Sick Day

 Bonsai has been sick all week.  Luckily, Spruce was off on Monday, and my dad was here visiting and helping out till Tues (he is terrified of the baby, but fantastic with Bonsai, so it all works out), but for the past 3 days, it's been just me and the kiddos.  Spruce only went back to work post-paternity leave on Jan. 3, and my dad was here for 10 days starting the 7th, so I'm still very much finding my rhythm as an outnumbered mom.  I did not relish the idea of dealing with my poor sick kiddo and managing the baby.  Two of these three days, Bonsai should have been at school, but stayed home sick instead.  School days still involve getting up & ready, breakfast, packing lunch, dinner and bedtime, but they are easy anyway.  They give me lots of time to just snuggle with baby--though they're meant to give me time for working, and next week, I need to start using them for exactly that. 

As it turns out, having these extra days with Bonsai was no problem at all.  Today, for instance: I woke at 7am to discover Baby Blossom had slept 8 hours!  Bliss! (she's done this before, but most nights are more like 6 hours, which really isn't enough.)  I fed her, put her down, and Bonsai woke up.  I got him ready, fed him breakfast, played, fed us both lunch, and put him down for his nap.  Blossom slept through all of this, waking only as I was putting him down.  Awesome timing!  So I fed her, snuggled, fed her again, while Bonsai fought naptime. But he fought it by playing happily in his room, which was not bad at all.  I went in to check on him, changed his pull-up (we're potty-training but have no expectation of dryness at naps or nighttime yet), went through bedtime routine again (3 songs & 3 books!), and then he fell asleep.  Which meant I still had time for a nap myself!  Blossom and I napped together for almost an hour (well, she in her cosleeper--Spruce is ready to move her to the nursery and we need to soon, now that she's 3.5 months, but I don't want to...), then I fed her again. Breastfeeding, by the way, is going awesome.  The first 3 weeks, she wouldn't latch so I pumped all the time and gave her all breastmilk via bottle.  Then I saw lactation consultant who magically solved everything in a 1-hour session--seriously.  Blossom has been a total champ ever since, and I love it!  Only problem--now she refuses the bottle!  I ordered a cool new one over the holidays that worked great when my parents watched her, but we haven't tried it ourselves yet.  Hopefully it's solved that issue though...we'll see.

Anyway, I even got a shower in (yes, at 5pm, but whatever!), wrote this post, and now Bonsai has just woken up.  I know he won't nap that long when he's well, but I'm glad he got the rest he needed today, and it certainly made the day easier on me! Definitely looking forward to him feeling better, though, poor guy.

On a larger note--so much time keeps going by between posts, and while I am reading, and think often of writing, the time just isn't presenting itself.  I think what I want to do is change to a non-anonymous blog.  Then I'll password-protect this one so I'll still have it, but it can't be stumbled upon by people IRL who I don't want to see it.  If I do make the move, I'll give you all plenty of notice! Of course, if I can't manage to post here, why would it work there?  Well, I could do photos, and shorter things about the kids--I had to delete all my pix here when I joined Goo.gle + because it linked them, making my anonymous blog all too findable!  So we'll see...I miss this space and am trying to figure out how to integrate it more into my life. Thinking of you all!

Balancing

I've been working on this post for weeks, but finally getting it finished now! So much busyness and sleep deprivation with two little ones!

When Blossom came home, my biggest worry was that Bonsai, no longer our one & only, was somehow being deprived by our decision to add to our family.  Part of this fear is because, as an only child myself, I never had to go through the transition from only to oldest. (My husband did, but says he doesn't remember anything about it.  He was 4 when his sister was born and remembers plenty from age 2 on, so--maybe he blocked it out?)  Part of it, I suspect, is because we adopted him, while I gave birth to her.  They are both equally my children, both equally miraculous, both equally in my heart.  I genuinely feel no difference based on how they entered our family, but I'm terrified that he or others will suspect that it is there.  Maybe not now, but eventually, won't someone say something to him about her being our "real" child? Of course, since she came from Laurel's magical eggs, Blossom is no more genetically mine than Bonsai is (though she is biologically mine, so that's confusing), but the average kid on the playground won't know that.

