it to and then yesterday I think it was instrumental in calming me the fuck down. See beautiful handiwork:

- Bryce came home and we ate the delicious Mexican restaurant food that my friend had brought for us, heated up in the oven, and he said YOU SCARED ME and I think what he meant is I AM STILL SCARED and I assured him, don't worry, I scared myself too. Everything has just built up until all these threads in the past few weeks came together and unraveled and I haven't even talked about half the shit that led to what I am fairly certain was an anxiety attack amplified by the Prednisone on Wednesday. I need to get this under control. But the good thing is, I am throwing away my mask. Clearly it is doing more harm than good. I am going to figure out what I need to do to deal with all this. I am still strong. I can be broken and strong all at once. I just need to stop lying to myself. I need to stop feeling this tremendous pressure to be okay all the time. To do all the things and smile when really I just want to curl up in a ball and cry for an hour or two, for all that I've lost and all that may not get to be. For the pieces of my identity that are stilted and withered. For the mothering I have inside me that has no child to give it to.

And there you have it. What a week, eh? I can say that I am not okay, but I am okay, or rather I will be okay, eventually. Just something's got to give.

#Microblog Mondays: When You Run into Your RE at the Grocery

Late last week Bryce and I went to the grocery store to pick up food and massive amounts of Dayquil and cough drops so he can function minimally and not cough like he's choking to death quite as much.

We were looking for a checkout line when I saw a familiar person... it was our first RE (reproductive endocrinologist), from our first clinic, who sort of counts as our first and third RE since we switched doctors after two cycles, then that doctor left for the clinic we ended our run at and so we switched back to him. There was a lot of switching things in our journey that ultimately did not make much difference except to be able to say that we tried a whole lot of different approaches.

We always had a soft spot for this doctor, though. I will say this, while I don't agree with that video that made its way around that felt very much like hope peddling to me, he never oversold us. In fact, he was the one who said things like, "I should be able to tell you why you can't get pregnant, but for as much as we know, there's so much more we don't." And "We are not quite there yet, but if you transfer those 2PNs and nothing happens, we will have the 'I think it's time to stop' conversation." Of course we just shuffled those 2PNs off to Buffalo and now they lie in Texas waiting for a more hospitable womb to take its chances, so that conversation never actually happened. Because I didn't want to hear it in part, and because we kept searching for that next great thing that could make the unworkable work.

But I actually genuinely love this guy, who tried his damndest to get us pregnant but was also willing to give some reality, too. The last time we saw him was at last year's event to raise money for the fertility preservation program they have for cancer patients of reproductive age at that clinic. We couldn't go this year because it was the day after Bryce got back from his business trip and he was already super sick. Our RE said it just wasn't the same, and while I'm sure there's some business-y element to that since we usually donate (and last year Bryce was able to do a sponsored donation that was much larger than our usual silent-auction-only payout), I totally believed that it was disappointing that we weren't there. It was crazy emotional last year, so many of the nurses that had been with us through our personal hell came up and one even teared up and started to cry, because even though we weren't successful and we ended our journey not in their care, we continue to come back and support this cause and we genuinely want to see them.

Which is pretty special.

It was hard to be asked if there was adoption news and have to reply in the negatory, but we did get props for our holiday card. Which we still send to him. I'll never forget the one time he came in for our ultrasound monitoring of some sort and our card was tucked into his tie. We had to internet stalk his address to keep it going, but thankfully that was seen as touching and not creepy. Could have gone either way, honestly. We might have boundary issues with professional relationships where we want to be best friends with everyone.

I'm sorry we didn't get to be a success story for him. I'm glad that he got to be the one to call and tell us we were pregnant, the one time it seemed so promising. I'm glad I can now acknowledge that what I thought was dream-killing talk was probably the kindest thing anyone could have done, but that I just wasn't ready to hear it. But I appreciate that he said it. I am glad he still gets a kick out of our holiday cards...never quite sure what the heck is going to be inside it any given year. God help us if we aren't parents by the holidays this year...I'm going to have to end up renting sparkle ponies or something to top last year.

But for now, I can revel in the fact that we are friends with someone who tried real hard to get us pregnant and tried to keep it real even as the quest failed miserably, and who still gives really great hugs and truly enjoys our presence, whether at events, the grocery store, or in the mail. Maybe, in a weird way, more so because we weren't a success story.

Want to read more #Microblog Mondays? Go here and enjoy! 

A Beautiful Mess of Motherhood

Hi, friends. I did something else that is scary and uncomfortable for me... I videotaped myself reading my piece that I wrote for the Listen To Your Mother audition, as encouraged by my friend Lori Lavender Luz, because she said even though I didn't make it into the show this year it would be "fun" to see me, and I took that as a sort of bet against my own fears. It's horribly awkward for me, but I just pretended I was sitting on your couch, reading this to you guys face to face, and that made it a little easier. You make it feel like a somewhat safe thing to put myself out there this way in all my mismatched-pupil, animated-face-making, voluptuous glory.

