Torrefaction

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Better question: is there any method I would NOT be likely to consider? I mean, seriously, unless you have been there you cannot imagine how loud the ticking of the biological clock can get, particularly when it's been going TICK TICK TICK in your miserable head for the better part of a decade.  There are plenty of methods I chose not to pursue, but when it comes to consideration, I considered every goddamn thing.  This one time I was walking into The Container Store and a guy parked his car in front of the door and went in for a half a minute to pick up his stuff that they had waiting right inside for him to load, and he left his baby in the back seat of the car. With the windows of the car open, which is better for the baby's temp but also better for carjackers.  Who knows, maybe he even left the keys in the ignition. My second thought was "that guy's wife would KILL THE HELL out of him if she knew he just did that" but my first thought was "hey, free baby!"  It was a facetious thought but it was a thought.  (What I actually did was eyeball the kid protectively from the parking lot until the dude came back out).

I opted not to pursue IVF because I don't see the point in paying 10,000 dollars to feel like shit about myself because I can't get and/or stay pregnant, when I was already getting to feel like shit about myself for free every 21 days (my former cycle was ridic; I do not miss her, may she rest in peace).  Surrogacy frequently is about using your own genetic material, and, uh, well if you know me you know that's a mixed bag.  Plus I have a zillion nieces and nephews, a couple of whom remind me of me in a good way, so I am sufficiently represented already.

So: adoption, because I like nearly everybody, I enjoy every type of temperament, and I love every baby I meet. And I particularly love the baby I ended up with, who is the world's best baby big boy, even when he is throwing a choo-choo at my head.



In closing, here's a fist-bump of solidarity and/or a hug, as appropriate, to any of you who are riding or have ridden the fertility rollercoaster...it's definitely one of the barfiest rides at the carnival.

There is a kid in the neighborhood who is just not getting his head around the concept of Charlie.  This kid, who I'll call X, is 6, and asks about Charlie's arm almost every time he sees him, in particular wanting to know if it's going to "grow back."  He's not a starfish, young man.  Every other kid who hangs out on our end of the block is fond of Charlie, asked once or twice about his arm, and now they just want to play with him and say hi. (X is also the kid who asked if Charlie is a "China boy," as I believe I mentioned, but if I didn't, there you go).  So I'm getting a bit irritated with X.

Today we encountered three kids, two of whom predictably went "Charlie! Hi Charlie, say hi!" and smiled at him. The third kid, X, asked about his frickin arm AGAIN! Mike's brother, who hadn't ridden this ride with X yet, started to give the "that's just how God made him" answer (I tend to give the "he was born like that" variant or the "he's just different" one), but I found myself snapping "you've asked that question about a hundred times, X, you need to stop asking."  Then to take the sting out of it, since all three kids were a little startled (I am not usually peppery with kids) I encouraged Charlie to say hi, and I was smiley.

A tiny part of me feels bad, because natural curiosity blah blah blah.  But a much bigger part of me thinks that if you don't understand something after the first couple of times you've asked about it, you need to just shut the hell up about it, even if you are only 6, because DUDE. 

I'm thinking today about the way we measure ourselves as mothers.  I suppose we all have a set of mothers in our heads--the ideal one we think we should be;  the bad one we strive not to be and maybe fear being.  Maybe we were raised by a version of one of those archetypes, and are measuring ourselves against our memories and hopes.  If we adopted our children, we may be measuring ourselves against the sorrow that brought our children to us--trying to be a good enough mother to make up for the child's loss of his first mother, and her loss of him.  If our children are disabled, troubled, medically fragile, that's another measurement: can I mother away pain, illness, limitations? Can I make up for all the hurts of the world?  Even those of us with supposedly-uncomplicated little ones, and supposedly-simple family relationships, have a thousand ways to fail to measure up.  Breasts that don't make enough milk, minds that create anxiety instead of bliss, kids who will only eat bananas and crackers, kids who just don't feel like sleeping or doing their homework.  Moms who stay at home with their kids are expected to raise their own food in the back yard and knit their own diaper covers and read edifying literature during naptime; moms who do office work are expected to be there for every school event and doctor's visit, and make a home-cooked meal every night.

