Movin' on Up

Hello to one and all. I have reached a conclusion: blogspot sucks. Thusly, I am moving to wordpress. It's the same site, just on wordpress! SO, if you would like to continue following my sad little saga, join me over at:

www.lianotjuno.wordpress.com

Hope to see (most of) you there!

Here is a picture of my knitting as a farewell-to-Blogspot gift. I'm practicing casting on and off and picking up stitches with a different color. It's still a bit ratty, but what can you do?

Okay please stop!

Please stop commenting! I know the blog is public, but please, I beg of you, just leave me alone! Does Lia feel attacked? Yes, Lia feels attacked! Lia is a human being, a very upset and sad human being who is allowed to have feelings even though she is relinquishing her child!

I'm turning off anonymous comments and when I figure out how to block certain users from commenting I will do that too. This is my space. I'm not going to let you trample all over me anymore - I just can't take it. If you wanted to make a complete stranger in a shitty situation cry, congratulations. I heard you, you made your point, I get it. And I understand I went to the adoptee blogs first. That was a mistake. I apologize. I will leave you all alone, I will no longer try to open lines of communication or to ponder your point of view. I will stop trying to understand you. You've made it clear you can't be understood. You win.

But this is my blog, not a forum for you to wax philosophical about what a terrible person I am, or all birthmothers and adoptive parents are. I believe there is a forum for that elsewhere. Please, I beg of you, just leave me alone.

Hey, look! A new post!

Nothing exciting or noteworthy has happened of late. A conspicuous silence from the social worker is the #1 thing on my mind. She called me two Fridays ago to hammer out the rest of my medical history and told me she'd contact Super Dreamy Happy Couple (SDHC) that day, and then let me know when she heard back from them vis a vis do they want the seabass. I am still a bit tender from the T&V debacle (though I recognize now that it was for the best) and I wish there was some way I could beam SDHC the knowledge that the seabass is swimming around happily, not shriveling in a corner of my womb dying from the horrible things I exposed him to pre-pregnancy test. But both members of SDHC are overly educated, to the point that it might not matter. I wait in fear of almost certain rejection.

I move back to NYC on Saturday. Pros: school is starting soon and I love school, I will finally have something to do with my days, I get to hang out in my super cool new apartment in Brooklyn, I get to be around friends more often so I don't isolate and get lonely. Cons: school is starting soon and that could be very overwhelming - it also marks the official "final stretch" of the pregnancy (scary), it will be harder to see Max Power, I will be away from my family. The two sides seem to balance out well enough for me, so I just spend my days cheerily filling boxes. I'm on some new medication now and it is SO AWESOM E IT BLOWS MY BRAIN OUT OF MY NOSE AND ONTO MY KEYBOARD. I feel so much better, I can't believe I spent years on the other medication, and this one is a fraction of the price!

In the meantime, I'm learning how to knit. I always need something to do with my hands. I can't watch a movie without playing solitaire on my phone. I can't sit in class without doodling, but I doodled all over my notes. I started making cranes in high school; I'd fold them in class and write little haikus in them. I have thousands. I recently scattered a thousand for my grandfather's funeral:

I was gonna make another thousand for the seabass, but I already have so many. Instead, I'll make him tiny socks.

When I woke up this morning, I didn't know how to hold needles. And look what I have now!

Scraggly, I know. But c'mon. Throw me a bone here.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Disclaimer: This is potentially controversial. I link a few other blogs and mention other people. I would ask for their permission, but then I remembered that their blogs are public and open for anybody to see. If I mentioned you and you'd rather I didn't, let me know, and I apologize.

Jill Elizabeth over at The Happiest Sad wrote a post a little while ago that I really liked called Cold Risotto, the gist of which was that adoption is sort of like a restaurant that has good days and bad. Some people got cold risotto and thus refuse to admit the restaurant could ever be good, others got great risotto and (this is my own little addition) refuse to admit the restaurant could ever be bad. There was this sort of thought in my mind that it's a preference dictated by the internal with minimal (but important) input from external circumstances. By which I mean, if placing was absolutely awful for you, it's really about you and who you are as a person, and the same for the opposite. Both sides have requisite amounts of suck, and all adoptions involve complicated relationships with family, birth fathers, social workers, and prospective adoptive parents. But if you're the kind of person who never wants to go back to the restaurant, I didn't feel external circumstances would ever trump the internal. You could have had a great family/social worker/whatever and still hate that freakin' restaurant. You could have had no support and still love the restaurant. It's all about how you feel. There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

I stand by that, to a degree, but probably because I didn't realize how much the circumstances suck for a lot of people who end up placing. I guess I was only thinking of the people who see that pregnancy test and think: yeah, I'm gonna place for adoption. Those who didn't obviously have a very different experience with this.

I'm thinking of Myst, over at Living in the Shadows. She and I sorta butted heads when my blog started, and I lumped her in with other birthmoms who had cold risotto and didn't want to go back to the restaurant. But, I read her story recently, and that's not a restaurant that serves cold risotto, that's a restaurant that offers a great menu and then instead of bringing you food just repeatedly punches you in the face. What happened to her was criminal, no two ways about it. And if I had gone to that restaurant and gotten punched in the face, I would definitely tell everybody I know to never ever under any circumstances go to that restaurant.

Let me figure out a way to stretch this metaphor... I guess it's as if I'm a masochist. I just really really like getting punched in the face. And I hate food. So the no-food-but-lots-of-punching restaurant is the one for me. I'm ready for the pain, and I embrace it (let's forget the whole sexual aspect of sado-masochism for the time being) because it's what I WANT. Advising a masochist not to get punched in the face because you don't like getting punched in the face will just elicit annoyance. And... oh god I can't continue the metaphor so I'm just gonna step out of it. I have the absolute best external circumstances possible for my situation. My agency is wonderful, and I mean that. I will not tolerate any comments calling ALL agencies baby-grubbing money machines. 60% of the expectant parents at Spence-Chapin end up parenting, and they make that fact extremely clear to any prospective adoptive parents. They offer lifetime support to all members of the triad. They only offer open adoption, and they're serious about it. And I know that's one in a million - most agencies do in fact SUCK, and people who worked with them have the right to want to shut them down. I'd shut down IAC if I could. I also have the full support of Max Power and my family. That's something I'm trying very hard not to take for granted. So though my internal circumstances sort of suck (I'm not the stablest of people) I've been discounting how lucky I am to have the external circumstances that I do.