In the interest of "do things that scare you," here it is, my face and voice reading the piece that I wrote. Below is the text of the piece. I am very proud of it, and also proud that I can read it without crying. The tape sort of ran out at the end (I still say tape although all this is digital), but all you missed was me awkwardly pointing out my friend the raven who appeared to be sitting on my shoulder throughout the thing. Ha. Also my thank you for listening to me got a bit cut off. THANK YOU. I know logically there are worse things than seeing yourself read something highly personal on video and sharing it with whoever sees it on the interwebs...but today it is terrifying. And sort of necessary. In the interest of bravery.

Wow, that is not the still of my face I would have chosen to begin with, but such is life when you are technically challenged. I own this video, as much as you can own anything on the web. (c) Jess of www.mypathtomommyhood.blogspot.com

A Beautiful Mess of Motherhood by Jess*

I was watching TV with my husband, Bryce, when I saw a commercial that I will be avoiding for as long as it runs. It featured various women gleefully holding up ClearBlueEasy pregnancy tests and embarking on a new amazing journey into motherhood. Actually, I can’t tell you exactly what was in the commercial because as soon as I saw the first scene I covered my face and la la la’d through the sappy music and the squeals of joy until Bryce said it was safe to come out.

It’s been years since I’ve peed on a stick, but I know some things about ClearBlueEasy. I know that the digital test threshold for HCG, the “pregnancy hormone,” is 25 because I called them the very last time I was pregnant, in 2012, so that I could use it to determine when I was no longer pregnant. I had miscarried after my sixth IVF embryo transfer, but I could still produce the word PREGNANT on the screen. In a sick sort of way I wanted to see it, over and over, because even though it wasn’t true, not really, I didn’t know if I’d ever see that word in connection with my body again.

The only other pregnancy I achieved ended in the operating room with the removal of my right tube and the wayward babyling who was trapped within it. I peed on sticks like mad that pregnancy, too, because while I hoped against hope, deep down I knew it wasn’t going to last.

It turned out to be wise, taking picture after picture of pregnant pee-sticks, because I never got pregnant again – that was all I had of the experience.

By the end of our insane 13 cycles of IVF over 5 ½ years, fueled by the hope of those two brief pregnancies, I couldn’t even complete three of the planned embryo transfers as my uterus had decided to call uncle and refuse to make a lining anymore thanks to scarring from too many surgeries. In the beginning, I peed on a stick before the blood test, but quit because a sympathetic nurse saying “I’m sorry” and scheduling the “rehash-and-new-plan” appointment is a hell of a lot kinder than a sad and lonely single line on a stick, or worse, the words NOT PREGNANT blaring from a digital screen. I learned to pee on a stick only when I knew I was already pregnant, however briefly.

That’s not entirely true. I peed on a stick one last time at the end of the last completed cycle, and the result was the worst – a faint second line (I couldn’t take any more words) that didn’t register on the official blood test. Maybe it was a stick error, maybe it was an embryo that started to implant and then…didn’t. Either way, it was not a satisfying end.

While I would have loved to have gotten pregnant and stayed that way, that is not how motherhood will come to me. It was so hard to let go of the hope of pregnancy, especially after using donor eggs and then donor sperm and having those fail. It seemed like the quintessential mother story – you pee on the stick, you call your OB, you go to joyful scan after joyful scan as you nest and prepare for the bundle that comes after a reasonable 40 weeks, give or take. Although I know that’s not how it works out for so, SO many women, hanging on to the dream of that story started costing me motherhood:  pregnancy was just not going to happen and we were literally flushing our money, our hopes, and our stamina down the toilet.

I wish that I had realized sooner that parenthood was far more important than a gestational period glorified on social media with Bump Watches, maternity shoots, and cute clothes to show off the belly you’d rub beatifically without even thinking about it. Because now we are 19 months into our wait for domestic adoption, and it is just so hard to be in a place of perpetual waiting, perpetual hope, and perpetual disappointment…so far. I am tired from beating my head against a wall throughout the IVF part of our journey, and now that we are seven years into our quest to have a family it feels like it’s possible we enjoy torture. There is no calendar for the calls. There is no pee stick to let me know I have made it to the next step. We have had a span of 10 months go by without a call at all to cling to, and then received a call where the baby was born the day before and, if chosen, we would need to be able to go to the hospital within 24 hours and take placement. We’d go from not-parents to parents in a dizzying span of time. I felt intense hope for impending motherhood, a feeling of MAYBE NOW THIS PART OF OUR LIFE CAN BEGIN, only to have those hopes dashed in a kind but short phone conversation notifying us that someone else got the “yes.”

