the oneliner

i know. crazy.

you know, if you haven't been by, you might want to stop in. seriously. unless you're totally not into GREAT news.

www.apronstrings.typepad.com

so i've moved. to a new blog. i started feeling like i had split personalities. really. it was too much. and with this blogeveryday b.s. it got to be too much with the two blogs. here's my new home. i know, i've gotten all fancy on ya.' don't be a stranger. or forget. because then you'll wonder who the heck this apron person is who keeps commenting on your blog.

seriously, come on over.

http://www.apronstrings.typepad.com/

i love our hands

i love my husbands strangely enormous hands. that exude strength. they're farming hands. that in a different era would have served him well. they are big-boned. so much so that his football teammates called him ten thumbs. they remind me of my german grandfather's enormous pale hands. i love that we had to order a special sized 12 ring when we got married. 

and i like my hands. goodness knows there is waaay too much i don't like about my body. but i do like my hands. they're narrow with long slender fingers. i have my grandmother's piano hands. and her size 4.5 ring finger.

i also love my hazelly-green, very round, eyes. that match my mother's. and my olive skin. that made me blend into the background of turkish people one summer. 

i love the ears that my husband and his brothers inherited from their father. and his impossible pale as an over-exposed sky in a photograph, blue eyes. they're big and sit amongst brownish red eyelashes and under a head full of ridiculously curly hair that is the perfect color for a pair of j.crew cords.

i think it's funny that my poor nephew has the exact same cow-licks as my brother. they're in the worst places too. like the side of his head.

i like how my mother, brother and i are such light sleepers and that the three of us are always out of bed by 7:00 a.m.

although, i've always hoped that our children would inherit k's sleep habits. k sleeps so soundly. and can fall asleep anywhere.

the thing about adoption, is that it is great. and a blessing. but there is a loss. and the knowledge that it will be matched by the child you will be so lucky to raise. a child wants to look like their parents.

ours will not.

cousins

or, things that i'd like to replicate. (by the way, how cute are we?).

that's my cousin johnny with the football helmet. he has four children and runs a deli. his sister rachel, who i adore, and who is the most thoughtful fertile friend (3 children in four years) an infertile could have. my brother is next to her and of course me in my all time favorite hair style.

***

thank you so much for the profile advice. i do take it to heart. we are adding the kssing the check picture, that's to the left. you're right, i'll take out the car picture. because they did drive in the neighborhood and i am a terrible liar. we will add active pictures and those of our backyard. we don't really have pictures of us and the dogs, mainly because it is quite the endeavor. perhaps i'll add the a couple in which we are clearly present, if not pictured.

pictures that do and do not tell a story

we are working on our profile. these are some of the pictures.

us. collectively 40 pounds lighter. "before the cheetos"

the house of cheetos.

me with my nephew. i have since gained as much weight as he has.

~the family/ ~k with his kids. the ones he taught in Compt.on, who were good kids. notwithstanding the gang signs. (how white is my husband?)  

k with nephew in car.

the pics that didn't make it.

my parents as zoro and zorette. this should answer the "what the hay is wrong with her?," question from here on out. 

we'll take your kid spelunking!

the last movements

so, after considering DE, obsessing over whether we made the best decision re:IVF...we have decided that no matter what we are moving forward with adoption.

actually, we must be pretty convinced because we drove to Kennesaw otherwise known as way far away, (oddly named "best city for families by Family Circle," Kennesaw, the town who has a law that says every person has to own a gun. hence all the bumper stickers that read "It's the Law in Kennesaw" with a gun pointed at you.)

luckily, we did not get shot, but did get our fingerprints ran and our  background checks. we went the hour and half north, because this small town, for some unknown reason, has this special fingerprint machine that that actually scans your prints. Scanning is better because you have to send your printed prints to the F.B.I. and if they are wrong when they scan them in...they send them back and it is a huge delay.

the meeting with our agency went great. they believe that we will be placed sooner rather than later. i know a lot of agencies say that, but I believe ours because:

1. they are a religious social service agency (versus a private agency).