My experience (thus far) and Myst's don't even really deserve to be in the same category. If I could personally lock up (and maybe waterboard) every person involved in what happened to her, I'd do it. But adoption rights are part of reproductive rights. They go hand in hand with things like abortion. You can hate abortion, you can believe it is murder and denounce it and everything, but the fact is that if you outlaw it, women will do it anyway. There will be back alley doctors and poisons and coat hangers and people will die. If you do away with adoption all together as a construct, things will get worse. Instead, we should work on making sure all the experiences are like mine, and NONE of them are like Myst's (did I mention how angry it makes me?) because unplanned pregnancies happen, and I don't care what your experience says I should do - I will not parent. I should not parent. It's not going to happen. And I stand by my right to choose what I will do with my body and my offspring. That's why it's called pro-CHOICE.

Also, just to make it clear - no matter how much adoption is the right choice for me, I know it's just gonna suck really hardcore. I have braced myself for impact. I am doing everything I can to be ready for the sheer emotional distress of placement. But getting ready, understanding and accepting the pain is not the same thing as being anti-adoption, not even close. I'll eat the cold risotto, and I'll do my best not to ever go back to that restaurant myself (no more unplanned pregnancies for me, hopefully) but at the end of the day, well, I was hungry, it was the only place open, and the food might have sucked, but at least I didn't starve.

Miserable most, to love unloved.

My mom called me at 8:30 this morning, while I was still dewy eyed and asleep, curled up next to Max Power like a cat. My ringtone is really fucking loud. Turns out the woman who runs the front desk at her office is sick, and since I am the defacto put-her-anywhere temp person, she needs me to come in. We'd had a conversation yesterday that I thought meant, "I'm done for the summer" and she thought meant, "You need to give me more things to do." When I asked not to come in, she got very upset. So I kicked Max Power out, cried a bit, and came to work.

I'm disgustingly dependent on him. It's pretty gross. He found himself a ride home yesterday and was about to leave and I burst into tears, which guilted him into staying. I've been crying a lot lately, and I'm sure it's the hormones, but I just feel so overwhelmingly, all-encompassingly, dark-night-of-the-soul alone. I don't feel a connection to the seabass. I don't feel he's mine. I can't relate to other people. I need Max Power to be around, all the time, because he is the only other person who is also going through this. But when he is around, I clam up. I don't know how to act, I get flustered, timid, too affectionate, not affectionate enough, awkward, sad. I don't want to mention the seabass, because I don't want to remind him he's shackled to me. Aren't chains ashamed of their prisoners? But everything else seems trivial.

This is a pretty useless post. Maybe, in some ways, I'm trying to pull a Lucius Fox when he tries to describe to Bruce Wayne how he came up with the antidote to Scarecrow's fear toxin:
Lucius: I analyzed your blood, isolating the receptor compounds and the protein based catalyst.
Bruce: Am I meant to understand any of that?
Lucius: Not at all. I just wanted you to know how hard it was.

Being pregnant when you don't want to be sucks. Being a birthmom is probably going to suck even more. I don't expect anyone who hasn't been through it to understand - just like I can't understand what it feels like to be an adoptee or a paraplegic or a war veteran or an elephant. But I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. It just... it's lonely, it's terrifying, it's thankless, it's alienating, it's uncomfortable, it's frustrating, it hurts everywhere, everywhere. All the time.

I can't sleep. I've taken to wandering around my neighborhood at all hours of the night, while lonely men on park benches solicit me. "Twenty bucks," a guy said when I passed him last night on my way to 7-Eleven to get Nerds (sugar helps with the cigarette cravings). "Fifty," he said when I passed him again on the way home. I wonder how high he woulda gone if I'd kept walking in circles around him.

Bloody butcher and his fiendlike queen.

I've been lying around feeling sorry for myself. Feeling stuck in limbo between carrying out a charade and torching, myself, the only solid ground I have to stand on. This results in a lot of staring into space, walking into walls, and continuous, droning, circular thoughts of self-pity.

I need to snap out of it. The stress is bad for the seabass, and it makes me an absolute nightmare to be around. I really do need to think of this one day at a time. I need to ease up a bit, back off a bit, try not to control everything so tightly, try to trust those around me a little bit more.

The social worker appointment was wonderful. We were there for a couple of hours, and SW talked to me and Max Power both together and separately. We got to look through the photo albums of the two couples we'd picked out of the book. One of them really, really stood out to me (even more so when we looked at their album - even though they used Papyrus font) and Max Power liked them too. After getting some basic medical history from MP and flushing mine out a little bit more, SW told us she's gonna contact them, and maybe we can set up a preliminary getting-to-know-you meeting at the agency if they like us on paper. I am remaining firmly neutral on this, trying not to picture the seabass gallivanting happily through their lives; me in the kitchen on his birthday, playing on the floor with new toys; them holding their new son, smiling, full of love. NONE OF THAT. One day at a time.

Also, STUFF helps. Focusing on silly, short term things helps. Such as:

- My two-pack of JCPenney sport-ish kinda bras came and OMG I AM NEVER TAKING THEM OFF. My bazongas have sprouted like Tomacco and not having a bra on is awkward and painful, but I'm not gonna be sleeping in my push up. Nor do I wanna sleep in a sports halter corset coffin. NOW I HAVE THESE. SO COMFORTABLE.

- I cashed in my Chase rewards points from my debit card for a $25 gift certificate to Gap! Now I can get the maternity shorts I know are unnecessary long-term and I couldn't afford but would be so wonderful right now.

- Stretch mark lotion: I bought some cheap lotion to rub between my toes which always feel interminably dry. And then I got some more expensive lotion from this site: http://www.duematernity.com. If you go to the bella b section under skincare, they have this tummy lotion to prevent stretchmarks. It's $20, which is ridiculous, but they're doing a promotion where if you buy it you get their stretchmark reducing cream ($25) for FREE. I am a SUCKER for shit like that. I bought it. Seriously, it cheered me up, so fuck it.