We endure this hope and despair and picking my broken self up from the floor to do it all over again because I have this overwhelming desire to be a mother. I can’t have the typical pee-stick commercial experience, or anything even remotely resembling it. My motherhood is dependent on someone else reading the words PREGNANT but feeling hopeless for so many possible reasons, all of them heartbreaking. Neither of us are going to have that joyful moment with this milestone. Hopefully, I will get to become a mother, to feel the joy of parenthood, but it will be because another woman has to make an incredibly difficult decision. My joy; her tragedy.

My experience with motherhood will be different, because it will be shared with my child’s birthmother. We hope to know her, to have her be a part of our lives, but even if she isn’t physically there, her presence will be a constant. There will be complexity for both of us as we navigate this multilayered family tree. We will be on opposite sides of this fertility mess – me, unable to bear a child despite desperately wanting to, her, able to bear a child but at a time where she desperately wishes she wasn’t. 

It will be a beautiful mess of motherhood, one that isn’t pictured in pregnancy test commercials, but I am ready for it to begin. 

* All rights reserved by Jess of www.mypathtomommyhood.blogspot.com

Good Riddance, March

Seeing my resilient snowdrops  in the garden the other day was a welcome reminder, because March has been a doozy of a month, leaving us feeling bruised, battered, squashed, and gasping for air. But today is the last day, and I can only hope that there is nothing but green shoots and warmer weather and good things to come in April. Thank goodness today is the last day of March, because I honestly cannot take any more of what it had to give.

- March started innocently enough, with the first weekend holding a glorious visit from my best friend and the audition for Listen To Your Mother. I was surprised how incredibly nervous I was reading my piece, but I started the month feeling like I had accomplished something and fed my soul between best friend time and pushing myself creatively. The flip side was that I had spent so much time on my LTYM piece that I was a bit behind on my IEP (individualized education plan) writing, so I knew I would have to haul on those once that was over.

- The week after that amazing weekend I started having problems with my eye. I thought maybe pinkeye, but seeing as how I don't have small children and I don't work with small children (although middle school children often do not have the best hygiene), that seemed odd. Also, not itchy. But throughout the week it got worse and worse.

- Sunday March 12th, also known as Bryce's birthday, we spent forever in the emergency room making sure that my eye wasn't trying to explode or kill me. I got started on a bazillion mgs of ibuprofen, which did bupkus.

- Monday March 13th I lost my Uncle Jim to lung cancer. He'd thought a stage 1 bout was over when treated with selective internal radiation therapy, but when back for a routine scan it had spread virulently and he was given six months to live. Despite hoping for more time, more possible treatments, he passed away at home surrounded by family. It's a loss that's hit our family hard, and I feel so much for his wife, his sons, his brothers and his sister (my mom), and all the cousins. He was 68. My mom and stepfather have been volunteering at a local hospice house, and they went out several times including the weekend before he died. What a gift to bring peace to a family member and those surrounding him, but what a difficult thing to be supporting and needing support yourself, to try to facilitate end of life and grief while working through your own feelings. My uncle was a Vietnam Veteran, a Navy Seabee who served multiple tours. He had many stories about those times, and you could always find him at family events surrounded by people, regaling everyone with stories that were always interesting and never sugarcoated. He was a gifted welding engineer, well-respected in his field and widely published. He was an amazing father whose sons are a testament to his legacy -- smart, caring, hard-working, family-oriented. He was a loving husband to his wife, my aunt. They struggled more than any one family should with health conditions, but they held each other up. My Uncle Jim got to be a grandfather, and some of my favorite pictures that have come up on social media are of him smiling as his granddaughter wears his Seabee hat. There are a lot of pictures of Uncle Jim smiling, with a twinkle in his eye. For all that he lived through in his too-short life, he always had that twinkle. It's hard to believe that it's gone except in memories. I wasn't super close with my uncle, but I loved him dearly and the hole in our family that he leaves is a gaping one.

- Friday March 17th I spent my St Patrick's Day at the eye specialist at our local (and amazing) hospital. Ibuprofen did nothing to reduce the creepy redness and pain in my eye. Turns out it was anterior scleritis, which is inflammation of the inside of the white of your eye, or the sclera. (Fun word fact, "itis" means inflammation. Whatever comes before is what is inflamed.) They were hoping it was epi-scleritis, which is inflammation of the surface of the white of your eye, but alas, I hit the crap jackpot. I got put on a strong regiment of Prednisone, Prednisone eyedrops, and prilosec. The prilosec is a godsend, because when I had the flu last year and was on Prednisone forever, I had heartburn as a side effect that was so intense I almost had Bryce call an ambulance because I thought I was having a heart attack. The prilosec in the morning before breakfast has eliminated that completely, it's just towards the end of the day that I get a weird tingly sensation under my right ribcage, like little bugs crawling around under my skin, but no heartburn. Whew.