Anyway--I am a little obsessed with making sure Bonsai always knows how deeply we love him, how much he means to our family.  And maybe all parents worry about how the oldest will feel when a new baby arrives (okay, all the parents I know definitely worry about this), but I feel like our unusual situation makes me extra-sensitive on this front.

Exhibit A: The day we came home from the hospital, we sent my mom and stepdad to pick up my pain meds (yay, c-section...sigh), and we were trying to get Blossom settled while also looking after Bonsai.  Except, I was still in a lot of pain, and Blossom wasn't latching at all so I was pumping to feed her, but the breast pump we'd picked up was the wrong one and was super-painful, and I didn't have anything I could wear for breastfeeding (hadn't realized how convenient that hospital gown was!), and I was still bleeding a lot and was almost out of the industrial-grade pads from the hospital, and...well, you get it, I was feeling overwhelmed.  And Bonsai needed something--I can't remember what, but it was something I couldn't do, involving picking him up, and I just lost it, feeling so bad that I couldn't do everything for him anymore, all because of this new baby I'd brought into his life.  And I felt like Spruce wasn't being supportive, so I was sobbing and yelling at him, and Bonsai was crying too, and...yeah, it was bad.  I wish I remembered more specifics but it was such a blur, what with the pain meds and the sleep deprivation and all.  Then we heard my parents come in, and Spruce asked my mom to play with Bonsai so he could help me.  He ended up running to a local breastfeeding store to get me the right pump and took Bonsai with him so my mom could help me (my stepdad was out of commission with a migraine).  And then I was sobbing as I searched for nipples to use on the bottle of expressed milk I'd pumped at the hospital while my mom held Blossom and I ranted about not wanting Bonsai to feel left out.  Not a good homecoming.

See, while I was in the hospital, Spruce mostly stayed with me, and my mom and stepdad stayed with Bonsai.  They came to visit but I wasn't in charge of Bonsai while I was in the hospital bed.  This was tough, especially one time when Bonsai tumbled off my hospital bed and I couldn't pick him up and he was crying and all he wanted was for me to hold him--he was fine, but it was heartbreaking (my stepdad picked him up and brought him to me to snuggle).  But here I was, back to our normal lives but with two kids now, and while this is such a huge blessing, I just wasn't sure how I would manage it.  I'm still figuring that out, 8 weeks in, but I think it'll get easier. 

Anyway, Bonsai had fun at the store with Spruce (he got a toy train for his trouble), and my mom helped me get Blossom settled, and disaster was averted.  But it took three adults to make that happen! And so I was terrified about how we would manage once my parents left. Which was tough, when Blossom was just over a week old and up all night and Spruce was taking the night shift with her and sleeping all day while I took care of both kids.  At least Bonsai has school twice a week, because I was way too much of a zombie to be any fun for him those first few weeks.  It's better now that Blossom is sleeping through the night, sort of--though 6 hours, 1am to 7am, is not actually enough sleep! Spruce is still on paternity leave and will be through the end of the year--and how does anyone manage without that?! That'll be another big adjustment, come January.

So much balancing is involved with two kids, but I'm starting to feel like I can do it.  Bonsai will be in school three days a week in the new year, which he's super excited about, and will give me time to work while Blossom naps (hopefully I can manage that, rather than just napping while she naps!).  He's loving having both Spruce and me home, and we've both enjoyed lots of playtime with him and, now that Blossom is allowed out of the house, fun outings around town (this week, we went to Disney.land!)  And Bonsai is so sweet with his little sister, that I feel much more thrilled to have been able to give him a sibling, something I never had as a child, than guilty about no longer being able to give him absolutely all of my attention.  He loves helping out--he's great at burping her and giving her her pacifier.  He loves to hug and kiss her, and in the car he always holds her hand.  When she cries, he tells her, "Don't cry, baby sister."  It's the sweetest.  He's the sweetest.  The two of them together simply melt my heart. 

She's Here!

Blossom was born on Oct 6 at 7pm! 7 pounds, 20 inches long, perfect from head to toe. We are so in love.

