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?