- Saturday March 18th Bryce left for a conference in California, so I was left alone with my Prednisone energy and sleeplessness and he was on a whirlwind schedule of meetings and classes and client dinners and events. Also, our gross cat started to sneeze and be especially gross again, and so Bryce helped out by getting him to the vet and on meds before he left on his trip. The good news: the cat wasn't sneezing gross things at me. The bad news: I had to give him FOUR PILLS PER DAY in addition to remembering my own pill and eye drop regiment. This meant getting up extra early, because Prednisone needs to be taken with food, and I usually eat my breakfast in the car and show up to school covered in gluten free bagel or blueberry oat bar crumbs, but now I am forced to eat breakfast in a less-rushed way, which isn't all bad actually. I also discovered, while Bryce was away, that he keeps me from working all the time. All those IEPs needed to get to my administrator chairing the meeting, and get copied, and be double and triple and quadruple checked, and I had broken my own boundary rule of not giving out my cell number to parents because all the days off from snow and wind left me unable to complete all the parent phone conferences at school, so I had to make sure I'd incorporated all of those conversations I'd had while sitting in my glider upstairs where we actually get phone service. I was at school until 6 or 7 most nights he was gone, and then I kept working at home until bedtime. Necessary, due to the time of year, but exhausting. Did I mention that the ophthalmologist said that she firmly believes that stress can be the trigger for scleritis? More on that later. Sigh. Also, please smack anyone you see who says teachers work "part time." If I didn't have the next break or summer to look forward to I would probably collapse. We work all the normal hours and then some in a 10 month period, for those people who love to complain about "all that vacation." It's EARNED, people. And for what we do and the qualifications we must have we are not compensated NEARLY enough. But that's a soapbox for another time.

- A spot of good news was that one day when I did leave early that week I had the followup from my endomyometrial resection surgery in December, and everything looks good, if bizarre on an ultrasound. That was a resounding success, so far.

- Bryce got home late, late Thursday night (1:30 in the morning Friday 3/24 actually), and was sick. At first we thought it was just a cold from flying, which happens every time he flies, but it quickly revealed itself to be more. By Sunday we were in Urgent Care (I fear we are becoming frequent flyers there between my elbow and his throat, and an incident last summer where he fell down our slate steps and beat the tar out of his foot and leg), where they couldn't get a strep swab because his throat was so swollen he couldn't tolerate it (and he is squeamish about stuff like that), but they did the best they could and told him to take ibuprofen (drug of choice apparently) and rest. Well. It just got worse, he lost his voice, he had a continued low grade fever, his throat was painful and phlegmy and basically when he coughs he sounds like he is going to choke to death... so I ended up taking him to the doctor on Tuesday 3/28.

- But first, I had my meetings on Monday 3/27, which went very well despite the fact that I had about two and a half hours of sleep from a combination of Prednisone, nerves, and Bryce hacking his way through the night until he set himself up on the couch at 3:30 am. My kids made a buttload of progress, we've tweaked all their programs, parents and kids were happy, my students were confident in the meetings and spoke well to their strengths and concerns and needs for next year, and they just about floored me with their maturity and ability to communicate what works for them. I mean, floored by way of pride, but I am not surprised because my students have done wonderful things this year. These meetings are such hard work, but so rewarding especially when you can see that things have clicked for students. It is a day that exhausts me thoroughly but also serves as a reminder of how very much I love my job, how much I love helping young people develop the tools to be successful and work through challenges and be the captains of their own ships, and that this part of my life is incredibly fulfilling. Even as it probably is a huge contributor to the state of my eye.

- Back to the doctor on Tuesday. Boy did I feel horrible, because I had honestly given Bryce a really hard time about his "man cold." It is a universal truth that men tend to be awful when sick. They tend to simultaneously claim to be dying yet refuse help or medical attention of any kind. I know I am not alone in this struggle. However, the doctor looked at Bryce's throat, which was red, raw, swollen, and dotted with nasty white pustules (hope you're not eating right now), and said, "This is the WORST virus I've seen all year. I've never seen anything like this." He said he should take the rest of the week off to rest, he shouldn't talk for 48 hours, to expect to be sick and at least highly weakened for at least 3-4 more weeks, and that traveling was a terrible idea both for contagion and the need for rest. Um, he's really sick. REALLY sick. I wake up in the night to go down and check on him to make sure he's still breathing, like he's a newborn. His coughing is horrific. It's not in his lungs, but it's a throat-clearing, choking sound that wracks his body. Whatever this is is just awful.