Quick version of birth story (will write more later, assuming that someday I'll be less sleep-deprived...): I went to the hospital the evening of Wed., Oct 5 at 39 weeks to begin the induction process. They gave me Cerv.adil at 8pm and by 11 I was having painful contractions that built all thru the night: early labor. I sort of dozed in between them, but it was not exactly a restful night. Happily, Spruce was able to stay with me, which made the whole thing less scary, while my mom stayed with Bonsai. So glad she was in town!

By morning, contractions were more intense and frequent, but I was still only dilated to about 2cm (I'd been at 1 for weeks). They started both Pit.ocin and the epidural at 8am. At 11am, my OB came to check me and broke my water--wow, that was a big gush! No trickle like at that hospital visit a few weeks ago. That kicked off active labor, and soon my body took over on the contractions and no more Pit was needed! Really the Cerv.adil plus breaking my water took care of the induction process. I labored for 7 hours, and man am I glad I got the epidural! I felt no pain, though I could still move enough to turn on each side and feel pressure. I was actually able to doze off and on throughout the day, which was great given how exhausted I already was from months of insomnia! At one point, the epi wore off, and the pain was unbearable for the half hour till the anesthesiologist came back. I even puked, and I hardly ever throw up! So I'm very glad I only endured that briefly, rather than the whole time.

I'm especial glad because, when I was 9cm dilated, Blossom's heart rate started falling a lot with each contraction. It had been at 130 or 140 for months, and it was dropping to 80. My doctor was headed over anyway since I was close to fully dilated, and when she saw the heart rate, she was really concerned. Since I still had to push and that's the most stressful part for baby. For her sake, we were going to have to do a C-section. I was slightly disappointed since we'd gotten so close to a vaginal delivery, but the important part was protecting our sweet baby, and this was what she needed. Suddenly I was being rushed to the operating room. I was glad they moved fast, since I was worried about my girl. Spruce joined me, and held my hand the whole time. Although there was a curtain up so I wouldn't see anything, he watched the whole thing! He was fascinated! (he's kinda weird...). I actually thought, as they pulled her out, "This is so surreal." Here i was, finally having a baby--unbelievable. I got to see her, and she was adorable. Then Spruce went with her while they checked her over (9 & 9 Apgars, baby!), and then he headed to the nursery with her. I was glad he was with her when I couldn't be, but it was lonely in the OR without him. The surgery wasn't bad, though I did puke again (luckily while Spruce was still there to help me), and after, I got an uncontrollable case of the shivers that just wouldn't stop.

But soon I was back in my labor & delivery room, and Spruce appeared at my aide. Soon he went back to get Blossom, and I finally got to hold her. Amazing that we made this little person!

There's lots more to say but I need to feed our miracle girl, so...more later, hopefully soon!

Tomorrow

I go into the hospital tomorrow to start the induction process and am expected to deliver on Thursday.  I'll be 39 weeks tomorrow.  I can't believe that after so many years of waiting, I'm finally about to give birth!  I am still scared that something will go wrong (how could I not be?), but mostly I'm feeling confident in my baby and my body's ability to get through this successfully.  Good thoughts in our general direction would be much appreciated!

Aside from the excruciating pelvic pain I've been having since Blossom dropped 3 weeks ago, and despite rather frequent hospital runs for contractions and other excitement in the previous couple weeks, this last week of my pregnancy has been relatively uneventful.  Just waiting, trying to wrap up a few more things (finished decorating the nursery, finished my last couple of book projects that were under contract), getting more easily tired out, more uncomfortable, and even more eager to meet our baby girl!  My dad was here for 10 days and was a great help with Bonsai, and my mom arrived on Sat.  I'm so happy she'll be here with Bonsai while Spruce and I are at the hospital, and that she'll be the one to bring him to meet his baby sister there!