- I dyed my hair. It's reddish red with a tint of red, which is my standard shade.

- I finally went to the eye doctor, and I'm getting glasses - a godsend, since I can't see - and I have frames all picked out. They're like Buddy-Holly-meets-librarian.

Focusing on these little things - getting the bras, focusing on when the Gap card will come, when the lotion will come, when I can go get my glasses - they are the handholds I use to swing from day to day and preserve my sanity. I've been doing the same thing with the seabass since the beginning: focusing on the trivial and taking the big picture as it comes, fitting in the pieces as they show up. Whenever I try to step back from it, I panic. So I would think about little dorky things, like how a girl would be a good thing so I could dress her in a onesie that said, "Though she be but little, she is fierce." Or how I want to breastfeed, just once, so that I can truly say, "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me." But then my mind goes dark, because more onorously, I will have to say the rest.

"I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this."

Because I have sworn to adoption, willingly and fully. I will be that disgusting, twisted Lady Macbeth. That's how I feel, anyway. Fiendish. Bloody. Despicable. Unwanted. Capable of anything but love. And this is how trying to focus on little pieces ends up sending me back into tailspins of self-pity. I am a dork, therefore I am sad.

To end on a lighter note, here I am, gettin' pregnant! Yes, that is a tattoo of the Batman symbol. No, I am not ashamed.

And thank you, dear kind readers, for your support on my previous password protected post (ALLITERATION FTW). It really meant and means a lot.

Paradise Lost.

Some things have happened here. This is a long one, and it's ranty, so buckle up if you feel so inclined. I just really need to get it out there. I put it on wordpress, so as to keep it private. If you want to read it, email me at nar268@nyu.edu for the password. I'll gladly share, I just don't want it open to the world at large.

www.lianotjuno.wordpress.com

In the meantime, here is my creepy alien baby! It's just his face. He's lying on his side, staring straight out at you. If you imagine his eyes are open and not closed, he looks like a terminator!

My creepy alien baby could beat up your creepy alien baby.

Creepy alien baby! You will see what I mean when I post pictures.

Oh, by the way, IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And he is healthy, with a big ol' brain and a beautiful beating heart.

Sterilized hallways REDUX.

Woke up this morning with a fever, chills, nausea, headache and some pretty bad random muscle pains. Called my doc, who called the hospital, who told me to come back in. My doc was kind enough to add that "Oh! It looks like that culture we did on you last week was actually positive!" I spent another 5 hours in L&D, and they redid all the tests. Armed with the NEW KNOWLEDGE of my POSITIVE CULTURE which nobody thought to call me about, or tell the hospital about when they asked for my records, they basically said, "well, that's an infection - here are some antibiotics!" This took five hours because they needed the attending to sign off on this before they could discharge me with a prescription and he was in the midst of a C-section. And they were out of pillows! And they wouldn't give me anything to eat even though I was STARVING, "just in case." I lay shivering in a hospital bed for hours and hours in awful pain. Despite it all, everybody was very nice for me, and it's good to know what's wrong and how to fix it. Thanks everybody for all of your kind words and thoughts.

ULTRASOUND TOMORROW! Can't wait!

Sterilized hallways and green Jello.

After a sleepless night filled with excruciating pain, I am now in the hospital. Still don't know what's wrong - will post information as it comes.

UPDATE - After many merry hours in the labor and delivery unit, it has been concluded that nobody knows what is wrong. All of my tests came back normal, and the pain (though still really bad) is responding well to Tylenol. They sent me home and told me to keep an eye out. Now would be a really good time to have a baby daddy that could fetch me Tylenol (we're an Ibuprofen-only household) and stroke my hair and tell me everything will be okay. It's mighty lonely over here. Thank you all so much for your kind thoughts and words.

A very merry unbirthday.

I have notoriously crappy birthdays. This was not always true. As I was looking through old photo albums for pictures to show T&V I found snapshots of what looked like my 5th birthday (Batman themed, of course), with a house full of smiling kids and a very giddy birthday girl. But as I got older, it got worse and worse. I sort of have this feeling that the world should stop and revolve around me on my birthday, and I'm inevitably disappointed. But it's not just me being a little snot - my grandfather's funeral was on my 15th birthday, and on my 18th an ex-boyfriend dumped me, which sent me into a tailspin of epic proportions since I was new at college and having a hard time transitioning and making friends and ended up bed-ridden with crippling depression for the rest of the year.

My 21st birthday is on October 23rd, and I will be about 7 and a half months pregnant. THIS BUMS ME OUT. As a previously adamantly not-recovering addict (totally a story for another blog, but yeah), quitting drinking and drugs is a daily struggle with a momentous amount of suck. My 21st birthday was supposed to be, well, everything a 21st birthday normally is, except MORE, because it's me. It's that whole it's-a-special-occasion excuse to do basically everything I can get my hands on. And in a less fucked up way, I'm supposed to be able to go to dinner with my family and order a cocktail and take a picture drinking it and blah blah blah.

It's all this stuff I had to GIVE UP - no rollercoasters this summer (my favorite things), no post-coital cigarettes, postponing my dental surgery so that I can have the full amount of drugs I will need with it, postponing drugs in general (oh god I hope nobody tells me this one is a blessing - YEAH DRUGS ARE BAD I GET IT), no traditional 21st birthday - and how angry I am about it, that sort of reaffirms my belief in adoption for myself. Because I'm a selfish person, and I have no qualms about that. Max Power and I simply are not ready to sacrifice our lives for the seabass's. Let me make it clear: the decision never came down to parenting or adoption. It was abortion or adoption. We are not ready or willing to be parents. Maybe that makes us terrible people, but at least we KNOW it and are availing ourselves of our options instead of ignoring what we know in order to do what other people feel we should. Now, of course, this doesn't mean we don't love the seabass, or that we won't always love him. Today, Max Power got to feel him kick for the first time (normally when I tell him to feel my belly the seabass immediately stops, as if he quiets down to respect Max Power's authority or something) and the look on his face was nuts. And I'm sure that once the seabass is born there will be lots of complicated emotions as a result, but one thing won't change: we still won't be ready to be parents. We still won't WANT to be parents. I will still want my 21st birthday, preferably IN the hospital (I've already demanded Max Power find a way to bring me a margarita the size of my head ASAP after the birth, in a Big Gulp if he has to). Maybe we're selfish - okay, we are - and maybe the shame and guilt of that will follow us for the rest of our lives. But shame and guilt is something I can deal with - having a child I resent is not.