- Did you catch that "no traveling" part? That means that we are not attending my uncle's Celebration of Life services next week. I am beyond upset about it, but I honestly do not feel that I can go by myself, and I cannot go for as long as other family members such as my sister and my mom and stepfather. I need to help with Bryce. I need to not be a carrier. I am struggling with my own issues with my eye. It is just not a possibility anymore. I emailed my aunt and cousins, and my aunt wrote an amazing note back to me that put me into a sobby mess for about an hour. I did not know that she is struggling with immune deficiency, and so it is DEFINITELY not a good idea for us to go and expose her to whatever this ilk is. She understood. I am so sad not to be a part of the family coming together to honor my uncle's life though. But so it goes.

- Wednesday 3/29 I started having intense pain in my eye. Just to be clear, my eye looks amazing. It is no longer a horror show. However, having piercing pain in the same area where the redness was created a fair amount of concern. I've been religious about the Prednisone and the eye drops, but the pain was the same soreness that brought me to the ER paired with waves of pain so intense it brought me to tears at school. And so I went back to the eye doctor. The good news: all my bloodwork for scary autoimmune diseases related to scleritis came back negative. My inflammation is gone. The eye looks good. The bad news: sometimes scleritis comes with weird muscular pain, and so dilating it can actually help, which they tried and it worked. So now I have one normal eye and one dilated eye, but no more pain beyond a tiny soreness. This is hilarious for many reasons. 1) I look like David Bowie, if David Bowie was a slightly chubby 40 year old woman who is not cool at all. 2) My vision is basically like one of those hidden picture things they used to have displayed at the mall -- I am constantly looking for the fucking sailboat. My life looks like I have 3-D glasses on. 3) Somehow, I am able to compensate for it pretty well and still read, since my job involves READING ALL DAY with students. I think this is because of my astigmatism, because before I got glasses as a 20 year old I had been using my brain to figure out the shapes of words and letters. When I got the glasses, observing the world was so much less cognitive work, and I hailed my brain for the good job it did making up for a deficit I didn't realize I had. Same here. Good job, brain. It's exhausting, but it's doing well with this unbalanced vision. I am hopeful that I don't have to do this for more than a few days. It's disconcerting.

One of these things is not like the other...

- Oh, also I found out that I'm on Prednisone for another SEVEN WEEKS. They want to make sure that the inflammation doesn't return, as scleritis likes to make a comeback tour. So this week I'm at 40, then each week it goes 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 5. NINE WEEKS total of Prednisone, since I started with a week of 60, then a week of 50. I am still struggling with sleep deprivation, and I hate the overly energetic feeling this drug gives me. I have done things like scrub our hardwood floors with a t-shirt and Bona spray. I have made parent calls where I sound like the fine print at the end of auto sales ads on the radio. I was observed yesterday and fear that I looked like a 10-ring circus ringmaster even though I have 6 students in the class that was observed, and I packed a lot into the 30 minutes we had due to state testing. (Oh yes, and state testing this week.) I am very sad that I am in this for the long haul, but glad given that it will hopefully keep my eye healthy for the long haul, too.

- Late this week we also found out that the planned transfer for the couple who adopted our embryos was cancelled, the third cancellation since our embryos made our way to them (and ours aren't even first at bat, there's another one in play before ours). I freaked out, as it was basically the proverbial straw. "What if there's something wrong?" I wailed. And then I left a frenetic speedy voicemail for our contact asking if it was possible to know what happened, because my peace of mind was flagging. Well. We got a very personal response from the couple, and I immediately felt like the biggest of assholes. Everything is fine, and they totally understood our concern, but I couldn't help but feel that in seeking my own peace of mind I made them feel shitty when they are down. I remember cancelled cycles. They suck. And no one else was invested in ours. The upshot is now May is the month for transfer (although possibly not ours yet), and I hope all goes well. It seems that there is no such thing as closure in this arena, or any arena, and we continue to wait and see what happens on this front. The nice thing is that we can communicate back and forth with the couple through our contact at Snowflakes, which makes me feel a bit more connected and hopefully I can let go of my anxieties on this front. These embryos are all we have left of some kind of genetic link, and while they are no longer truly ours, it is nice to know what's going on. I can't help but fear that we've spread our curse to this poor couple. Irrational, but not any less real of a fear. If that makes sense at all. I wrote them a letter that Bryce approved, to hopefully make it clear how much we appreciate their accepting our embryos and how we feel for their situation and hope for a family at the end for us all. What an amazing process to be able to have this level of communication, to have this openness even before embryos are in play. It brings tears to my eyes, actually.

- Today, the last day of March, I kept my sick day. I was supposed to have my follow up for my eye today, but since they saw me on Wednesday I got to cancel that. I had put in for this sick day for the appointment over a week ago. I kept it as a sort of sacrifice to the March evils. You know why? Because I am EXHAUSTED. I am SPENT from my own Prednisone-fueled insomnia paired with the energy of a million ants. I have been taking care of Bryce. I have been taking care of everything but my own sanity and health. And so, in hopes of preventing myself from getting this hideous thing that is attacking Bryce, and in hopes of coming back next week more rested and less vision-impaired, I KEPT MY SICK DAY.