The way I keep my sanity in the face of the Yardstick of Motherhood is to sometimes whimsically measure myself against a totally different ideal--the Yardstick of Old-Fashioned TV Fatherhood.  Unlike real fatherhood, Old-Fashioned TV Fatherhood seems to involve not much more than showing up for dinner, talking to the kids about their minor problems with their paper route or half-hearted bullies, and then having my spouse tell me how great and wise I am.  On the weekends, there is ball playing and lawn mowing, generally resulting in shenanigans.  The Yardstick of Old-Fashioned TV Fatherhood is awesome!  It's particularly well-aligned with my cooking skills, which are Mike-Brady like. I recommend this to every mother who ever feels bad about herself as a parent--just say, "would TV Pa Ingalls be able to do what I'm doing right now?" and unless your mothering style is all about splitting wood, you know that you measure up just fine, because that dude never did a goddamn thing, really, except talk pretty.

Or, better yet, put the yardstick away for a while.  Because you measure up just fine, dear Mothers.

Happy Mothers Day.


[edited to clarify which Pa Ingalls I'm impugning]

So, there's this thing called the Hague Convention: http://adoption.state.gov/hague/overview.html

And these are the countries that are part of it: http://adoption.state.gov/hague/overview/countries.html

If you adopt a child from a Hague country, the adoption must follow the rules of the Hague convention.  The convention establishes things like...children should be adopted in their home country first, and only placed internationally if they can't be adopted domestically.  And that adoptions have to be handled on both ends by accredited agencies.   These are rules designed to cut down on child trafficking, adoption of not-really-legally-orphans, and giving US adopters preferential treatment over in-country adopters.  It's not perfect...China is a Hague country and has problems with all of those things.  But it's a step in the right direction.

Haiti is not a Hague country, and the earthquake swept away most of their own internal systems for clearing orphans for international adoption.  The initial group of orphans who were allowed to enter the US without paperwork were children whose legal orphan status* had been established before the earthquake, who had paperwork in process in the now-destroyed Port Au Prince Hall of Justice, and who had already been matched with US parents.

This thing where a bunch of people grabbed a bunch of kids to take them, supposedly, to a safe haven in the Dominican Republic is not part of any proper adoption proceeding, and is interfering with Haiti's sovereignty as well as interfering with the personal rights of those children and their families. 

Anyway, good rules of thumb for ethical adoption:  1. adopt from a Hague country, if possible, rather than a non-Hague country  2. whether Hague or non-Hague, scrutinize how well the law is being followed and what circumstances are used to justify exceptions.  3. don't adopt "disaster orphans" because it's very difficult to establish that they are really orphans, legally or actually.*  4. ignore the intentions of people in the process and focus instead on their compliance with the law and with accepted adoption ethics.

I'm generally a fan of international adoption even though I ended up adopting domestically (I'm also a fan of domestic adoption)--I think unethical adoptions happen all over the world, in huge numbers, both internationally and domestically, and therefore engaging as ethically as possible with whatever process you choose is the key thing, rather than only doing one sort of adoption.

*generally, a child who does not have a relative willing to claim them is a legal orphan, even if their biological parents are alive.  Children relinquished to orphanages by living parents are sometimes legal orphans and sometimes not--in developing nations, parents may relinquish children temporarily to keep them alive, and retrieve them once they are able to feed them.

You know how certain parenting behaviors and beliefs kinda go together?  Like, moms who are into babywearing often also tend to be into breastfeeding, as well as sometimes co-sleeping and attachment parenting.  I enjoy reading about all of those things, although I don't practice them, except occasional babywearing back when my baby could reasonably be "worn," instead of "hauled."  So my blog reading on that front has been enjoyable, even though much of it doesn't apply to me.