There was a bit of unpleasantness last week when my crazy aunt (seriously, she's been in and out of mental institutions for years) sent a voicemail after hearing I'd been having contractions but no progress saying that maybe I was having trouble because I'm too old and my muscles are too weak.  See, last week, I had strong, regular contractions for about 7 hours (5 of them before going to the hospital since I wanted to monitor them for awhile first, not wanting to go in yet again if it wasn't labor, and then had to wait to hear what my doctor wanted me to do, and wait for Spruce to battle rush hour traffic to get home from work, etc.)  They were about a minute long each, about 3 minutes apart for the first 5 hours, though they spaced out a bit by the last two (once I was being monitored at the hospital, of course).  I had tried everything to alleviate them--downing lots of water, lying on different sides, walking around, showering--nothing changed them.  The only thing that made me think it wasn't labor was that they weren't increasing in intensity, just staying pretty steady on the painful scale, and that they weren't actually as painful as the last ones I'd had that sent me to the hospital (those had to be stopped with a shot since I was still 36 weeks then)--they were painful, like stop what you're doing and breathe through it painful, but not as unbearable as the previous batch.  Still, they went on for so long that it seemed this had to be it.

But it wasn't.  At the hospital, the nurse (who by the way had made me cry at a previous visit, and sure enough, did again--why oh why did I get the one cranky nurse I've encountered there twice?! And how can I avoid her for actual delivery??) checked me and while my cervix was very soft, I was still only dilated to 1.  Baby is low and ready to go, uterus is enthusiastically contracting, but that darn cervix was insisting on staying closed.  Which, I mean, I hoped so hard for it to do for so long to keep our little girl from being premature, but I was hoping it would have gotten the memo that it was safe to loosen up now!  So after 7 hours of contractions, I was sent home to wait for real labor to begin.  My doctor's only advice was to look for something "different" next time, if I went into labor before my induction, since clearly the frequency and regularity and even painfulness of contractions aren't really an accurate indicator of labor for me.  Apparently I have an irritable uterus, or something.  It's certainly making me irritable that it did all that with no progress!

Anyway, while we were at the hospital and my dad was here with Bonsai, Dad got all excited and called  both his sister and my mom to tell them I was apparently in labor.  That aunt (my favorite one; not crazy) posted on Face.book that I was having the baby, so I had to print a retraction when we got home.  My mom called her sister (crazy aunt) after we were home, and this is what prompted Crazy Aunt to believe there was something wrong with me, since she (being the expert that she is) had never heard of having contractions for that long without it actually being labor.  But you know what, it happens, clearly!  And every pregnancy is different.  And she was pregnant once, 28 years ago, so maybe she doesn't remember or know absolutely everything about it.  And just because her daughter, also crazy, has had three kids in three years starting at the age of 26, doesn't mean that 31 is an abnormal age to give birth for the first time--I'm still younger than most of our friends were when they had their first babies!  It's just so hurtful for her to say I'm too old when yes, ideally, I would have given birth for the first time back when I was 27.

Over four years of infertility landed us on this alternate timeline, and I don't even mind anymore, because this path led us to both Bonsai and Blossom, who wouldn't have been ours if things had been easy, and I can't imagine any more perfect children than them (ok, yes, I'm assuming Blossom is perfect since I won't meet her till Thurs., but I think it's a fair assumption :) ).  And infertility did make me feel old before my time, wiping away my mid-to-late twenties in a whirl of invasive treatments and failures and leaving me at 30 labeled with premature ovarian failure.  Finally being pregnant, with so many of my friends who are my age or a few years older pregnant at the same time, has made me feel my age and no older for the first time in years.  It's been so nice to feel normal, although of course our donor egg route to get here is not exactly the picture of normalcy (wonderful as it is).  And then my crazy aunt's careless comment made me feel old again--even though I know she's wrong, even though I know she's crazy and not to be listened to.

And then there was the "not strong enough" comment--actually, my muscles are working great (hence, contractions)--like I said, it's just the cervix that's not cooperating!  And I'm still a week before my due date (I was two weeks before when she made the comment), so it's not like it's weird that I hadn't/haven't delivered yet! Her daughter went past her due date with her last baby, and Crazy Aunt didn't act like there was anything wrong with her--nor was there.  Another cousin had preeclampsia; my stepsis had gestational diabetes, low amniotic fluid & high blood pressure and had to be induced early for the health of the baby, who was then in the NICU for several weeks.  Not that these are huge complications, but Crazy Aunt didn't harass them--just me, who has had no real pregnancy complications.  I am in much better overall health than either of those relatives, but because I'm infertile, Crazy Aunt singled me out and assumed there was something wrong with this pregnancy.  My problem was always with getting pregnant, though--it turns out I'm not bad at being pregnant, once we circumvented my crummy eggs.  This is why I didn't want my mom telling the family about any of the hospital runs--because I knew they'd assume that there was yet another thing wrong with this broken infertile girl (alone in a family of hyper-fertiles), and I didn't want anyone thinking bad things about what has truly been an extremely smooth pregnancy.

