transcended.net

This won’t be long as I didn’t flake out on my tutoring obligation this week like I did last week (bad, bad, bad, I know).

Just wanted to share this while I remember…

And don’t worry, I’ll give you full color on the genesis of this conversation later on…

But the gist of it is this, as usual, I freeze in the midst of major life changes while my husband charges forward into them headfirst.  I guess that’s why we work so well.

Last night I told Paul that one possible negative regarding adopting from South Korea is that the timelines are actually relatively quick.  I read that the average wait-time is 5-10months, which sounds awfully short compared to other programs I’ve read about.  Even though I know that adoption is unpredictable and things can move faster or slower than you expect, in my head I’ve always imagined the “gestation period” (if you will) would be ~2yrs and that this would be the amount of time I would have to mentally prepare for my whole world turning upside down (in a good way). 

So the thought of 5-10months was strangely disconcerting to me.  And because SK is not my first choice but it is Paul’s, I thought, Aha!  I’m going to bring up this accelerated timeline as a negative for this program, since I’m pretty sure he is not ready to be a daddy in five months! 

Except when I told him about this “problem” he looked me in the eye and said, “Isn’t that good?”

To which I replied, “HUH?!” and looked at him as though he had grown a third eye. 

And then I asked him if he could REALLY imagine a two year old running around our quiet, clean home in five months. 

Like seriously boo, think about it.  

And he said yes.

I have to be honest.  I’m not quite there.

More later…

I’ve started so many posts this past week in an attempt to wipe the last one from the top of this blog and my memory.  And yet, I haven’t finished a single one and last Friday still weighs on me.

My thoughts are such a jumbled mess though, I don’t really know where to begin.

Truthfully, my week was exhausting enough on its own, but I’ll save that bitchfest for later (in fact, it’s one of the half-written posts mentioned above).

I will say this though, the way I feel seems to change from day-to-day, hour-to-hour, even minute-to-minute sometimes.  I vacillate between these moments of peace and clarity, and other moments filled with things like gut-wrenching hopelessness and despair.  Unfortunately the peaceful moments are fragile ones, whereas despair is not shy about settling in and making itself at home.

I think it’s because the peaceful moments are coming from a place inside my thought process that I’m still not really sure of.  The best analogy I can think of is a work-related one so I don’t know if it’s really all that good or if it will make sense, but basically it’s as though I’ve built a model to analyze securities and I’ve run a certain security through it and, based on my model, the security seems to be a good buy.  The problem is, I’m not confident in my model. 

Translation?  The only thing that makes me feel better is believing that we will still find our baby through adoption.  When I can believe that that is the reason for all of this pain right now, i.e. because God wants for us to meet our child(ren) on this unique path meant just for us.  My heart does start to heal when I imagine that adoption will be our saving grace in the midst of this. 

But I’m afraid.  Afraid that my model is broken, afraid that my health issues will fuck us once again and prevent us from doing the ONE AND ONLY thing that makes me feel like I should bother continuing to put one foot in front of the other most of the time. 

So oftentimes, my moments of peace of clarity are interrupted by a tumble into despair as I start to imagine that we will be rejected by every program because of my health issues and we will never be parents and I’m just really not ready to imagine that possibility yet without becoming mildly suicidal.  That is kind of the exact thought-process it turns into every. single. fucking. time.

My doctor (who is not an expert on adoption or reproduction)  has assured me he doesn’t think it should cause any problems and that he is more than happy to write whatever he needs to to certify that my health issues do not prevent me from being a successful parent, except that I’ve been advised not to get pregnant.  The reason I mentioned that he is not an expert on reproduction is because when he brought up adoption last Friday, he also threw out egg donation (actually he said, “You may want to start looking into alternatives, adoption, egg donation, and a whole bunch of other kinds of things they can do nowadays.”) which confused me because as far as anyone knows there is nothing wrong with my eggs.  I guess it’s not really that relevant, but just something that’s been bugging me and reminding me once again that doctors don’t know everything (or much of anything really) about the human body either. 

I didn’t really go into much detail in the last post about the specifics of the conversation, but something else that really kind of irked me was that my doctor kept bringing up China adoption (“People are bringing home tons of babies from China these days, and you’re already Chinese so it’ll probably be easier!”).  By the way, my doctor is not the total asshole this particular conversation makes him out to be, he’s clearly just really bad at discussing this sort of thing and much better at discussing things related to my test results, this is basically what I was talking about in this post about the specialist in TM2.  This is the same doctor who gave me his personal cell phone number last summer when I flared and even told me I could call him on vacation if I couldn’t get ahold of my other doctor or the on-call doctor, so I know he doesn’t mean to hurt me and actually cares for me quite a bit. 

Still though, this conversation was completely asinine.  