In the land of special-needs parenting blogs, I don't encounter a lot of parents whose kids have the same specific needs as mine, but I do encounter an attitude I like, particularly among parents of kids with developmental delays and emotional challenges.  There's a lot of focus on the unique situation of each child, and a very strong emphasis on communication and reasoning--at least in the blogs I read.  So, yay that; another blog environment where nothing really makes me go "guh?" except the very occasional anti-vaccination thing.

Unfortunately, in the land of transracial adoption and toddler/orphan adoption, there is often a correlation with an authoritarian ideal of parenting, and a control-based approach to solving all problems of behavior and attachment, up to and including forced eye contact, holding, and so forth.  Which is a style of parenting that bothers me a lot, particularly when applied to children who have already been through trauma and/or abuse.  A lot of adoptive parents are also very religious, which sometimes intersects with either authoritarian parenting or racial "colorblindness."  It's not impossible to find adoptive-parent blogs that feature non-authoritarian parenting & racial awareness in a single package, but sifting through the other ones can be....unpleasant.

Is there something you're passionate about, that seems to often go hand-in-hand with something you're passionately against?  (Despite the serious topic of this entry, feel free to provide facetious and/or silly answers to this question :)

This week is International Blog Against Racism Week - go over here to read a pile of awesome stuff.

My contribution is scatterbrained--motherhood has been kicking my ass recently. But here is some stuff I can share.

A few thoughts for white people who are not adoptive parents: 

1. Some babies who are ethnically Chinese are actually born in America! It's amazing but it's true.  Stop being so startled.


My son Charlie, a gentleman and a patriot.

2. Chinese children come in "boy" as well as "girl" versions, even the ones who are adopted. Stop being so startled.

3. Asian children in America are of multiple different ethnicities and nationalities, including the ones who are adopted.  Stop saying Ni Hao to random Asian kids.

4. You are seriously going to tell my my son "doesn't look Chinese?" What the hell do you think Chinese people look like?  This?

5. Black birth mothers who place infants for adoption generally do so because they cannot afford to add a child to their family, not because they don't care about their baby.  Stop talking shit about them.

6. The law is unfair to black people.  And poverty, with its associated ills, disproportionately affects black people.  Black parents who lose custody of their children are not necessarily bad parents.  Stop talking shit about them.

6. Oh hey I know, how about you just stop talking shit about  ALL black people? 

And thoughts for my fellow white interracially-adoptive parents:

1. Black mothers do stuff with their daughters' hair. Look here, here, here, here.  If you have a black daughter, for God's sake, do some stuff with her hair. Your average black mom would no more send her daughter to school with her hair in a mess than she would send her son in without a shirt.

2. Your child loses something of value when they are placed in a family that doesn't share their race. You can and should take steps to mitigate that loss and help them to develop as healthy of a racial identity as possible, so they don't feel like a fraud. But don't kid yourself that they haven't lost anything.

3. Chinese people in America do not, actually, stick their kids in adorable tiny silk outfits with frog closures at every fucking opportunity. 

4. Know your ethnic slurs! Do not, for example, put your Asian child in a shirt with bananas on it, like I did once upon a time. If you are white and have a black son, notice that monkeys are ubiquitous on boys' clothing, and then NEVER BUY ANY OF THAT SHIT. 

5. Be aware that many proper names have ethnic or racial baggage attached.  "Charlie" is such a name (Charlie Chan, 5 o'clock Charlie...).  If you're naming your child (as opposed to keeping their birth name) (which is what we opted to do), make sure you vet their name thoroughly before settling on it (You should probably check their birth name too, just in case there's baggage their birth parents are unaware of).

6. That "red thread" saying is not about adoption. Please stop repeating it. Also? Most adoptions involve some level of personal tragedy for the birth parents, and also for the child. Chinese adoptions in particular involve quite a lot of pressure on the birth parents.  Sentimentalizing that as "destiny" denies your child the truth of their story.