I am ending March with a tiny bit of self-care, in hopes that it helps me to bounce back. Because this month SUCKED. It sucked hard. It was full of disappointment and grief and overworkedness and health issues and more stress than I think I've felt in a long time. I have wanted to sleep for days and also cry for days, and I have been unable to have nary a glass of wine for most of the month due to all the meds. Which is a plus and a minus, because I'm basically on a bit of a cleanse. Except we're eating a lot of takeout because time is just not on our side and it's easier, and I'm pretty sure most cleanses don't involve barbeque and Thai food. Ha.

So, sayonara, March. Good riddance to you. Take your nasty energy and leave, please. I sure as shit hope April is a much better month.

#Microblog Mondays: Resilience

These snowdrops first poked up out of the leaf litter in early March, when we had a little spate of warm weather in advance of a giant windstorm that uprooted trees and put thousands out of power. The branch came down in the middle of the small clump of spring, and then the following week, not even a full week later, we were hit with over two feet of snow.

This spring has been crazy -- days where it's 72 for the high and 25 for the low, sustained winds of over 65 miles an hour with gusts of 81, and then a giant dumping of heavy, heavy snow.

But now there's been rain, and while the yard is swampy and scarred by the carnage of the snow plow along the road, I am thrilled that the snowdrops have survived all this. The clump is three times bigger than it was when they first poked out only to be thrust into all the lion March could give, and they grew around that branch that was wrenched off a sassafras tree yards away.

They are a picture of resilience -- of taking a beating over and over only to grow up out of the dead leaves matted by heavy snow, to grow around the branch that tried to squash them, and to grow robustly and defiantly into the only white and a smattering of green in that side garden.

So much inspiration in a stubborn patch of flowering bulbs, finally heralding the promise of spring.

Want to read more #Microblog Mondays? Go here and enjoy!

Paved With Good Intentions

I am struggling hard with Facebook lately. It's been a love-hate relationship for a while, but I truly struggle with some aspects of it.

Not the connecting-with-other people, although I am starting to wonder how much actual quality connecting is going on. I have this worry that people THINK they are connected, but in fact interactions have become super shallow thanks to a sense of connectivity on social media that doesn't go deeper than "I like this photo of your dog" or "that post was ha ha funny." Not even the sharing of information, of news-related things, current events, things to be aware of, essays to read, human-interest stories to watch or read (I am very interested in the fact that my feed has quickly shifted from pictures and text shares to more than 50% videos, which I think speaks to the shifts this technology has made in human attention span in some ways). Those are great, and I am a sucker for a good panda-bear-rolling-backwards-through-the-week short video, in moderation. These are all things I can stomach about the book of face.

It's these other things I see spread all over Facebook that put me on the hate side. Things that seem to give a false sense of DOING SOMETHING but in actuality seem to be a 21st century iteration of the chain letter email. It's the cut-and-paste things that are driving me CRAZY, and the proliferation of sharing without a) thinking or b) ACTUALLY READING what is inside.

I cannot keep track of them all, there are so many, but I am going to focus on three in particular that have my ire up for various reasons. Before I go on, please know that I am not against cancer patients or foster adoption. I am also not for #45 in any way (I have yet to find a reason to "give him a chance" since every single new thing I learn gives me more reasons to mourn for humanity). But I just cannot get behind these cut-and-paste things that are spreading like wildfire.

Anything that is supposedly in support of people going through a horrible disease like cancer without actually linking to anything helpful to the cause and/or includes manipulative language. 
I see this one ALL THE TIME, and it irritates me EVERY SINGLE TIME. It literally starts with "I'm going to say goodbye to some of you right now..." and ends with something like "95% won't cut and paste in support of those fighting cancer, will you?" Please tell me, how many chemotherapy treatments were funded through cutting and pasting? Where is the link to donate to scientific research, or organizations that support families dealing with a cancer diagnosis? Oh, that's right. THERE'S NOT ONE. Where is the advice on how to call your representative to insure health coverage for various cancer treatments or screenings to prevent it? Where is the information on how to actually support someone who is going through this experience? It doesn't exist. Instead, the cut-and-paste thing bullies you into spreading it about (and I have news for you, not once have I been unfriended because I did not copy-and-paste, despite the threatening language inside the post). And it "spreads awareness" without actually giving you a concrete thing to do to help at all. This one drives me nuts. On a separate note, the ones about the Suicide Prevention Helpline do NOT drive me nuts, because there is an ACTUAL ACTION ITEM in it. You are spreading the actual 1-800 number (incidentally, 800-273-8255) that someone might need on that day or in the future. Give me a phone number to call, give me a website to go to for more information, give me places to donate money or items to actually help. But cutting and pasting by itself? That is not actually doing anything. And yet, they spread.