Especially because I already knew we wouldn’t meet the requirements for China adoption.  I actually thought it was because I was briefly on anti-depressants in college, but I just looked it up and it sounds like that wouldn’t be material since it was over two years ago, BUT the requirements do specifically rule out people with “severe diseases which requires long term treatment and which affect life expectancy, like malignant tumor, lupus erythematosus, nephrosis, epilepsy, and etc.”

I’m sure my doctor would argue that in my case there is no indication (at this point) that it should affect my life expectancy, but I’m pretty sure it’s a Very Bad Sign when they use four conditions as examples of what not to have and you have (or have had, since I am not currently leaking anywhere near enough protein to qualify as nephrotic) two of those four examples.  Which only further goes to show that he should have left it at, “Maybe you should start considering adoption.”  and left the details up to us as opposed to trying to give “helpful” suggestions on a subject he’s clearly ignorant about.

Anyway, most of the other country requirements I’ve seen are more vague (like “no serious medical conditions”) but I can see how it will probably be an uphill battle if we choose to go the path of international adoption.  In third-world countries someone with lupus probably can’t live and function normally.  So I can see how it would be hard for them to change their mind-set towards this condition even knowing that in the US we have access to a level of care that is unimaginable in vast swaths of the world.   

This depresses me to no end because for awhile now I’ve had my heart set on adopting from a small chain of Eastern Caribbean islands.  It may sound completely out of left field, but I stumbled on an adoption story, call it a year ago, which sparked my curiousity and when I looked into it, it sounded like such a straightforward program that I’m surprised it isn’t more popular what with all the issues popping up in other countries (with the UN getting involved, etc.).  I get that this is probably because it’s not quite as easy or great as the available information makes it seem, but I choose to believe that it must be a diamond in the rough.  Because sometimes it’s just healthier to hang onto your delusions. 

Which is probably why I’ve been too afraid to actually email the agency for more information.  Because I’m afraid it will only be the first step in a long, drawn-out process, at the end of which could be nothing more than a door slammed shut in my face.  I’m trying to be realistic and not get my hopes up, but at some point I have to remind myself that even if I do have my heart-broken, I have to at least try because at the end of the road there is still the possibility of a baby.  My baby.

And if I’m going to be any kind of parent at all, the least I can do is send one email right?

At the same time, I am opening myself to the idea of domestic adoption where I think we’ll have an easier time making the case that my condition is clearly not affecting my ability to function at a pretty high level (see: demanding/stressful job for the past four years with serious health issues mainly only occuring when attempting to stop meds).  However, domestic adoption brings up its own host of fears, not the least of which are the reasons I wasn’t too keen on adopting domestically in the first place.  For one, Paul is very open to adopting but he is very against the idea of open adoption.  I can usually convince my husband to my point of view when it comes to things like this because he knows how important this is to my happiness, but I really don’t want to have to do any convincing when it comes to this.  It’s just too important to risk talking him into something he discovers he isn’t comfortable with later on, so I’m not pushing it (only giving him my thoughts on the potential benefits of an open adoption).  I know this is going to drastically limit the number of birth mothers who will even consider us and the fact that we are Asian-American is not going to do us any favors either. 

I’m hoping that if we do end up really digging into domestic adoption, Paul will start to appreciate the benefits of an open adoption (e.g. family medical history, possibly less emotional issues for the child, possibly being able to be involved in the pregnancy, etc), but there are no guarantees and I’m thinking if he doesn’t change his mind we could be waiting for a very long time.  Maybe forever.

On my end, there are a lot of fears surrounding the potential for being scammed when it comes to domestic adoption, particularly if you do get involved during the pregnancy stage.  Also the benefit of having your baby from the first few days of his/her life is tempered by the fact that you can’t be sure the birth mother won’t change her mind until after the papers have been signed.  While I have heard of international adoption stories where this has happened, it seems like it’s less common because in most cases the children have already been abandoned or there is really no possible way the birth mother can raise the child no matter how much she may want to (which brings up a whole other can of worms about the many sides of adoption that people who don’t seriously think about adopting probably never consider). 

I just don’t think I have the stomach to be jerked around like that for very long and it seems to be a common problem for people who opt for domestic adoption.

Again though, I think if it comes down to it, I’ll just have to suck it up because I’ll do whatever I have to (within the confines of the law, of course).  

If we do end up adopting, I don’t think we could live in a better place than here in San Francisco.  I think the chances are good that we will have an obviously interracial family, given that the plan is to pursue either Carribean or domestic adoption (although, Taiwan and South Korea are not out of the question either) and if it’s not acceptable here, then it’s probably not acceptable anywhere in the US yet.  When I daydream about our future family, I usually don’t picture all of our children as being the same race, and I’m totally okay with it.  In fact, I’m probably not supposed to admit this, but I actually kind of prefer it.  No one’s going to mistake us for your average traditional family!