At Max Power's this weekend. I was supposed to go home tonight (work tomorrow) but being alone in my room at night gives me panic attacks, and I'm trying to avoid those, so I'm staying. I'm so tired all the time. I feel completely worn down. I'm always cold, even though it's blisteringly hot here. The seabass kicks and squirms at the most inopportune times. I'm irritable and grumpy. I've started enjoying sex less. I've started enjoying everything less. I really just want all of this to be over - but it never will, will it? It's gonna last forever.

PS - Despite all of this, I AM SO EXCITED FOR MY ULTRASOUND ON FRIDAY! And also for my silly shirts to arrive. These are the ones I got:

http://www.cafepress.com/+maternity_ts,191725404

http://www.cafepress.com/+im_in_ur_womb_cravin_ur_foodz_maternity_dark_tshi,132300807

Is the second one funny? I was really late to the LOLcatz craze, but I find it SO FUNNY in an embarrassing sort of way. Once I was sitting in the living room of my apartment with my roommate, who was trying to study and was in a bit of an irritable mood. I started looking at LOLcatz and couldn't stop, and I was laughing so hard I was physically shaking with the effort of suppressing it. My poor roommate. So I cracked up when I saw that shirt. Funny or no?

Panic attacks.

I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder (among other things), though I don't like that it has a title, because that is not a disorder, it is life. I mean, who the hell doesn't have generalized anxiety? It's right up there with other BS diseases like restless leg syndrome and Lupus (it's never Lupus). And yet, the little DSM-IV code for "generalized anxiety disorder" shows up in the mail on all my medical bills, and I have a little bottle of oval peach-colored pills on hand at all times, at the ready for when my throat closes up and my breathing accelerates and I start sweating and my heart starts pounding and I get that weird feeling like I'm being physically restricted in a very claustrophobic way even though I'm out in the open and a metallic taste pops up in the back of my throat. This can happen at the strangest times. For example, when I saw the positive pregnancy test I just stared at it for a few minutes and then lit another cigarette. (Less reasonably, I then carried the test around in my bag with me for days, periodically checking on it to see if the cross had faded.) But for some reason, crossing 1st Ave into Alphabet City never fails to leave me choking on my own engorged heart which will have somehow resettled in the region of my throat.

Now that the seabass has signed a lease and set up his punching bag (I swear he's taking kickboxing lessons down there) in my uterus, I can't take my medicine anymore. I'm on a lot of meds, most of which my doctor has approved for use during my pregnancy. The anti-anxiety ones are the least important, in my mind, and luckily my attacks had been decreasing since the winter - from once or twice a week to once or twice a month. But in the last few weeks, they've started coming back, and in a whole new way. It happens late at night, when I'm alone with my Netflix Instaplay and my insomnia. The seabass will kick, and suddenly I will have vehemently changed my mind. Not in the whole boo-adoption way, but in the what-was-I-thinking-going-through-with-this-pregnancy way. And then I will start to wish violently that I were no longer pregnant, and that this was not my life, and that I had gone through with the abortion when I had the chance. Max Power and I probably wouldn't be together (if we even are "together" - I like my relationships complicated and impossible, clearly) but I'd be willing to trade that for a strong margarita, a whole lot of very high quality cocaine, and the assurance that I will not be responsible for the life of another human being for a very, very long time.

At these times, I start to cry uncontrollably. I get very uncomfortable in my own skin and I pace and sweat and bite my nails. And the fear wells up, the crippling fear that this will hobble me forever, that after the seabass is born I will never be able to stand up straight and look another human being in the eye. The shame of it all, and the guilt of all the years to come, years in which I will have a child but I will not be his mom, I will not nurture him at my breast or feed him his first solid food or see his first steps or yell at him to brush his teeth or tuck him into bed every night. I don't care about the differentiation of titles and what's appropriate and what's not - all I know in these moments is that something huge and momentous has plopped itself down on the tracks of my life and my train is speeding towards it with no idea what the impact will bring. All the while, my little bottle of pills looks at me and says, "sucker!"

Having been through more of my share of ridiculously traumatic experiences, mostly brought on by my own idiocy and wanderlust, I've had to deal with the anxiety fallout quite often. But this time, I don't have my two main support devices: my medicine, or my family. I know that my family is there, and supportive, but I just hate talking to them about my pregnancy. We all have a lot of complicated feelings about it, and it makes me feel super weird to open up to them about my emotions. I'm used to being overly reliant on my parents; they have literally walked me through every single crisis or semi-crisis I've encountered. But I don't think they can help me through this one. I just don't want their help on this one. I kind of wish that they would never have to know, that I could shield them from this horrible thing that I'm going to have to deal with, so that they neither have to watch me deal with it or deal with it themselves.

As for my sister... well, the two of us are very close. But she is being absolutely awful, and I'm worried that this experience is going to drive a serious wedge between us. She was the first one I told, and she's never stopped trying to urge me towards an abortion. She constantly belittles me about my choice, which she seems to think I made as a plea for attention. I know I may be oversimplifying, but her lack of support stings. A lot.

So instead of them, and instead of my pills, I've adopted some new techniques. Mostly these involve emailing bloggy friends and wailing until they cheer me up or suitably distract me. It is really nice to have that outlet, at least.

Hey mister, I'll trade you my baby for a puppy!*

I ventured up to rainy NYC this past Friday to see my brand spankin' new Spence-Chapin social worker. SW and I had a gay ol' time together. My wariness of this whole process made me pretty guarded and defensive (as did walking into the waiting area and seeing shelves full of children's books with titles like, "Does my Mommy love me?") but Spence-Chapin is great. SW spent most of our hour together reminding me constantly that I can change my mind at any point, and that over 2/3 of the women they work with end up parenting. She seemed very pleased by all my circumstances: Max Power is in the picture, my parents are supportive, and I've still got time. We talked about the services they offer - namely, boarding care, which was something I'd never heard of. For up to 30 days after the seabass is born, I can opt to have him placed in boarding care, where volunteers at the agency will look after him while letting me retain my parental rights. Then Max Power and I can visit him, and see what it's like to be away from him, before we sign anything.

