thanks for the + thoughts and or prayers for my nephew

my nephew is in picu recovering from the surgery that removed his appendix and untwisting of his bowel. His surgery lasted around 4 hours late last night. He did not end up with a colostomy bag, thank goodness. He will remain in the picu for 3 or so more days and then will be in the hospital for another 2 weeks or so. Thank goodness that his kidneys are back to functioning better, thank goodness they untwisted his bowel without necrosis and thank goodness he is on the road to feeling better.

Thank you for the prayers and + thoughts for him. He is a strong 12 year old and has given his fair share of trouble, but deserves to recover from this 100%.

I plan on going up to see him once he is out of the picu as only immediate family is allowed in the picu. I plan on making him a card and taking it up with me after he is out of the picu.

prayers or + thoughts, if you don't mind, please

my 12 yr old nephew is in surgery right now. He had is appendix removed and now they are working on his twisted and blocked bowel. Gosh, so scary. He will be in surgery for another 2 hours or so. I pray he comes out of surgery ok. He will most likely have a colostomy bag for a few weeks so he can have rested healed bowels after surgery. Poor thing was vomiting since wednesday of last week, admitted to st. johns last friday and moved to Cardinal Glennon hospital PICU last friday afternoon. He went through a bunch of tests, mri's, cat scans, cultures etc. At first they thought he had e coli protein born, but he kept vomiting with no trace of it quitting. His mom is at his side 24/7. She just started a new job and might be released because of this. Looks like my bil (step-dad) to my nephew will try and get a fund raiser together to help pay for the bills while my sister is out on leave without pay or even if she gets fired. Ugh.

Please send healing vibes for my nephew and some healing prayers too. It brings me to tears thinking of how sick he is and how bad this could have turned out. We wonder if he was born with a condition to bring this on.

I'll post here again tomorrow as soon as I hear something. I will go up to the picu after work to sit with him to give his mom a break.

Good Lord above, please keep "S" safe and healing up well after his surgery tonight.

Adoption books I have read

Adopting after Infertility


Adoption is a Family Affair


Adoption without Fear

Open adoption books I am reading.....

I received both of these open adoption books last week that I ordered from amazon....

I am about 28 pages into The Open Adoption Book by Bruce M. Rappaport, ph.d. ( A guide to making adoption work for you - what to expect if you decide on open adoption - why open adoption is preferable for both parents & children - what birthmothers, adoptive parents & their children say about their open adoption experience)....... Yes, I read many books at once....

The next book I got is The Open Adoption Experience by Lois Ruskai Melina & Sharon Kaplan Roszia. A complete guide for adoptive & birth families - from making the decisions through the child's growing years....

I am about 49 pages into this book. This is the book I posted about on Sunday talking about fears in adoption and fears I had with infertility.

Thought I would share the titles to these books because several of you have asked me either on here or by email what the book's name was that I blogged about here on Sunday.

I am going to focus on the second book above for now as I am in the throws of the latest Harry Potter book.

We went into adoption knowing we would seek an open relationship with our child's birthfamily, but we are prepared to accept any level of open adoption, semi-open or even a closed adoption if that is what the birthfamily seeks. We can't wait to do those update letters and pictures and chat about how the baby is growing and our family activities if that is what the birthfamily feels comfortable with. We would like to be able to visit at least once a year in person if miles between us are not too far. Heck, flying and meeting up in person is a hope, if possible too. Sure, that might seem way too open for some perspective adoptive couples, but we are comfortable sharing how we feel about the level of openness we wish to have. Each adoption relationship is different and even if we are very open at the beginning of the relationship, that level might slow in later dates of time or even increase if the level is more a semi-open adoption plan.

If you have adopted, what is your level of openness? None? Semi-open? Fully open with a few visits in person a year with letters and pictures to fill in that time?