Although I’m sure the novelty will wear off, we WILL be just like every other family (which is a good thing!) and I’ll be irritated by the constant inflow of ignorant comments made by the non-adoptive community at large.

Another issue is that Paul and I don’t totally agree on how important it is to emphasis birth culture.  We both agree that no matter what we will do our best to teach our kids Chinese (even if neither of us are 100% fluent), but still it seems important for them to at least get the foundations when they’re young.  Beyond the possible future advantages of being able to speak the language of the country with the largest populace in the world, our kids are obviously going to be raised in an Asian-American family and we both want to share with them what culture we can.  However, I feel like it’s important to, from a young age, encourage them to learn about their birth culture as well.  For example, the country I currently have in mind is an English-speaking one, but when I looked into the Haiti program, I was thinking it could be good that I can speak a tiny bit of French because I thought it might come in handy if I needed to try and learn some basic Haitian Creole.  Paul on the other hand, was like, Why would you need to learn that?  We’ll just teach them English.  Whereas in my mind, it was a no-brainer that we would do what we could to keep them familiar with their native language, Paul just didn’t (and still doesn’t) see the need. 

I think no matter how liberal it is where we live, there will be unavoidable moments in the future when some idiot says something stupid in front of my child.  As much as I will probably want to punch said idiots in those moments, I hope that my kid is secure enough in who they are to move on emotionally unscathed for the most part.  I tend to think that the only way this will happen is if they see that we as their parents are interested and proud of their racial heritage by familiarizing ourselves with their birth culture while we are introducing them to ours.   Paul tends to think we shouldn’t be highlighting their differences from us at all because we will be making them feel excluded and different.  I think his heart is in the right place, but disagree with his logic.

So there it is.  Something.  Some of that jumble I mentioned way back at the beginning. 

Oh and just a word of advice.  Don’t ever tell someone who wants to have kids and can’t that they should “look into adoption” “just adopt” and in fact just avoid the word adopt altogether. 

Fucking duh.

Do you really expect the reaction to be, “Oh really?  Do pray tell me more about this uh-dop-shun you speak of as I have never in my life heard of it before and it could be an interesting solution to my problems that I had never considered!” 

No?

I think I would have found the whole conversation much less disturbing and upsetting if he had simply said, “I’m afraid your health will never allow for you to safely carry to term.” 

I totally would have come to the obvious conclusion on my own.  In fact, I have.

But I don’t know, maybe it was a good thing since it has forced me to realize that I need to start actively pursuing adoption if that’s what the option is for now.  I have to get over this paranoia that another dream of parenthood will be revealed as a baseless pipe dream and just say…here goes…

It’s really not about E.

At least, I don’t think it is.

It’s more about all the emotions it stirs up in me, how similar they are to the ones I’m feeling today. Inadequate. Broken. Unsure how, or if, things can be fixed.

Because let’s face it, that is what all of this is really about. The obsessing over the past, wallowing in what-if’s, spending so much time inside my own head. It’s all an elaborate cover up orchestrated by my own mind to trick myself into believing that these issues I really have already dealt with are what’s causing this complete and utter emotional devastation I’ve been feeling.

I think I did really believe at this time last year that I could be pregnant today.

Today? I’m not so sure about next year. Or ever. I don’t whole-heartedly believe I can do this anymore, no matter how desparately I want to. When you lose a boyfriend, your heart (and the 12 year old in you) may tell you you’ll NEVER find anyone else, but (as long as you are not actually 12) your brain usually reasons that you will. I think knowing that your brain does not agree with your heart, when your heart is broken, helps a lot. It kind of gives you hope. So what do you have when your brain is the one driving the “IT WON’T WORK” train?

I think the closest I’ve even come to working through all of this before now was back in February when I had the initial bad blood test. I look back on what I wrote then and am shocked at how similar it is to the things I’ve been posting as of late. And then the retest came back surprisingly normal and I thought everything was back on track only to discover a few short months later that not only was I having a flare, I was having a pretty nasty one.

For some reason I couldn’t get myself to really accept it again. I was kind of hopeful that in a few weeks I’d retest and everything would be fine again.

Obviously that didn’t happen.

I did try to process it.

I just haven’t known how to. I don’t know what to do with the fact that I only half believe there is a way for me to get off these meds. That I only half believe I will ever be able to carry a child inside me and know that I nurtured a precious tiny life.

My memory about the things I write here is clearly terrible (as my recent forays into the archives have shown me), but I don’t think I’ve spoken about this before. Maybe not even to Paul. The hardest thing about all of this is that I still carry this horrible guilt inside me.

I’m afraid that I somehow caused this disease.

That all the self-loathing I felt for all those years finally manifested itself in the form of my own body attempting to slowly murder itself.

And that, that is the reason I can’t get pregnant.