Then she let me look at their prospective adoptive parents book, stressing over and over that it's not yet time for me to really be picking anybody. All the birthmom letters had a little grid on the back with the basic info for the couples (and single parents) I was looking at, which was super helpful. At a glance, I could see their ages, education levels, races, desired level of openness, planned religion for the seabass, and comfort level with prenatal drug exposure (something I worry about constantly). Also, it was pretty clear they all took a lot of time and care formatting their letters; SW told me they fret over fonts and papers and stuff for hours. I thought this was hilarious, since so many of them ended up using atrocious things like yellow paper and comic sans, and if they passed the grid test I couldn't help but start to judge them on that. And then, this couple jumped out at me. I'm not gonna say anything about them, for fear of jinxing myself, but I will say that they used normal paper, 12 pt Times New Roman font, and had excellent grammar.

The rest of my weekend was a rollercoaster. I went to Long Island to hang out with all of my friends from NYU, and brought Max Power with me. It sort of scares me how well he gets along with all of them. Sometimes, they'll take me aside and say, "Of all the guys you've brought home, we are SO GLAD it was THIS one who knocked you up." I suppose I deserve that - I have brought home many a weirdo, most of them 10+ years older than me.

When I catch sight of myself in reflective surfaces these days, I often can't believe it. I'm pretty recognizably pregnant. This has started me panicking, because as my father says, almost 100% of carried-to-term pregnancies tend to end in babies, and I have absolutely no idea how to prepare myself for the actual birth-giving. I don't know WHERE I'll be giving birth - New York seems likely, since I'm due December 14th and my finals don't start till the 17th. I don't know HOW I'm giving birth, except for the fact that I want the maximum legal limit of drugs available, and I'd like to avoid a C-section if at all possible. And I have absolutely no idea WHO I want there with me. As much as I love my parents, and as much as I normally rely on them, I hate discussing the pregnancy with them because this was not how it was supposed to happen. I've had a very hard time accepting my impending permanent adulthood, and I like to come home and feel like a little kid again when I'm with my family. Being pregnant is one of those things that really shoves you into adulthood; after all, what makes a grown person if not bringing other little people into the world? Sure, it would make me MUCH MORE of an adult if I was going to parent, but there's no use denying that my body is creating another life and that that is fucking weird. I like to joke that I want Max Power to be there so I can yell at him about how it's all his fault, but honestly for the sake of our sex life that might not be a great idea (and I just can't picture him telling me to breathe). Do I want the adoptive parents there? Gah, I simply do not know.

Funny exchange that now takes place between my sister and I quite constantly -

Her: Wanna go get some coffee?
Me: You know I can't have coffee, it's on the bad foods list you gave me! What kind of doctor are you?

(From the fabulous movie Waitress starring Kerri Russell and Nathan Fillion - or as I will always know him, Captain Malcolm Reynolds.)

I refuse to give up on my idea of getting a puppy after the seabass is born, so that I will have something to take care of in my grief. I know many a friend who credit their pets with getting them out of bed during bouts of depression, since they need to be fed and walked and loved and cared for. I know this may be a cop out, but I know myself when I get depressed (sadly, it's often, and chronic) and knowing what a risk I am for postpartum depression, I want to be armed with ideas on how to combat it. Spence-Chapin, luckily, offers very comprehensive post-birth counseling. Anyway, I want a BIG DOG that I can raise from a tiny little thing - sort of like a surrogate seabass, except not as creepy as that sounds. A German Shepherd or a St. Bernard, or something. But puppies like that are expensive, as Max Power reminds me, so I'll probably end up going to the pound. Unless, of course, I find adoptive parents willing to buy me a designer puppy - forget the ethics about puppy mills and human trafficking! I want my dog!

For inquiring minds: ULTRASOUND IS AUGUST 6TH! Don't worry, I will hastily post any information! I CAN'T WAIT!

Also, I now want all of these:
http://www.cafepress.com/+maternity_ts,191725404
http://www.cafepress.com/+maternity_dark_ts,258587720
http://www.cafepress.com/+not_responsible_maternity_ts,215813545
http://www.cafepress.com/+pregnant_with_boy_due_in_dece_maternity_ts,131960226

Seriously, this is what I spend my time doing.


*NO, I won't.

I've Never Been In Love Like This Before

I've been listening to Lauryn Hill's "To Zion" on repeat for about 2 months now. It's just... it's great, it's a great song. Here are some of the lyrics, if you don't know it:

Unsure what the balance held
I touch my belly overwhelmed
At what I have been chosen to perform
Then an angel came one day
Told me to kneel down and pray
For unto me a manchild would be born
Oh this crazy circumstance
I knew his life deserved a chance
But everybody told me to be smart
"Look at your career," they said
"Lauryn, baby, use your head"
But instead I chose to use my heart

Now the joy of my world is in Zion

How beautiful if nothing more
Just to wait at Zion's door
I've never been in love like this before
I will pray to keep you from
The perils that will surely come
See life for you my prince has just begun

Yeah, she has a kid named Zion, born to her as a single mom. I don't think very often about keeping the seabass, except when my anxiety about his future and welfare gets really bad and Max Power reminds me that we will do everything and anything we have to, even if we have to raise him ourselves (this is usually when I go all nuts about birth defects and whatnot). But he has faith we will find a wonderful adoptive couple and a lovely open adoption and blah blah blah. He's so damn sure - or at least he fakes it well for me. But see, the seabass has started kicking - usually late at night, when I'm alone - and, well, I've never been in love like this before. I worry constantly, every second of every day. I think Max Power is able to forget about it more easily.

So yeah, I'm at 20 weeks and I'm getting big. And I'm at that stage where I'm super pudgy but nobody would really pick me out as pregnant, which makes me sort of self conscious. I mean, I've embraced this pregnancy and I'm happy and excited most of the time; I kinda wanna share the exuberance with the world, instead of just looking like I had a huge lunch. Yeah, I know - a couple posts ago I talked about how uncomfortable I was with being congratulated. That's still true. It's complicated, okay?!??!?!