My mom doesn't understand why I'm so worked up about this, but is it actually strange to be ultra-sensitive about all things pregnancy after everything we've been through to get here?  Or to not want my private information shared with a relative I can't trust? (Crazy Aunt also left a message for my crazy cousin, Maple, the one who used to be like my sister but has barely spoken to me in 5 years, telling her about how she thinks there's something wrong with me--which I really didn't appreciate since Maple and I don't really have a relationship anymore and I don't want her judging me either.)  My mom has long had an over-sharing problem, and I'm upset that it's caused me this stress at the final stage of my pregnancy.  I am just holding onto the fact that things have gone so well so far, and even if my weird relatives don't know it, it is the truth and that's what really matters.  And by Thursday I'll be holding our sweet baby girl, and what they assume or gossip about me won't matter at all--all that will matter is Blossom, and her big brother, and my husband and me: our little family of four.  Oh how I hope everything goes well, that I get to prove my doubting relatives wrong in the next couple of days.

Support System

Two days ago, Spruce and I were rushing to the hospital as I breathed through contractions--18 in two hours before I stopped obsessively tracking them, all about a minute long and 3-5 minutes apart, all painful and most so bad that I couldn't do anything but ride them out until they passed.  We had lined up a babysitter for Bonsai as it was Back-to-School night at his new preschool, something I'd been very much looking forward to.  But given the frequency of the contractions (I'd also had a 2-hour, 18-contraction bout the night before, but those had subsided at the 2-hour mark, while these didn't; the night before that, I had 12 contractions in an hour before they trailed off), my doctor's office recommended that we go into labor & delivery.

After checking in, I was ordered to take a wheelchair upstairs, something I've avoided on previous visits to L&D because it seems overdramatic.  But, given how painful it's become for me to walk, it seemed like a reasonable idea this time.  I was just there on Thursday as I was leaking amniotic fluid--they kept me overnight, pumped me full of antibiotics, and planned to induce me Friday morning to prevent infection to the baby.  Then, when the leaking seemed to have stopped by morning, they monitored me for awhile--and by afternoon I was leaking again, and they were on the brink of inducing once more when they decided that maybe the tear had healed itself (I guess if it's small enough, that's possible?  We picture Baby Blossom simply plugging the leak with her head, restarting it if she manages to move very far to either side), gave me more antibiotics to prevent infection, and sent me home.  We had already sent Bonsai to an extra day of preschool on Friday (luckily, he adores his new school!) so Spruce could stay with me in case I was actually having the baby that day, and a good friend was on her way to pick him up from school when I was discharged.  We still asked her to stay the weekend, just in case something else dramatic happened, which she was kind enough to do.  Of course nothing happened until after she left Sunday night, but I was reluctant to return to the hospital then and held off till Tues., when the contractions were markedly worse.

Despite all of our IF struggles, this pregnancy has been remarkably drama-free (except for that awful first-tri bleeding episode)--at least, up until the past few weeks.  Besides the two hospital visits outlined above, we went in once when my stomach had gone rock-hard for 4 hours straight without relief, then did the same thing for two hours the next day.  The doc was concerned that if my uterus was contracting for that long, baby wouldn't be getting enough bloodflow, so we went in for a non-stress test--and she was fine.  Just over a week ago, I was having contractions frequently enough (more than 5 in an hour at preterm--I'd had 8 the day before and again the next morning, combined with cramping & extreme pelvic pressure) that my doctor's office said I should head in for observation.  After sparring with a skeptical nurse who kept asking, "So, you think you're in labor?" as I explained that no, I'd simply been told that that many preterm contractions weren't normal, she eventually determined that I was 1cm dilated and somewhat effaced (no details on how much), and that I was right to have come in, though labor wasn't imminent.  I guess they get a lot of overanxious pregnant ladies in there, but believe me, I don't head into the hospital just for fun!  But I also won't skip a trip when I'm having weird symptoms that the doc agrees are troubling, because I absolutely will not put this baby at the slightest risk if I can avoid it, even if that means annoying a few crochety nurses.  Poor Bonsai had to tag along on both trips, but he's so chill and enjoyed playing with the remote for the hospital-room TVs and charmed all the nurses, so it wasn't so bad.  Such a good boy!