I know I shouldn’t feel that way, it’s unproductive after all. But I think that’s part of the reason I haven’t really been dealing with this very well. I’ve been so hesitant to let myself feel what I feel and grieve. Because even though I am very lucky in so many ways, I’ve also been very unlucky too.

I hate that it will never be easy for me. That even if I am able to get off the meds and get pregnant, it will be a high-risk pregnancy and I will be afraid the whole time.

I hate that I will never have one of those carefree, innocent pregnancies where you can’t even imagine that something could go wrong.

I hate how scared I am that if I ever do get pregnant something will go wrong, my body will freak out and that will be the end of that. There are only so many more years left for this to happen right?

I think that we will be parents, we both want to adopt regardless of what happens. The problem is, I don’t think adopting can truly “heal” the disappointment you feel in yourself when you fail to achieve your main biological purpose in life. I don’t think anything can. I will love my children with the same intensity no matter how they join my family, I will love however the miracle unfolds if God brings me a child through adoption. But I don’t think an adoption experience, no matter how beautiful and even more unique than a pregnancy/birth story (as this blogger, whose archives I recently browsed through, so eloquently put it), can replace the experience of having a life grow inside you, of knowing that your body safely cared for a little miracle. How do you REPLACE the feeling of your baby kicking inside you? I don’t think there’s an apples to apples comparison to make there…

Adoption is great. Giving birth is great. Are they equally great? In my opinion, yes. Do they equal each other? No.

I wish people wouldn’t equate adoption to some sort of salve for infertility. Or whatever this is considered. Not to mention, you can’t “just adopt” but I think I will leave that for another time.

Sometimes I read the infertility blogs and I’m stung by the fact that they can do fertility treatments. They take medicines that hopefully help them have babies, while mine are the reason I can’t. If I find out later that there’s also some other reason? I won’t be able to do anything about it because fertility treatments will most likely only do serious harm to my health anyway due to the hormones. So if this chronic disease, which no one knows the cause of decides to go away with only minimal medical intervention, and I can then quickly get pregnant before it changes its mind, I’ll be ok. If not? I’m basically screwed with no options.

Wow. Don’t think I’ve laid it out for myself quite like that before.

And on that note…

Usually I try to end these really long, rambling, depressing posts with something positive. Just because I hate to leave a sad overtone on this blog (although, who am I kidding these days?). I think today I’m just going to let myself feel like this fucking sucks. And not be grateful for anything.

Don’t worry, I will try to put my big-girl pants on tomorrow. I will look for the bright side and when I feel myself slipping into that quiet desperation? I will remind myself how good my life is.

But today, I am going to let myself be broken.

Well, I’m screwed. It’s 12:30AM and I am up. Because I went to bed just before 7pm, and that is a little early even by my standards (yes it is a Saturday night and you don’t have to tell me, I know I live an extremely glamorous life and you are so jealous right now).

The good news is that I think I am getting sleepy again. Which I realize only makes my life sound even sadder.

When I woke up at midnight, one of the reasons I couldn’t go back to sleep is because I immediately started thinking about “the m situation” and sleep was not going to happen. (The “m” stands for a word that I strongly associate with that time in my life, one that I still have a reaction to every time I hear it, much to my chagrin).

It drives me nuts because I know exactly what my twisted little brain is doing. The m situation was the last time in my life where I felt really wounded by something, as though something inside of me was now broken. The only other time where I’ve felt so completely powerless over something that had such a direct impact on my life. The only other time where it didn’t matter how much I wanted, or hoped, or wished, or endeavored, what I wanted was going to be taken away from me and there was nothing at all I could do about it.

It taught me that it doesn’t always matter how hard you work at something or how badly you want it.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the times when you work really hard for something, you will eventually succeed.

But there are things that are out of your control.

That you can pour your entire heart and soul into, and still fail miserably at attaining.

Sometimes, it’s just not up to you. Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do to change someone else’s feelings. Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do to make your body stop attacking your kidneys (c’mon body, really? aren’t we all on the same team here?).

Clearly, the m situation is kind of a perfect metaphor for what’s going on right now. My mind prefers to process a situation I’ve already done a post-mortem on and know I can move on from, as opposed to something that I really want right now and am now truly afraid I might never have. Something, that I’m really not sure I will ever be able to move on from.

And I still can’t make myself feel much over the realization that (if all goes according to plan) it will be over two years since we first decided that we’d like to start trying soon. That if we were a “normal” couple, or to be more specific, if I were a normal person, and we had started trying last June when we first talked about it we could have a baby, like now.

Instead, I’m sitting here, waxing nostalgic, blogging in a tired but not sleepy haze as I consider taking ambien to ensure that I do not completely get my schedule turned upside down.

No one other than myself (and the hubs, but he’s fast asleep!) to take care of at the moment.

But I suppose that’s step one.