Anywhere, here's me being big and looking like Heidi at work:


Also, the cigarettes. Oh, the cigarettes. I was a smoker - fairly heavy, at times - and I quit cold turkey when I found out I was pregnant. I haven't slipped up at all (well, except for maybe standing a bit too close to my friends when they smoke, which they all do, in front of me and constantly). It's been two months and I would hurt anybody who wasn't the seabass for a cigarette. Seriously, I would hurt you. Yes, you. ALL OF YOU.

Open Adoption: the new Friends with Benefits?

Max Power was here this weekend, which is always lovely, and left today, which is always not. I wish I could say that's just sappiness, but my anxiety level rises exponentially when he's not around, since he's not there to calm me down. I spend a good deal of time every night laying awake and saying things like, "What if we never find anybody else? What if we find somebody else and they're halfway across the country? What if the seabass is born messed up because I'm a terrible person? What if I've completely ruined everything cuz I didn't know I was pregnant and he's born with no limbs and nobody wants to take care of him and we CAN'T take care of him because we have no health insurance so we have to drop him off at a fire station or a hospital and just run away and live with the guilt forever and ever?" And to all of these he responds, "everything will be okay."

"How? How will it be okay?" I say.

"I dunno," he says. "It's a mystery."

Then I hit him because cutesy Shakespeare in Love quotes do not solve anything, and say, "How come you're always so calm?"

"Because somebody has to be," he says. "And you have a lot more right to freak out than I do."

This never fails to calm me down. Unlike my parents, who always say those things can and might happen, and my sister, who rolls her eyes and maintains I should have gotten an abortion like a sensible person.

My family (like many of you guys) maintain that T&V backed out because they were uncomfortable with the level of openness Max Power and I wanted. I don't think that's true. For one, we had only discussed it vaguely; they took the lead in that conversation and I basically agreed with everything they said. I don't want an undue amount of openness - pictures and updates and the occasional visit (T&V said they would commit to an absolute minimum twice a year even when they move abroad, but wanted something more like once or twice a month if we were living in the same city) - but I do want the seabass to be able to decide for himself if/when/how much he wants to see us when he gets older. T&V agreed with that. But if it's true that the level of openness, or open adoption in general, had started to make them uncomfortable, well, let's add that to my laundry list of fears. My friend Drew said it's unlikely I'll ever find a couple that wants the same amount of openness that I do. That can't POSSIBLY be true - some of y'all have opener adoptions than I plan on having, and it works just fine.

Or does it? I can't help but think open adoption is some sort of new friends with benefits thing - you know, something that works on paper and that everyone starts off very excited about, but that fails miserably once human feelings get involved. There's always one party in a friends with benefits situation that ends up unhappy and one that ends up uncomfortable and guilty. I've tried to do it many times, and it always ends up a mess. Funnily enough, Max Power and I started out as friends with benefits, which was fine at first because he didn't want a relationship and I was already in one (I was doing a semester abroad, and we were taking a break). But things got complicated for various reasons, my boyfriend and I broke up, and I ended up pregnant. Now, for better or worse, we're family forever, and we're having a hard time navigating the romantic aspect of that. AKA: a mess.

I guess the ideal open adoption scenario is like a friends with benefits one that turns into a wonderful, beautiful and mutually fulfilling relationship. It always seems like one person goes into the arrangement hoping/thinking that could happen, while the other knows there isn't a shot in hell; but since they both ACT as though they want this other thing, lines of communication fall down or get crossed and everyone ends up unhappy.

I really don't want this to happen to me, Max Power, our baby and whatever adoptive couple we wind up with. I want this open adoption to blossom into a partnership, a family, kinda of like marrying the dude you starting off just hooking up with at your roommate's 21st birthday kegger. But is that even possible? Does that EVER happen? Even if the arrangement ends up being manageable or pleasant, are both parties ever fully satisfied? It's starting to seem like one side is going to have to settle for less than they wanted, and in this situation it's never the adoptive parents that have to do so. Waaaaaaaah, and also, waaaaaaah.

Dropped like so much trash.

T&V called me today to tell me that after a long conversation, they decided that "we aren't a good match." I am blindsided and devastated. I just saw them on Sunday - we went out to dinner and had ice cream and some great conversations. We even started talking about visitation specifics and we were in complete agreement. We were going to have a big dinner party at my house on Saturday, with T&V and my parents and Max Power and his dad. We were all excited and nervous for it. My parents planned out a whole menu. It's all off now.

I know I should be glad that they told me now, instead of pretending everything was fine and then cutting off visitation. But I can't help but think - these people really want a baby, but not MY baby. What's so wrong with me?

anyway, I'm gonna go drown myself in self pity and ice cream.

Corporate privatization.

Okay - blog is now private. I know it's the internet and I opened myself up to all the criticism because I invited people to my blog and NO I did not expect everybody to agree with me, but as if snarky comments weren't enough I started getting actual hate mail and SO I shut it down (Tina Fey style). I was gonna scrap the whole thing but I have actually met some super awesome/helpful/sane people that I want to keep in contact with and whose blogs I enjoy reading and so HEY, let's try some privacy settings first.

Here is my baby seabass:

Look at him stick his little butt in the air! Apparently, it is still too early to know the sex. Okay, I knew that, but I REALLY WANT TO KNOW. I am going absolutely bonkers over here. But this ultrasound was so amazing, unlike the one at Planned Parenthood (love 'em to death in theory, and lord knows the world needs 'em, but man am I song irrationally angry at them for doing their jobs). At PP they only do an ultrasound to assess how far along you are. They don't really let you see it (unless you ask, which I did) and it takes about 2 seconds. But at my gyno, they fussed around checking all of the limbs and his tiny little kidneys and femurs and his BUTT (plus there was a medical student there, and I let her fuss around a bit too. The pursuit of knowledge is very important!) and it was just the coolest thing ever to watch. First of all, my doctor's office is mad nice. Like, they HEAT THE GEL that they put on your belly. And there's a TV on the other side of the room that lets you comfortably watch what they're doing on the ultrasound. And oh lordy lord, seabass moves around like a crazy fellow. I could feel it before, but watching it happen is so incredibly cute.