But it's in regards to Bonsai that I'm really feeling anxious.  Because when I actually do go into labor, I know I will need Spruce's full focus on me, rather than him busily parenting Bonsai while occasionally tending to my needs.  I'm grateful that he's such a wonderful dad and fully capable of taking over with our boy when I can't (i.e., when I'm confined to a hospital bed and hooked to monitors!), but these recent hospital visits have shown me just how much I will need him, and how much he won't be able to help me if he's busy with Bonsai.  Of course I also don't want Bonsai witnessing my labor & delivery--seems too traumatic for a 2-year-old!  And this is where I see how nice it would be to have family nearby to help with him.  It's important to me that Bonsai be home with someone he knows and loves while we are off delivering his baby sister, because I want everything to feel as normal and comfortable for him as possible.  To that end, when my parents offered to come out to help, I asked that they come in advance of my due date, as I was concerned that she might come early (and the plan to induce at 39 or 40 weeks means we have a deadline for her arrival that Blossom won't be going past).  Spruce gets 3 months of paternity leave (!), but can't start that for another week at the soonest--and besides, I'd rather have him home with baby, Bonsai, and me for longer after she arrives.

So I asked my dad to come from when I'd be 36 weeks (yesterday) and stay 2.5 weeks, with my mom & stepdad coming out the day he leaves and staying two weeks (leaving about 5 days past my due date, so even if we don't induce till that day, and I end up needing a C-section--unlikely in my opinion given how low baby girl dropped about 2 weeks ago!--Spruce, Blossom, and I should all be home by the time they leave).  Instead, my dad called a couple weeks ago to tell me that he'll be dogsitting for some friends of a friend up until this coming Monday, and thus will be arriving a week later than I'd asked him to.  For some reason, I really felt I needed to be covered from 36 weeks on, and had explained to him that that would make me feel most comfortable, and he'd agreed.  But then that wasn't what he did.  Instead he chose strangers over being there for me the one time I've really needed him, the one time I've really asked him for help (my parents divorced when I was 3, and although my dad was always involved, I was definitely raised by my mom, not him).  I didn't call him on it because I knew he wouldn't break the commitment he'd already made to these strangers (though he had broken a commitment to me, but I'm sure he somehow thought the plans were more tentative than that), but would feel guilty about it, and then would be all hangdog and pathetic when he comes out here, which I didn't want to deal with.  My dad has a lot of regrets in his life and he hangs onto them all, and brings them up frequently to me, forcing me to cheer him up/assure him that I wasn't scarred by all the things he missed when I was a kid. I don't have the energy right now to deal with that neediness, so I decided it was better to just let him do what he wanted and hope Blossom stayed put till 37 weeks.

After the rush to the hospital on Tuesday ended with me being given an injection and take-home meds to stop contractions so baby girl can bake at least a week longer (come on, 37 weeks!), I felt like I'd been right to think she might arrive before full-term.  And if she does, since my dad flaked out, I don't know what we'll do for Bonsai.  The friend who was here last weekend has agreed to come stay with us again this weekend just in case.  A mom friend who lives nearby has offered to be on call during the day if I need a ride to the hospital and someone to watch Bonsai, but we don't have an overnight plan for him on weeknights until my dad arrives on Tuesday.