Stop that clicking

Oh shoot, I was suppose to be listing more stuff on ebay, but I got into the clicking of my online blog roll and it rolled into another blog into another blog and so on. I got into 10 different blogs before I had to stop myself and come back here to gather my thoughts and list at least 1 item on ebay. Bahahaha. At least the clicking into other blogs does not cost me money, only time. But that time is money as it takes away from my ebay sales. What a vicious cycle. Click

fear fear fear everyday everywhere

I am reading a book about open adoption right now and in the Understanding Open Adoption chapter (1st) it talks about "Working Through Your Fears". Fears are reality in adoption as it was going through Infertility. My fears are valid in these two different arena's. In dealing with Infertility, our fears were that we would never become pregnant, once we did and experienced our first miscarriage at 8 weeks(2nd loss of 7 pregnancies), we then entered the fear of will we ever become parents of our own biological child. The answer we know is 99% most likely not (we do have one frozen embie and remember I am without a uterus now surrogacy is unreachable financially!). Then we moved onto building our family through adoption. The fears were there from the get go. Fears of never being the ideal couple a perspective birth family would never like, fears that we would have a failed match (3 times now), fears that we would never become parents through adoption.

Yes the fears are there in every step we have gone through. Fears that are valid. Being scared if we are not a couple that is Fit to be Parents. I often ask "Why" still in adoption as I did with Infertility so that fear, although a different perspective, is present every day of our lives.

Dealing with losses of any kind is hard. Losing a parent (both of us have lost our fathers to cancer) and losing a pet that has helped us deal with our Infertility and Adoption losses, loss of friendships, and loss of control.

I guess the control issue is a greater fear of all of this. I can't control what a potential birth family does and what decisions they make. I can't control when and how we will become parents (how is less of a worry because we know we will adopt). I can't control the worries about finances as we are not RICH (and I do work 2 jobs). I can't control when we will get that match that turns into a placement that is successful. I can't control ANYTHING except how we know for sure we will become parents one day. I guess that is more HOPE than control.

I know, I am rambling, but the issue of working through our fears is an everyday task we will not give up on. We hope that each day we can control our fears long enough to be able to keep that hope alive for a call with a match turning into a placement of our first child.

Another thing we just can't let go of is the wanting of a newborn. I fear missing out on those precious newborn moments. Sure, you all that are parents might think I am crazy, but I (and DH) have always wanted to experience that bonding from day one. Yes, we know there will be sleepless nights, moments of chaos, moments of sheer fear, but we feel we deserve to be able to experience these things as if we had given birth to our first child also. I know we won't have a sweet smooth ride the first few days and weeks of our baby's night and days being mixed up, but I want to and deserve to experience these things as any other new set of parents would also. It is a want, need, desire that I did not think was a problem until I this past week with dealing with a situation for a possible match. I know, you all must think I am ungrateful, but when a woman (and man) have a desire to experience something so strong, it can't just be let go so easily.

I have a longing for something and by gosh I will seek that out to the end of my days. I won't let go, although sometimes things have to be rearranged or changed to get there, I won't stop until we have a baby in our arms.

we won't let this get us down.... for long

thank you all for your support. I would be a lost cause without it!

thanks to a very nice update email from our AGOHA's social worker today, we won't stay down (emotionally) for long. Her email told us that our profile was sent out to two different potential birthmother situations yesterday. Ahhhh, a relief that we know our agency we were working with this past 2 months is working hard to find us a match. They have been so helpful. We have been a priority once a match has failed and we are comforted knowing we have all their support too.

I know we could be like some couples I have heard of, but we won't let this get us down. See, some couples that have been through a failed match emotionally and financially choose to step away from adoption on the whole for several months. Not having their profile shown or, making an effort to seek out any potential situations themselves, but deciding to take time to recover from the loss of a match. DH and I have said we are not getting any younger so we assess the bad situations we have been through, but we pick our butts up off the ground and march forward in hopes that a match happens again soon with a much anticipated placement soon to follow. We are scared, sure, of another match that failes, but we will keep our guard up and watch for any potential signs of something going wrong. Plus our social worker does have a watchful eye out for us also to keep us protected of the sour apple situations also.

We won't give up hope.