2. they make very little money off of us their total fees are ($16,000.00) that wouldn't even pay one of their eight member staff's salary. (the get a lot of funds from donors and the church).

3. they have less than 10 caucasian families on the list.

4. they placed 18 babies last year, 10 the year before.

5. our SW said that "most of the caucasian parents on the list will only accept a caucasian baby."

6. 70% of the infants they typically place are hispanic.

7. we, of course, would be thrilled with a hispanic baby. (i told the SW that we are committed to going to a hispanic church, to hispanic doctors, and otherwise giving our child at least a sense of their heritage...she said "that's good because a lot of people will just take the kid to Taco Bell once a month)(i pray to G-d she was joking.)

8. we are young. the SW said that all birth mother's want to place with younger parents, if that is an option. (i realize this is totally unfair.)(and yes, i will be making k get into a pair of osh gosh overalls for a picture for the profile).

9. i just trust the agency. the woman who is helping us, is devout. she goes to mass every morning. she has never sounded this optimistic and I believe her. 

anyway, i say all this to say, we feel better about adoption, because we feel like no matter what, there will be a baby in our arms soon enough.

i think all that donor IVF!?!? IVF !?!?! were just my last reflexive movements toward a bio child. Although, it's still not totally off of the table.

there is a clinic, in fact said to be the best clinic in the country, for doing frozen DE cycles. Their success rates for frozen (50% live birth, which is less than fresh DE) are the highest in the country. (on the IVF connections board)...and the cost? It's said to be $6,500. I left a message and will confirm with them next week. Oh, they are a clinic about 5 hours from here, on the beach! k and i said that we would jump on that in a second gambling with $6,500. is a whole different ball game than gambling with $30,000.

so, we're moving forward with adoption and probably not going to do a DE cycle now unless the frozen one worked out. (although, if we are still on the waiting list, with no profile showings, then it will look a lot better)

thanks for all the support, really. 

his name is winston. he is spoiled.

winston is our stinky, sweet, overly furry, dog. he always comes in the morning and curls up in a ball on my pillow while i am still asleep. sometimes he'll step on my head in the process. of course it wakes me up. he acts like he is tip-toeing but is too big for the pillow and clumsy. when i wake up (about five seconds after he starts trying to curl up on my pillow) he always looks at me, as if to say, "oh, you awake?" Which is funny for two reasons, he does this everyday, and he has probably just manhandled my forhead with his big clumsy paw.

then, i'll get up and of course then he is instantly exhausted. after all, trying to put your body on something which is half the size of your body and you're clumsy...isn't easy. to ease him into his slumber, i'll sing him a little song and tuck him in. (he got annoyed in the first picture...come on sing to me!) 

i know. i've got it bad. real bad.

the plot, and my lining, thickens

eeck, eh?

so, yesterday, when i wrote tomorrow (which, BTW, led to my being sent several chastising emails!) i was going to write today that i felt like we should adopt a toddler and do a DE cycle.

k put the kabash on that. he doesn't like the idea of adopting from Kazakhstan. he feels like that that is too far away, from here which would require travel and from accountability with the agency. so that's a no go. of course, i am adamant that we be on the same page. i want us to be on the smae page and excited should this work or not work.

he gave the above reasons, but i think he said that to justify wanting an infant. of his.

when i suggested we consider a DE cycle, his eyes lit up. and i'm not kidding. he seemed excited. k is a lot of things. excited is not one of them 99.9% of the time.

and today when i told him it would cost $30,000. he laughed and said "we'll figure it out." And then (!) when i reminded him that we'd be potentially wasting money that we'd already paid the agency...he said "i'm not worried about it."

i would still want to adopt. but that's a different story.

this from the man who used to take the train into Manhattan from NJ and instead of taking the subway so that he'd save money by walking a mile from the train to his work.  which included fighting his way through tourists and soccer moms outside of the Today Show at Rockefeller Center, often in awful weather. All to save $1.50. the man, like any scot, is cheeeeaaaaaapppppp.

plus, (i am teary thinking about it) when i first suggested the a toddler, he said "i may be romanticizing this whole parent thing, but i keep fantasizing about rocking a baby to sleep and walking with them strapped into a baby carrier on my chest."