The post about how much it costs for Melania and Barron Trump to stay in NYC while the skinny budget cuts the National Endowment for the Arts.
I agree that this is good information to know, and it is hypocrisy at its worst. Self-interest of the wealthy at its worst. HOWEVER. Where is the source? Are those numbers accurate? I mean, I've seen a variety of reputable things about the infinitesimal cost of PBS and the endowments for the arts and humanities among other programs that are being slashed "because we can't ask people to pay for them," but I don't know about the cost of secret service in NYC because of living arrangements I can't comprehend. I am aggravated, but I refuse to copy-and-paste or even "like" this one. You know why? SEMANTICS. There is a line that bothers me enough to not want to have anything to do with it. And that line is this, "So in essence the Federal government is giving the Trump family a $183 million annual voucher so Barron can attend the elite private prep school of his choice." Did you catch that? HIS choice. A ten-year-old's choice. I can understand being super upset at the fact that someone who ran for president did not plan or follow through like EVERY OTHER PRESIDENT WHO HAD SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN IN THE WHITE HOUSE (which is a lot, actually). I do not want to debate whether it's a decision that's best for families one family, yada yada yada, because you know that if a certain 44th president had done this a zillion people would be focusing on being irate about the money and not the "Importance of Family Values." BUT. I do not agree with spreading about something that makes it seem like this is at all the fault of or in the hands of a child. It's not his decision. These are adult decisions. Ones I don't necessarily agree with, but leave the kid out of it. So, um, not gonna do that one, either.

The article about the five siblings in Kansas who want a home where they can stay together. 
Wait, what? What possible issue could I have with this one? SO MANY THINGS, that rub me the wrong way to the point of painful chafing. Hear me out. First off, I have absolutely no issue with the article itself, which is about five siblings in central Kansas who are seeking to be adopted together. It is a pull-on-the-heartstrings story for sure -- they range in age from two to eleven and were featured on a TV show, pleading to be kept together. The older kids talk about their wishes for the family that might be theirs forever -- that they be able to do sports, and activities, and go on vacations and have a loving Christian upbringing. The reason for their presence in the foster care system is not given out of consideration for the children's privacy (this sentence was a big DUH in my book, but I'm sure they had to include an obvious confidentiality concern in the article due to the inevitable morbid concern of humans, and I'm sure they still got a lot of conjecture in the comments, which I did not read). The article also says that the response to their plea went viral, with inquiries coming from as far away as Ireland, and the it concludes with the information that the inquiries have been narrowed down to seven serious contender families who are in the process of being considered.

And this is where I have SO MANY PROBLEMS, because this article is being shared all over with the comments and taglines, "Oh, I'd take them all" or "I would if I could!" or "Anybody?" and I don't believe most people who share this story have actually read the article, or they would know that there are already families who have committed to adopting five children and it is down to deciding, I imagine, who is most qualified and prepared for the task of raising FIVE CHILDREN WHO HAVE SUSTAINED SOME SORT OF TRAUMA IN ORDER TO BE SEEKING A HOME. I don't believe that any of these families put themselves in for consideration on a whim. And yet, people who share or comment seem to think that you can just scoop up these children. In fact, someone I know TAGGED ME in the comments of one iteration of this article. As if I could go, "Oh, you know what? We really want a family, and we think that going from the two of us to SEVEN ranging from a toddler to a middle schooler sounds like the perfect solution, 1650 square foot home be damned!"

I did not know how to respond to that one, so I didn't. I pretended that my name is not attached to that article on the interwebs, in the comments. I don't know how to remove it. The story is a human interest one, and it is wonderful to think that they could all be placed together. But holy jeezum, does it add to the trivialization of adoption in the media, to this Orphan Annie fantasy of scooping up children without homes and you'll all be tap dancing into the sunset together. It makes it seem like, "well, you want a baby, you could have FIVE if only you'd consider these children from Kansas!" It completely erases any belief that we have carefully thought out our adoption plans. It makes it sounds that we are selfish somehow for not wanting to take on ANY situation that comes by. And that we are waiting so long because we want to have a little baby.

My ire, explained.
1) Never in my life has a family of seven been in consideration. Some people dream of giant families. At my most optimistic and idealistic, I never wanted more than a family of four -- two children, two parents. More children, more responsibility. More financial pieces, more space requirements. You know we live in a hobbit house. I have space for one child. Once upon a time we would have made space for two had that worked out, but it didn't and so now we plan differently. I have space currently for one that can be in a crib. Wanting to have a family does not mean wanting to suddenly become the Von Trapps. More is not more for us in this arena.