I'm working for my mom this summer at her company, doing data entry. She desperately needs people who will do monkey work, I desperately need a job and will work for less than market rate, especially if it means I get to sit down all day in an air conditioned office. Anyway, I was late this morning because I was hanging out over the toilet dry heaving, and my mom took that opportunity to hold a meeting and tell everyone in the office that she's "going to be a grandmother" and that I'm choosing adoption. Aren't those statements contradictory? Anyway, people have been coming up to me in the office all day to congratulate me. I fucking hate that. It's not terrible news, no, because bringing new life into the world never is (I also like to remind myself that I am GROWING A PERSON and thus it's okay if I eat an entire cake) but I really, really don't want to be congratulated. The people who aren't congratulating are looking at me funny and tiptoeing around me. Mostly men. It's like dude, it's not contagious.

Anyway, I also have an internship at this amazing theater - I wanna go into Theater Management and education - and it's completely awesome. Except that nobody there knows I'm pregnant (and I plan to keep it that way this time) so they keep making me do all sorts of crazy, physically stressful shit. Sometimes it's awesome (demolishing a set with a sledgehammer) and sometimes it's awful. Yesterday I walked about 3-4 miles in the blistering, sticky heat, dropping off brochures at various cafes. Times like those, I really wanna pull the "GROWING A PERSON" excuse. But it actually turned out well, because I saw this amazing street art:

Beautiful, no?

Fuck it.

Okay I'm definitely taking a break from posting my emotions on here. I came to the internet looking for information and experiential stories. I did not come to be talked out of my decision, which I realize now that I HAVE decided on. I'm not going to discuss this further, not now anyway.

For what it's worth, I find it extremely hurtful to be told I'm using adoption as a form of birth control. First of all, I used birth control. I was on the pill when I got pregnant. Second of all, if this was "birth control" I would have gotten an abortion. But whatever. I content myself in the knowledge that there are thousands of adoptees, birthmothers and adoptive parents out there that AREN'T outraged; after all, only those who feel very strongly take to the web (and rightly/understandably so). Everybody has a different reaction, I know. So why is everybody trying to assume mine? Or worse, telling me about this horrible pain I'm going to be in as if I should already know what that feels like? The whole point is that I CAN'T KNOW. And I've heard that a lot - the PAIN I can't POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND. And I GET IT. But if I can't possibly understand it, well... then how am I supposed to understand it? If it's incomparable, then there's NOTHING TO COMPARE IT TO. I've never had a child. How am I supposed to know? I'm going about this as best I can and trying to reach out to people, but I've never done this before. Please, please stop jumping down my throat for not knowing things I CAN'T POSSIBLY KNOW.

So if anybody reading this actually cares about me as they say, and isn't just trying to further their own agenda (which is just as detestable as what they claim my agenda is), I just have a question: adoption agencies. I heard IAC is crap from many of you and I'm starting to believe it. So where do I go? Any advice?

She's a psychopath.

There's a joke in my circle of friends that I'm a sociopath, which originated when my friend Patrick (a psych major, natch) posed a riddle to us one night (without telling us it was a loosely used test for sociopathy back in like nineteen-dickety-two). It goes "A woman's mother dies, and at the funeral she meets the love of her life. But she doesn't get his number, and she's afraid she'll never see him again, so she goes home and kills her sister. Why?"

I laughed and said, "That's not a riddle, it's a joke. She kills her sister so he'll come to the funeral, duh." At which point Patrick was like omg, you're a sociopath, get out of my room.

Now in all fairness, that is a well-known riddle, and I'd probably heard it somewhere and forgotten it. But that experience seriously freaked me out. I've always felt like I've had an abscess of emotion inside me; that I'm overly self-serving and abrasive with little thought to sensitivity or the needs of others. Up until that point I just thought I was a huge bitch, but then I started to wonder, is there something actually wrong with me? A lack of ability to feel attachment, or love, or empathy? Though my therapist assured me that worrying about being a sociopath effectively means I am not one, I spent the next several weeks after that night with Patrick frantically asking everyone else that riddle (and NO ONE GOT IT RIGHT, which only served to freak me out more).

Which brings me to SVU, season 7, episode 14 ("Taboo" - I should really start narrating my life using SVU), which is about a girl, twice pregnant, who throws both of her newborn infants into the trash. People naturally go apeshit - how could a person do this, she must be insane, yadda yadda (and she totally was). Sometimes I feel like people are telling me that adoption is akin to throwing my baby in the trash. As if it would be better to keep it and yell at it and hit it and feed it broken glass than to give it away to awesome, loving people like T&V. I mean, c'mon. It doesn't ONLY need love. It needs, you know, the right kind of love.

Anyway, everybody's been saying to me all the time that seeing my baby will change me and I can never know what that feels like. But what if it doesn't feel like anything? What if I truly am a psychopath? What if there is that complete disconnect within me that makes me unable to feel? I am so unbelievably terrified of that. I mean seeing the ultrasound and hearing the heartbeat were cool, but I wasn't like OMG BABY THAT I MUST KEEP OR MY LIFE WILL BE RUINED. I want my baby to be happy and healthy, and I want it to have love. What if I'm simply not capable of loving? What kind of baby deserves a sociopath for a mother? I feel like it might just be irresponsible of me to keep it, and not for all the ways the agency says it is (no money or job or future, etc), but because I might get bored and drown it in the bathtub for kicks. I simply don't know what I'm capable of - probably not infanticide, but probably not real love either. At least not the deep, abiding love I'm supposed to be capable of in order to adequately raise a child. So isn't the better thing to do to give it to people who aren't monsters?

No me ha dejado.

Holy mother of God that was an explosion of sentiment. Well, thanks for the comments I suppose, even though I really, really don't appreciate people TELLING me what to do. Advice and exchange of experience are welcome and encouraged and unbelievably useful, but can I ask that people please please don't insist that what I am doing is wrong, or what they think is irrevocably right? My experiences are my experiences; even if you've been through something similar, you haven't been me.