Meantime I am home today after giving myself a bad knock on the head. In the wee hours of the morning, ambien induced sleep walking, I got up to take a drink of water and I dropped a dish towel on the floor, I bent over to pick it up and WHAM, I busted my head open on the corner of the breakfast counter top on my way back up. OUCH. I immediately went to the bathroom and found blood. I did not want to go to the hospital so I just held a cloth to my head for about 1/2 hour. OUCH. Plus DH was out cold for the night and is very hard to awaken once he is asleep.

I did not black out, but I did get dizzy and felt a little nauseated when it happened. I fell asleep later after it stopped bleeding and woke up with a monster of a headache this morning. Let me tell you I gave myself a nice goose egg knot on the right top of my head.Ohhwwiieee. OOOWWIEEEE! I stayed home because I still can't shake this headache. I did call the docs office this morning and talked to the nurse about a possible concussion, but I think I avoided giving msyelf one, just a good knock on the old noggin'. Warning, don't sleep walk on ambien. LOL it is dangerous.

failed match and (cat death mentioned)

Yes, again.

In 1.5 months times we have experienced the nightmare of 2 failed adoption matches. This SUCKS. Long story on this one I will save for another day.

Our last kitty, Gizmo, is in heaven. She was 14 years old, a great kitty companion, but sick. We had to put her down tonight.She could not hold her bladder. She meowed in pain when I would pick her up, although still purring. My heart breaks when you have to put a pet down when you know they have some sanity left of their minds, but her body was failing her.

I'm going to bed early. This day sucks

I would die for that from kellie coffey - dealing w/infertility song

Kellie Coffey really sings from the heart on this video. Tissue suggested
WOW, SOMEONE REALLY GETS IT! Thanks Kellie for singing what I could never express in the proper words.

23127

check out my ebay listing.. Robeez Rock

I listed these Frog Robeez on ebay and they have about 15 hours left. SWEET bids from heaven. LOL

for everyone to read about how some feel going through Infertility(ME!)

This was an excerpt from a fellow poster's (on another infertility support board) therapist . Yes, even with DH and I moving on with adoption as our path to become parents, I often try to explain how We feel and have felt having gone through 8 years of infertility.........

The experience of infertility plunges people into contact with the outermost reaches of their humanity. Infertility is a profound crisis that threatens identity, relationships, and continuity. It threatens one’s sense of the world, it disturbs beliefs and assumptions, and it belies safety and security. It is an emergency that uses up coping skills, and depletes resources; people start to run on empty as their chronic stress levels move into the area of trauma. Infertility can shut people down emotionally, it necessarily limits and narrows; people are functioning in “emergency mode,” a black and white vantage point that oversimplifies for the purpose of survival. This is not the best place to understand the complexities of human interactions, or the perspective of the “other;” this is a time to survive, and everything else may feel inessential, a luxury.

thanks iswari for sharing

I could go on and on about how we feel, but some of those that DO NOT go through infertility might not ever understand where we infertiles come from or how we feel emotionally and FINANCIALLY too. We could go blue in the face trying to put it into different words and expressions, but we that have gone through infertility, whether it be primary or secondary or whatever, we all feel this way as explained above.

Even with us moving our hopes into adoption, infertility still creeps into my life. I am never going to be able to carry a baby, read: hysterectomy due to severe adenomyosis of my uterus, but I still have one frozen embryo in the cryo lab and I often dream that one day we could win the lottery and afford to hire a gestational surrogate to help us with that embryo.

ok, enough for now.

beautiful Sunshine

What a nice day, hot yes, but perfect day to finally get the pool open. See, this pool of ours is 15 years old. Above ground. Rusted by the input valve on the side wall. So we had to hire a guy to put some sheet metal riveted to the side wall of the pool (can't afford to pay for a new pool this year with all the adoption costs) and finally I helped DH open the pool. It took near 24 hours to fill up the 15' round 4' deep pool. That my folks is a lot of water. We had to fix the spot that rusted or else we would have had to take the pool downIdidn't want the pool to bust open and take out the neighbors fence). We did not want a spot in our yard without a pool because our deck is built up around it. So now that the pool is fixed and filled and the new ladybug vacuum is cleaning it up, we will be able to swim in it tomorrow. DH got in it today because he had to get the vacuum set up, but he did not mind it so much since it was so hot. Nice way to cool off. (older picture above, but an idea of what the ancient pool looks like)

