Uterine Wars

Extraneous

I've updated the Etsy store with some new items for my Ichthyosis fundraiser.  Please stop by and check them out.  Also, remember I am always open to custom orders -- if you can dream it, I can try to make it.

Moonpie is now completely over the strep/flu combo, and is driving me nuts watching this video on YouTube over and over and over:

Anyone know what they are saying? I recognize lots of the place names, and something something "my Kazakhstan."   She really wants to know what they are saying, so a full translation would be AWESOME. 

A Plague Upon Our House

Dear Britax:

Hi! I am a big fan of the cute, cute, cute car seat covers you have developed in the years since Moonpie was a baby.  The cow print cover?  Unisex and adorable.  Love it.

However.

When the baby is projectile vomiting all over the back seat, and I am trying to mop up vomit on the side of the road so she doesn't have to ride home in a pool of predigested gunk, the Teflon stain repellent stuff is more annoying than helpful.  Having warm vomit trickle off the car seat while it is occupied is not as helpful as I am sure you were envisioning. 

Also, really.  Really?  You couldn't figure out a better way to engineer removing the cover for cleaning other than to completely dismantle the car seat?  And are you fucking kidding me with the handwash and drip dry shit?  Do you know how long it takes to drip dry a car seat cover?

Anyway.  Cow print cute.  Car seat design? FAIL.

Hugs and kisses, send me lots of free stuff,

--- Soper

For the past three weeks we've been dealing with strep.  Shug and Moonpie both got it, got over it, and then got it again.  With vomiting.  And fever. And diarrhea.  Being the loving, involved mother that I am, I jumped right into the fray and came down with strep, too. 

Only it wasn't just strep.  It was strep, twice, with H1N1 thrown in for hilarious diaper changing fun.

The up side of vomiting for two days straight is dehydration, which has revealed my awesome abs that have heretofore been hiding beneath a layer of ... we'll call it water retention.  Definitely not fat.

SOPER: (staring at flat stomach in mirror)  Look! I have a six-pack!  Or, well, maybe a three pack.  What would you call a three-pack?

D: A slow weekend?

I want what every mother with a sick infant wants.  A shot of tequila and an Italian pool boy   A magic shot/pill/suppository that will make the vomiting go away and my normal happy baby reappear.  I do not want the pediatrician to tell me to give the baby crushed ice and Popsicles and spoon feed her milliliters of water until she can take a bottle again.  I especially don't want my husband to cheerfully agree that is the best course of action and refuse the prescription for phenergan before trotting back to his clean, sterile office while I lug home a sluggish, vomiting mess.

Crushed ice, my ass.

I can't say D has been an ass about all this, though.  He has been truly helpful, mopping up Shug's vomit so I can go vomit, letting Moonpie watch t.v. until her brains leak out of her ears just so I can get a decent stretch of sleep.  Last night, as Shug screamed and screamed and screamed, even his calm doctorly reserve started cracking, and even he got scared.  After speaking with the pediatrician on call and helping strip Shug's bed (again) and change her clothes (again) he turned to me and told me he understood now how scared I must have been in Kazakhstan when Moonpie was so sick.  "At least here I speak the language and can call a doctor I know personally for reassurance," he confessed.  "You must have been terrified."

Uh, yeah.  It was nice, though, to have him get it, really get it, even if it was four years ago.  It was, at the time, the most horrible experience of my life, but in a weird way it was the best welcome to parenting I could get.  Yes, Moonpie was very sick, yes, all her skin peeled off, and yes, I was trapped in a foreign country being monitored by KGB and couldn't even call home for reassurance because a hurricane had knocked out the phone grid to the Southeast... Wait, is there a but in there somewhere?  Oh, yeah.  All that, but, once I was safely on the other side of it, I knew that I could handle just about anything that was about to come.  Parenting isn't about a pretty nursery and cute clothes and artfully done photography with cute props, it's about happily wiping someone's boogers with your bare hand when you can't find a tissue and letting someone who has just rolled over during a diarrhea diaper change cling to you bare bottomed while you clean the mess with your free hand.   And being glad that you caught the flu and strep from them, because now you have abs of steel moderately strong plexiglass.

So basically we are sick, and I am giddy from a lack of hydration and sleep.  And I'm sure there is a point in all this somewhere.  If you find it, please send it to me.  I'll be the one huddled under the blanket on the couch, apparently happy that we all have the flu.

Roulette

There is a rumor in the Kazakh adoptive community that the region where Moonpie was born (Kostanay) is closing (or is closed) to international adoption.  The director of the Delphin baby house, Dr. Irina, apparently retired this past Spring, and her replacement is either bowing to political pressure or has an agenda to stop international adoptions.  

I was talking about this yesterday and Moonpie overheard the discussion.  "Oh," she said, looking sad, "that means all my friends in the baby house won't find mommies and daddies."

That was my knee jerk reaction as well -- if it weren't for Westerners, would many of those children ever escape the orphanage system?  But in reality, that isn't true.  Healthy infants are and will continue to be adopted within the country by Kazakh citizens (who adopt for free, by the way.  Think of that when you are writing that $30K check to your agency).  

But what about the "special needs" kids?  Is closing an entire region in their best interest?

When D and I started the adoptive process, I wanted a neurologically healthy live baby, under a year of age.  I had lost at least three pregnancies at that point, and a live child was my main criteria.  Neurologically sound was my second.  Everything else at that point was negotiable, so I guess I have to admit that I was always open to a special needs adoption.  The fact that I was willing to accept a child with special needs wasn't really the grand leap it seemed at the time -- on some level I was always ready to parent a child who wasn't completely "normal."  Now, four years later, I have two special needs kids, a child with Ichthyosis and a child allergic to milk.* 

So I recognize that it's irrational when I get irritated with the PAPS** on chat boards who want only healthy babies, are there healthy babies in Kazakhstan, I really want a healthy baby girl, are there healthy baby girls available and how fast can I go get one?  Of course those people are entitled to want a healthy child.  I wanted a healthy child.  Everyone wants a healthy child. 

But what about the kids who aren't?  Will those families hurry off to different regions, different countries, if only special needs children are available?  I think of Moonpie's future without me, shuttled to an orphanage for kids with special needs at the age of four, sore and itching with her skin flaking off because lotion is too expensive to offer her, all the while smiling somehow in her irrepressible sunny way, gently tucking in the FAS kids and helping wipe the cerebral palsy child's face clean for the mamachkas.   Shunned and tossed aside when she aged out of the orphanage system, left to beg on the streets, a social pariah because she happened to be born with a genetic illness that makes her have dry skin. 

I wonder how anyone could think that that life would be better than life with me?  How could anyone make the decision to close a region for those kids? To take a child who doesn't quite fit the definition of healthy and condemn them to half a life?  Each one of those children has something to give, and deserves a chance to do so.  Babe Ruth, Marilyn Monroe, Alexandra Dyonysievna Danilova, and even Leo Tolstoy were all orphaned as children.  Where would our world be without their contributions?  Where would we be if they hadn't been given a chance? 

I hope this is all just unsubstantiated rumor, that the region isn't closing, that every Kazakh child available for adoption finds a home regardless of where that home may be.  That you will look in your heart and see that there is room for child there who doesn't quite fit your definition of perfect.  That you will realize special needs doesn't mean intellectually deficient, it just means parenting with a little more work.

Most of all, I hope that all mothers find children, and all children find mothers.

* You don't think food allergies are special needs?  Seriously? Have you ever tried cooking for a kid with food allergies?  They put milk in hot dogs.  They put milk in everything.

** Prospective Adoptive Parents