7. Did you know that Hinduism is an actual religion, where they revere their gods and stuff, and probably don't like blasphemy any more than other religious people? IKR? If you put your Indian kid in a Siva/Shiva tee shirt  because "he's my little destroyer--he's in the terrible twos and he destroys EVERYTHING!" I hope someone is very rude to you.  (ETA: Not because it's bad to put your kid in a Shiva tee shirt, but because if you do it you should be able to explain who Shiva is for real, and not be glib and reductive about it).

8. If you name your kid "Martin Luther King Smith" people will know that MLK is the only black person you've ever heard of.

9. If your home is going to be a safe space for your child--and it really, really should be--you are going to have to work hard to fight racism, and to overcome your own prejudices, and to understand and check your own privilege--EVERY SINGLE DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. 

10. People of color who are against interracial adoption often have good reasons based in sociology, history, and personal experience, and are worth listening to even if you don't agree.  White people who are against interracial adoption often have a bunch of dumbass bullshit reasons based on racial biases.

11. In cases where a child is actually "saved" from poverty or oppression by being adopted, the credit and gratitude for that should go to their birth parents, who made an excruciating personal sacrifice in order to give the child a better life.

12. Going to a poor country to adopt a child and then complaing about all the poverty?  Makes you an asshole.  If you return from a poor country and say "the building where they finalized our adoption was so run-down, it was like something you would see in the projects!" you are an asshole and also very obtuse.  If you complain that the child you brought home from a poor country had diarrhea for a whole month OMG, when the people from the orphanage swore he was healthy, you are an asshole.  If you refer to your adopted daughter's home village as "pretty much the armpit of India," you are an asshole.  (I met all of these people in my adoption training; they were giving us advice about how to be parents. I also met awesome adoptive parents who do stuff like take their son to visit his birth mom in prison--it seems like it was 50/50 assholes/not assholes.  Kinda like humanity in general.)

Feel free to ask questions or add your own advice in comments (screened & lightly moderated)!

I find that I'm sometimes uncomfortable when I talk to other adoptive parents, and this was true even before I actually was a parent--I'd meet people in training, and I would feel alienated by their attitude.  Not all of them, but lots of them.  I'm finally beginning to understand why.

We're not better people than Charlie's birth parents.  I don't mean that in an abstract way.  We met them, we're getting to know them through regular emails, and they're really good people. 

Adoption is not about better or worse parents: it's about resources.  Money, education, time, family support, culture, civil rights, confidence, even love -- these are resources, and some people have enough of them for a child (or for a particular child), some people don't.  And sometimes people who do have enough resources think they don't, and end up helplessly regretting their decision; sometimes people who don't have enough resources think they do, and the child is the one who suffers.  Adoption is not about justice, or deserving.  Every day of my life, I'm so happy that I'm Charlie's mother.  And every day, I'm sad for him and for his birth parents because they couldn't be a family in the way they would have been, if the world was just a little different.

Some of the adoptive parents I've met, and also some people that I talk to about our adoption, believe that children are adopted by the families that they "really belong to," and they don't have a good opinion of birth parents, except for maybe praising them for "doing the right thing." Like God goes around depositing babies into families that don't deserve them and can't raise them, and then sends the deserving parents to take them away.  And the only bad part is if the undeserving birth parents mess up the process by, like, taking time to consider their choice, or hoping to maintain a connection to the child.  Like being unable or unready to parent makes you a bad person.   Even in situations where someone has a child taken from them because of abuse, the outcomes are so different for rich abusers than for poor abusers.  If you're poor, nobody helps you to turn away from the precipice. 

A lot of kids need to be adopted; a lot of infants need to be adopted.  And that's a tragedy, borne of injustice. I have met some adoptive parents who realize this. I wish we all did.

Yay.  Because Charlie's a special-needs baby* we are allowed to finalize his adoption in Indiana (his birth state), without having to get a second laywer here in Illinois or pay extra crossing-state-lines fees.  We also don't actually have to travel--our lawyer will phone us from the courtroom for the proceedings.   Easy-peasy-Japanesey.  Well, Chinesey in our case.