I have picked the first of my tomatoes. 2 so far. Nice beefsteak tomatoes. I have another ready to pick later this week and the grape tomatoes are getting bigger, yet a few weeks away from picking. My cucumbers are around the size 2" long. I can't wait to pick them. No green peppers. Looks like I won't have any. I had buds, but now no green peppers growing. Dang. I was looking forward to those. Plus DH is on a beef pepper steak kick and there is nothing better than home picked green peppers. Been a few years since I was able to produce any and looks like this year is going to be the same. Shoot.

The puppies were having fun tonight in the backyard. I had the hose fresh out of the pool and was watering the tomato plants and cucumber plants and sadie the pup was insisting on interfering by snapping at the water flow out of the house. She is a total water dog. I can't wait to get her in the river when we go camping again soon. Last time we went the river was too cold for me to get in with her, but she dove in and even layed down in the water. Now with it as hot as it is, I will slap on some good sunscreen and get in the river with her. Hannah and Lindsey are both water dogs too, but don't have as much fun playing like Sadie does. Ha. I plan on setting up my umbrella, water chair and filling up my glass with some margarita and watching the dumparse drunks float down the river. Yes it is a blast to do that.

she is still here on earth.......... kitty update

our kitty, gizmo, is still hanging in there. We opted to see the vet and have her evaluated for further issues such as thyroid and kidney functions, etc.. the vet said he felt she is still living a quality life and that we can evaluate her for the next few days and weeks to see if maybe she is harboring an infection that might be causing her bladder control. So we decided to hang in there and see how she does.

Bless our kitty.

Thanks for your support.

I am heading to bed. I am just exhausted from all this. Bless my DH for hanging in there with me too

not sure if we will be saying "failed match" again

but I am preparing for it to happen that way. We will wait until next week to make a final decision, but it is not looking 100% positive it will stay a match.

lost for words.

Also, my just over 14 year old kitty will be in heaven this time tomorrow night. She has lost control of her bladder and had an accident on the couch in front of DH and I tonight. She is diabetic, lost over 1/2 the control in her back legs and is about 12 lbs lighter than she was a year ago. Mind you she was 8 lbs total weight back a few months ago and if she weighs 6 lbs today that would be an overestimate on my part I bet.

Going to sleep. Just in a stinky mood.

Dee doo doo doo, dee da da da, oh his butt is so cute

(yes, Sting's butt, OMG... that man is in fantastic shape!)

The Police

They Rocked!

Well worth the wait

Well worth it all

I remember spending my hard earned babysitting money back in the 80's at Peaches record store on hampton to buy Syncronicity. I then bought all the albums .. Yes folks. ALBUMS, not cd's or mp3's!!!


Oh the love I had for this band, yet my DH is even deeper of a fan. We saw Sting at Riverport (yes, when it was called Riverport) back in the early 90's and he rocked then too. I am so glad that The Police got back together. Sigh!

What's in a name?

we have discussed baby names for as long as I can remember us trying to conceive. With that said, we both agreed that we like these names:

Girl: Julia Grace

Boy: Brendan James

BUT, over time we have come to realize that with adoption we need to be open about names.

A couple of things could happen. The birthmother could name the baby something she wants. If that happens where would our name choice stand? Would we change it on the birth certificate when we have the court finalization? Or would we accept what the birthmother chose? It would depend on how open we are with the birthmother and we would need to convey to her that we have always loved the name listed above.

BUT what if the birthmother would want to help choose a name for the baby? Would we agree to agree on naming of the first name or second name or both?


I have DH looking at baby name on web sites tonight. Bahahahaha... I am not totally set on the names listed above for a boy or girl, yet I still like them both per gender.

I will try and list our top 5 names later that we come up with.