2) Adopting from foster care is not our choice. This may sound harsh, but it's not. We don't have the correct certification for foster, and we did not choose that path for a multitude of reasons, all of them very well-thought out. There are generally no good reasons why children are removed from a home. There is trauma -- whether it's parental death, parents in prison, neglect, abuse, or a variety of other possibilities, none of them trivial. Those are experiences that require working through, and if you decide to adopt through foster care, you need to be prepared to support those needs. I do not apologize for wanting to work through a process that skips over the foster care system, finding a home for a baby before an intermediary is needed. I do not apologize for wanting to start my family with as much early environment influence as humanly possible. I have so much respect for those who choose foster adoption, and I can tell you that it is not a choice made lightly.

3) There is no acknowledgment that adoption, especially foster adoption, is a difficult, complicated process. For those who read the article before offering it up for other people, obviously not them, to take up on the offer, there are actually SEVEN FAMILIES being seriously considered for these children. Only ONE of those will become their permanent family, and it won't likely be someone who was tagged on Facebook. It will be after significant vetting and foster certification and home study activation, and careful consideration that the family in question is prepared to take on five children, ages two to eleven, who have suffered whatever trauma has them in this situation. We are not that family. Anyone who said, "oh man, if only!" is NOT THAT FAMILY. There are also likely to be court proceedings, possibly intricate ones, depending on the circumstances. So it irritates the piss out of me when people think that it is easy to scoop up five sandy-blonde-haired midwestern children pleading for a home,  that then we'll all be sitting around a farm table in our new giant house before going to gymnastics practice and soccer games together, easy peasy. Cue hazy sunset end credits.

4) Out of curiosity, when did you see such a public plea for a group of black siblings? The children featured are in a picture of white, sandy-blonde, mostly smiling kids. I am not at all saying that white children don't need homes, but there tend to be a hell of a lot more children of color who wait in foster care and age out, and where are the public pleas for them? It reminds me of something I saw (ironically on Facebook) about the epidemic of missing black teenagers in D.C., and that there has been very little media coverage of this. Except now that it is being spread on social media there is more awareness, and the police said that actually this isn't unusual. Which should have people really, really angry -- because a lot of children who aren't white go missing and it's considered just another day, and not really news? What the what? There is disproportionate coverage of human interest stories based on race. There just is. And it's something harder for me to put a finger on for why it bothers me in this case, but I think on all the older children who can't garner morning shows to plead for a home and have families clear in Ireland lobbying to be their parents, who don't have sandy blonde hair.

The point of all this is that I am seeing a lot of information spread about without a lot of thinking first. I feel like social media can be very helpful in knowing things that are going on, as long as you realize that you are probably only going to get the perspective of like-minded people if you get your information from Facebook sources. You are more likely to find things that are biased, or manipulating you into spreading information that may or may not be true or helpful. You are more likely to see something and react immediately, rather than thinking on implications or consequences.

I would far rather support causes I care about through actions than spreading a post around. I would rather send a friend fighting cancer a care package, or donate to the Breast Cancer Coalition of Rochester, or give money to the ACLU or Southern Poverty Law Center to fight injustice. I am short on time, but I have sent letters and called my representatives, who thankfully are in support of the things I care about. If you have time but not money, look into ways to support that are volunteer based. If you know someone who is in the adoption process, do not assume that they are just waiting to have a large family dropped in their lap (not always true, but also not actually realistic or possible).

If I had an adoption website, sharing that would be far more useful than including me in a post about children a thousand miles away who already have families in the process of trying to adopt them. I don't, because we are not pursuing private adoption, so just ask me how things are going. Tell me you're thinking of us. That works out better for everyone.

#Microblog Mondays: (Less) Creepy Eye Update

My creepy eye has had quite the workup.

I managed to get into the ophthalmology specialist on Friday, although had I known that a 9:00 am appointment would have me at the hospital until noon, I would have gotten a full day sub from the get-go.

So, it is scleritis, and not the nicer epi-scleritis surface version I was hoping for. It's inside the eye, and the ibuprofen did bupkus for lowering inflammation, so now I am on a regimen of predisone. I HATE prednisone. It gives me hideous heartburn and messes with my stomach. I also have prednisone eye drops, which don't have as many side effects other than somehow being taste-able 10 minutes later (I guess from leaking into my nasal passage or something? Ear-nose-throat stuff is so creepy). The meds are already making a difference, though.

Eye see you! Better, though right?
FEELS better, and that makes all the difference.
(This picture is from Saturday)

The reason I was at the hospital for so long is that scleritis is often associated with underlying conditions that need management, and they tested me for all of them which meant bloodwork, urinalysis, and a chest x-ray. I am clinging to the other side of the word often and hoping that this is just eye inflammation and nothing more, because otherwise I will need to have serious words with my body.

Buck up, body. Quit impressing me with your ability to do weird shit. Just DO WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, in SOME arena, PLEASE.

Even better after 3 days of Prednisone!
Still not clear all the way,
but not horror show anymore, either. Finally.

Want to read more #Microblog Mondays? Go here and enjoy!