I didn't get a chance to buy a special outfit for the day, because he's growing so darn fast.  And maybe there will be a delay, if some of our followup paperwork hasn't made it into the hands of the court.  But if all goes well, as of tomorrow, the social workers step out of the picture and Charlie will be ours forever.  Eep! Joy.

*feh. He's absurdly easy.

Edited:  Woo!  All done!  The lawyer's office will call us later to dun us for fees, but the court has decided and we are permanent parents.  YAY

I've never been crushed by the pain of being infertile...it's been more of an ache. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, so my genetic gifts are sufficiently represented in the next generation without my own contribution. And my relationship with my body is one of mutual disdain, most of the time, so I'm mostly ok with missing out on the pregnancy/childbirth thing, although I'm a little sad about it.

Being childless has been painful, but that, too, is something that hits some people harder than it hit me. I have so many happy childfree friends that I've been able to consciously move past the default raised-catholic idea of "life without children is meainingless." For myself, I had to do some serious thinking about what would give my life meaning if I never had kids. And I've spent the past couple of years seriously focusing on those ambitions, and I plan to go on that way now that I'm a mom, time allowing. He's going to grow up and move away eventually, after all, and people who live vicariously through their kids are a real pain to have as parents.

Which isn't to say I haven't yearned to be a mom. I have and have and have, and the journey to get here has sucked a lot. But all of the pain of that journey is melting away now; I really don't care about the pieces I've missed out on, because everything that matters to me is here with me now. [I almost said "in my arms," good lord, mommy hormones or something are inspiring me to write sweet, cloying prose! Thank god my brain said "no he's not, you can't type with a baby in your arms, you moron, and who do you think you are, anyway, L.M. Montgomery?"]

The pain of endometriosis, on the other hand, does NOT melt away. Normally I take flexiril for my godawful, debilitating cramps, but it makes me too sleepy to care for a baby, so today I'm just taking huge amounts of advil and thanking the gods that my new baby is snoozy and that his daddy has mostly figured out how to keep him dry during diaper changes so I don't have to do them all. Ohhh I miss my couch. With luck we can go home tomorrow.

I'm a blues man. A blues man is a prisoner of hope, and hope is a qualitatively different category than optimism. Optimism is a secular construct, a calculation of probability. --Cornell West, Rolling Stone, November 15, 2007

I'm having a hell of a hard time right now, walking the line between hope and optimism, at least as it relates to adopting a baby. In my case, the optimism is there...but the hope is going, going, gone. Two days ago we got a call about being shown to a potential birth mom. Today I got the call that she chose a different couple. This has already happened a couple of times, and it's going to happen a LOT more times, and it kills me every time. I'm not mad about it--when we pray about this, we pray that the baby gets what he or she needs, so that prayer is always answered. When we pray for ourselves, our prayer is that we have the strength to see this through, and the strength to go on hoping.

Right now I know I have the strength to see this through...but I don't know if I can go on hoping. I'm optimistic, actually. Our prospects are very good. We'll be shown to various people, and we'll be a match for somebody, and we'll be parents and it'll all be good. That's what my brain tells me. But I don't *believe* it. Because I've been watching too much Discovery Health Channel, I'm starting to think of it this way: that hope is produced by a gland of some sort, and mine has been damaged by an autoimmune disorder, and is no longer able to replenish the hope that is leaking out of my soul from a tiny pinhole in my mastoid bone. (I repeat: I watch way too much Discovery Health Channel. Also, I am weird).

The silver lining, I guess, is that hope I don't have is hope that can't be crushed. And if I lean on my optimism instead, I'll be able to keep hobbling onward until I reach my goal. The big steely grey cloud inside the silver lining is this: every time someone looks at our profile and doesn't pick us, I blame myself. Fiercely and comprehensively. So I have to find ways of keeping my spirits up, and I must not ruminate.

I have noticed that the process of subbing stories and getting rejections, which used to make me a little blue, now seems like a complete piece of cake. After all, they're rejecting my writing, not rejecting *me,* and I can improve my writing. Probably I'm just numb now, but it seems like a good time to polish some stories and submit them to some places, if only for something fresh to focus on.