He is cheap and he doesn't fantasize about anything usually. Yeah.

So, i made an appointment at a clinic near here to discuss a DE cycle (which they are already waaaayyyyy freaked out about). Then, a friend told me about a clinic, out of state, that has a DE success rate of 85.9. That's 86%.

86% chance that we could be parents. By birth.

I thought those stats were pretty hokey, so i looked at their CDC rates, and two years ago they were 71%. I don't think, based on their 2005 stats, that 86% is too much of an exaggeration.

What do you all think? About DE without IVF 1st?

And about going 2,000 miles to a clinic who's CDC stats are 30% better than a clinic here(the cycles cost the same) .

knowing when to fold'em

hear me out re: the third choice of "operation baby 2005-2011; the quest for love"

i am lucky that i swam out of my gene pool. very lucky. in a sad and tragic way.

let's go over the DNA from whence i came: my grandfather, my dad (who tried unsuccessfully several times), and my dear cousin committed suicide. all of them made suicide the goal of their existence. and tried numerous times before they were successful. three out of five of my paternal aunts/uncles are mentally ill. five out of five of my paternal aunts/uncles are either raging alcoholics or are recovering raging alcoholics. three out of five of my maternal aunts/uncles are/were raging alcoholics. two drank themselves to death.

by the way, i have shown no signs of mental illness thus far, and typically a mentally ill person shows signs in their early twenties.

my other grandfather died of a stroke. at sixty. both my father and my brother have heart defects. my brother's heart valve is leaky and will need to be replaced at some point. my aunt has breast cancer. my grandmother died, at 40, of ovarian cancer. two aunts have diabetes.

and i could go on an on, but i am sure you get the picture.

the strange thing is....i am only telling you the above to justify the fact that i am indifferent as to whether my gene pool gets another shot. Sometimes, you need to walk away from the table while you're ahead.;  ) Ohdeargod i have "you better know when to fold 'em, know when to hold 'em, know when to walk away. know when to run. you better count your money when your sitting at the table, 'cause they'll be time enough for dealing, when the dealing's done" running through my head. Sing with me. ...

I think doing an IVF cycle with a donor egg isn't so crazy an idea.

sure, i'd like to look at our child playing in the grass and note that her high cheek bones and olive skin may have come from my great-grandmother who was Cree. Or, if he has my grandfather's large German hands. (that my grandfather used to pick up a gun and.......). see, not good.

and you know what, this is:I'd like to look at our child: all i need from the former paragraph.

plus, i think my eggs aren't all that. I have MTHFR. Two mutations. Ali's RE seems to think that people with one of the mutations that i have do not respond well to ovarian stimulation. And when they respond their eggs are small. Um, yeah, that would describe our IVF attempt perfectly.

not to mention my fun little chemical pregnancies.

and the two RE's that think because my anatomy is ok, (they've been in there. with spelunking lights strapped to their foreheads) and k's count is okay, that it's either my eggs or our embryos.

donor cycles have much higher success rates. i am not a betting woman ( i just know betting songs from the eighties) which is a big reason why i do not want to do IVF with my eggs, that have a least a moderate chance of not working. but donor eggs, especially with my age...well, that's a much safer bet. which makes it a different story.

i know it seems weird...i mean, WHO goes from IUI to IVF with a donor egg???

in the end, while weird and novel, isn't this like adoption but better? No birthp.arent visits, not having to tell a child that their parents couldn't raise them, no waiting list, no international travel, no judges, breastfeeding, being pregnant and the possibility of having a child with ruddy red hair.

serenity said that i should go with what my heart is telling me to do. And after thinking about it awhile i think i might have an answer as to how to  build our family. tomorrow.