ANYWHO, the doctor yesterday was nuts. My friend Drew came with me for moral support, and my doctor (Cory something or other) was super awesome. She dealt very well with me, she was funny and relatable and I really like her. I'm getting an ultrasound next week (booo I wanna know the sex already) but I heard the heartbeat and it just floored me. Dr. Cory says I'm 16 weeks along, and she said not to get my hopes up about the heartbeat, but when she put the stethoscope on my belly it came through super loud and clear. I looked at Drew and her face was priceless. I don't think she believed I was pregnant until that moment. We both sat there in dumb shock for a little while. Then I took out my phone and recorded about 5 seconds of it, so I could play it for Max Power (who tried so hard to be there, but he had a test and he had to move into his new apartment and he lives an hour away - poor guy beat himself up so much over it). I'm with him this weekend so I played it for him and he just couldn't believe it. It was pretty special. Here it is (I just have to share!):

The heartbeat was hovering around 150, and an old wive's tale says that if the heartbeat is above 140 it's a girl. I just don't know what to think now! I wanna know!

Alright, that's all I got. Thank you all for your love and prayers. It means the world to me. I will leave you with this Family Guy video that perfectly describes how I'm feeling these days.

Well, I'm an idiot.

I made a pretty dumb and insensitive comment on another blog the other day and got it rammed down my throat. I'm really not good at this internet thing, but hopefully I'll get better.

I'm at an early stage in this and it's really hard to step outside my own bubble. The last few days have been particularly rough, since I got a book in the mail from IAC called "Dear Birthmother" and I've spent most of the time since reading it and bawling. I want to respond directly to the people I've severely annoyed, but it's probs best to let them be. I don't think they'll ever see my point of view because they've never been me, and I won't see theirs for the same reason. But on the unlikely off-chance that they see this, I want to say I'm sorry. I don't mean to be blind to the pain of adoptees. I only know my own, and in my pain I lashed out against somebody I didn't know who I perceived as being unfair. Her words hurt me very much. But it's her blog; she can write what she wants on it. I guess I just take exception to all birthmothers being called cold, unfeeling bitches for considering placing their children up for adoption. I'm not a bad person. I'm just a scared girl who doesn't know what to do. I would have gotten a lot less grief, from everybody in my life, if I had just gotten an abortion.

But that is so unbelievably not an option. I was talkin to Max Power and we were joking about something sex-related... probably me saying I totally would have stopped talking to him if he hadn't been so dynamite in the sack, or something else immature. And he said, well, you sure woulda been a lot less pregnant. Then we both got quiet. "I wouldn't change it," I said. "Me neither," he said.

We love this baby. Doesn't that count for anything? We will never stop loving him. But we have no money, nowhere to live, no jobs or insurance. We both have had nasty drug habits (although it's amazing how cold turkey you can quit when you get pregnant). Most importantly, even put together we don't have a lick of sense. But that doesn't make me WANT to give him up.

I've been reading the fabulous Mei-Ling's reunion archives for the past day or so and they've been blowing my mind. Feeling torn between two families, two cultures, and two potential ways of being is just the most intensely crazy thing I've ever heard. I don't want that to happen to my baby. I don't want 20 years to go by without him seeing my face or hearing my name. Well, more than that I don't want 20 years to go by without seeing his face or hearing his name, but whatever. It's not about me.

All I want to say is that, I haven't made a concrete decision to go for adoption. But I was sitting on my bed reading "Dear Birthmother" and talking to Max Power about feeling sad, and he looked at me and said "I know it's terrible, but you know we can't keep this baby." I didn't really know what to say. You're right? Fuck you, it's my baby, get the fuck out? Both thoughts were weighed equally in my mind and jammed into each other on the way out of my mouth. So I was just quiet.

Doctor's appt on Thursday. I'll know the sex for sure, hopefully, and I should get to hear his heartbeat.

Some Big Secret

ADA Casey Novak asked the ever-so-dreamy Detective Elliot Stabler (in an episode lightly centered around adoption... kinda) "If you found out you had another kid out there, would you want it?" And Stabler replied, "Damn right I would... it's not an obsession. It's a love. It's a connection that transcends anything and everything. I would die for my children. And there's nothing in the world that will change that. Ever."

My dad said, in a lecture to me about how unprepared I am for the birth of my child, "There is no way you can understand the overwhelming need to parent your child. It is the driving force behind mankind."

Is it bad that I sort of look at this as the entrance test to some really huge, universally understood and yet vastly secret club? There are billions of parents in the world, and they all know this thing that one can't know until they become a parent. It's kind of like sex - everybody does it, but for those who don't, it's a huge mystery. And now I'm being handed a key into this club, but it's like the key is on fire or covered in spikes or something - I get to have it, but it scars me forever. I'm both intensely curious and overwhelmingly terrified.

And do not make fun of my love for SVU. It is immensely entertaining. Even if it is giving me second thoughts about letting T&V raise my kid in Soho.

Oh right - My story

My name is Lia. I am 20 year old college student and I really don't have my shit together. I am about 14 weeks pregnant, and this is my blog for dealing with that.

I didn't know what to do. In this situation I always thought I would just "take care of it," that getting pregnant was just like a really expensive yeast infection. So I went to Planned Parenthood and they acted exactly like I wanted them to in my idealistic, non-pregnant state. You know... abortion is no big deal, here's what the state tells us to say, great see you in 24 hours for your procedure. But being there pregnant, I felt very strange about it. I mean, you don't think anyone will change their mind? That maybe we are just here for information? But no - nobody was, myself included. Then I got a sonogram (mandated to know how far along I was - 11 weeks and 5 days) and I saw my baby. You know that Friends episode where Rachel gets a sonogram and she can't see the baby and Ross has to point out that peanut-looking-thing and go "honey, that's it"? Well this was not like that. My baby has a face. It's got my nose. I can tell. Poor thing.

So I started researching adoption. Tentatively. But eventually I found this agency called IAC which specializes in open adoption. I knew I wanted a gay couple, in an urban setting (seriously don't ask me why - I have no idea) and IAC actually lets you SEARCH for gay couples (do you know how many agencies just DON'T HAVE THEM? It's atrocious.) and I found T&V (names withheld to protect the innocent). They're great. We're getting to know each other. They live in NYC, near campus, which is great. Even though I'm shacked up in Philly for the summer, they're close by.

And the father - gah, more on that later perhaps (if I stick with this).

So. I'm due mid-December (by my calculations) which will either be at the start of winter break or during finals! Who knows!