***

-to be sure...when i say 'i show no signs of mental illness," i really mean psychosis, or hearing voices, or a mental illness that would prevent me from functioning. i have, in fact, been recently diagnosed as suffering from depression.  and when i speak of wishing my children to avoid mental illness, i mean the type of a mental illness that would keep them from functioning, even if highly medicated. i hope that i have not offended anyone. please know that my seeming not to care was really an outgrowth of haste (i have committed to blog everyday on two blogs!) and certainly not a bias against those of us whose chemical makeup necessitates medication. (this seems like the disclaimer before MJ's Thriller video, no?)

-i know you love needlepoint. here's mine.

i wish there was someone i could talk to.

i just don't know what to do.

how to get the little feet into our house that are meant to be there.

here.

how!?!?!?

i would say in a hurry, but we only have a couple of shots at this and i want it to be good for them and us.

i wish our parents were more involved in helping us. I wish they were involved at all. But then i would, of course, complain about their presence.

i don't know. i don't know. i don't know.

who is where we are? no one. everyone does IVF and then adoption. or at the same time. i guess. actually, i don't know anyone who is where we are to talk to.

i do know:

-that this indecision is a red flag and that we shouldn't be moving forward with anything at the moment. (except our homestudy which we can use no matter what we do and is scheduled for Thursday).

-i do not want to do IVF with my eggs right now.

- i do not want three children in the next year. (actually i do. but we can't afford for me not to work and i would have to stay home. and that wouldn't be fair to them).

-if we are going to adopt toddlers internationally, school age children, i want them to look generally (same race, etc) like us. it's hard enough being adopted. from another country. after being in an orphanage.

-if we adopt school age children from abroad, i want to adopt siblings. see above.

- i do want at least one infant. (hello, someone likes to knit baby sweaters.)

(tomorrow i'll reveal my third idea for family building, which is the most radical yet.)

help.

desperately seeking baby. babies.

if i tell you this...you mustn't think me crazy, k?

k and i are looking into adopting toddler siblings from kazakhstan. for a lot of reasons.

it could happen very quickly. as in six months...which is pretty fast.

it occurred to me the other day that i could be on 37 when we start on baby two. i'm almost 33 (december 31st start saving) and then we wait a year for baby, and then another year for baby two...and well, i NEVER wanted to be the mother of an infant at 38/39. No offense, i know life doesn't pan out the way we plan most of the time, but if you can get what you want, shouldn't you at least consider it?

we would match ourselves with little ones from an orphanage. assuming this all worked, we could put our names on hold at the adoption agency until the little ones were moved in an then we could wait for an infant.

i know it's a change of course but a couple of things have gotten me thinking...one, my age and desire to be a relatively young mom, and that i want three. and, i would like to play catch up, i mean, we'd be on baby two sans IF.

i know it's crazy. but my schedule is flexible ( i am lucky enough to be able to work 9-2 or school hours)...and, they would both be in school (pre-K and k). they are 4 and 6. Yes, i have their pictures already. They may not work out but there are, sadly, a lot and there aren't a whole lot of people trying to adopt 4 and 6 year olds.

the $$$ would hurt. in fact, i am not even positive how we would swing it? i am hoping to pull it out of my ear.

but, it would be less expensive, i wouldn't have to take much time off of work, k and i are both former teachers, and k taught in compton. mostly eighth graders who were failing because they were reading on a 3rd grade level. Until the end of the year when they (all but one) read on a 8th grade level.

and i want to adopt siblings for obvious reasons.

am i crazy? dreaming? overly optimistic? insane? spill.

(by the way...i finished the shirt!)