Because we called Spruce's brother, Crabapple, the only family we have in LA, and asked him to help out with that.  And he's basically refused.  Like, when we were on the way to the hospital a couple of days ago and we asked him to come stay with his nephew while we possibly delivered his niece, he texted "I'm working kinda late, won't be home till 7. You could drop him off at my place and maybe my girlfriend could watch him."  Um, no!  First, working till 7 is not impressively late (that's an early night for Spruce)!  We already had the sitter till 8, so he could have come over after and taken over with Bonsai (who would've already been in bed by then), no problem.  Second, his apartment is an hour from our house, and taking Bonsai there would defeat the whole having him in his own environment idea--and I didn't really want Spruce making a two-hour round-trip drive (actually longer, since the dropoff would have had to happen during LA rush hour traffic) when I was possibly in labor.  And, I'm not so convinced of Crab's girlfriend's reliability--she's very young (8 years Crab's junior--she's 20 and he's 28), none too bright, and has never interacted much with Bonsai--and she might be able to watch our son?! Yeah, that's not really good enough.  Clearly, Crab is not particularly interested in helping us out.  He works in Spruce's old department (Spruce, of course, got him the job), and everyone there still loves Spruce, and if Crab said he needed to leave early to help out while Spruce & I have a baby, I know his boss would be happy to let him.  But he doesn't want to.

It's frustrating, when he moved out here to be closer to Spruce, lived with us rent-free for a year (half of that time he was supposed to be paying a small amount but refused--and that was 2 years ago and he still refuses to pay us back) while he got on his feet, got a job with our help, and talks so much about how it was just our "family duty" to help him out and yet that same sense of duty doesn't apply at all when we're the ones who need something.  It's disgusting.  Now, Crab has never been particularly nice or reliable (see here and here for more on that), but I thought he'd gotten better lately.  I thought he was finally starting to grow up, and I thought that for something this monumental at least, we could expect him to help out.  But no.  That's too much to ask.  Instead, if Blossom comes tonight, or on Sun. or Mon. night (luckily, not too many more days to worry about that aren't covered by my friend on the weekend or my dad next week), I guess we'll be calling my good friend back and asking HER to drive across town to stay with our son, leaving her with a long morning commute to work (but at least Bonsai can always go to school for an extra day if needed).  Which she's totally willing to do, and we've been friends for 16 years now so she's like family--but she's the one we can depend on, not our ACTUAL FAMILY.  Which pisses me off.

I have a huge and close-knit extended family back in the Midwest, but here in California, we're largely on our own.  Oh, we have lots of good friends who are happy to help, but in such a sprawling city, and given that many of them now have kids of their own, it's not so easy to coordinate with something as unpredictable as labor.  I didn't realize how on our own Spruce and I are until we needed this very specific thing--someone to stay with our toddler while we have our second child.  It's making me feel unmoored, and while I would never move back to the Midwest, I can see more than ever the appeal of having all that family nearby, eager to lend a hand.

For now, I'm just trying to temper my anxiety about plans for Bonsai and hope Blossom holds on until my dad arrives.  I don't know how I'll ever forgive him if she shows up in the window when he should have been here (yesterday thru Tuesday), but isn't.  I don't see how I'll ever forgive Crab for bailing on us the one time we've really needed him, after everything we've done to make the life he has now possible.  I am grateful for the friends who have helped in a pinch, thankful for my mom & stepdad who are coming exactly when I asked them to (& yes, thankful that my dad can come at all, though I wish he'd handled things differently), and so very happy to have Spruce at my side, ready to leave work early or take a personal day or cancel a speaking engagement (all of which he's had to do in the past week) to be here for Bonsai and me.  And of course I feel blessed to have to worry about childcare for my 2-year-old while preparing to give birth for the first time, instead of still simply hoping to become a mom now, at our 5-year mark of coping with infertility.  But I don't want to have to be this stressed about childcare when I'm also freaking out about this whole childbirth thing!  I wish I could actually depend on our families, who I feel more comfortable leaning on than I do with our friends.  I guess this just proves once again that family is not all about blood--really, the friend who's helping with Bonsai on weekends right now is more a sister to me than Crab is a brother to Spruce.  We have created a great support system for ourselves throughout the past 8 years in LA.  I just need to be willing to tap into that when we need them, instead of expecting our actual relatives to be the ones we can depend on the most, disappointing as that is.

Oh, Facebook

There's not a lot to say about the latest silly Face.book "breast cancer awareness" meme that hasn't already been said (here's one of my favorites; go here for a list of many more). I'd seen a few random high school friends participate, but I just ignored it. But when my 18-year-old cousin joined in, I decided it was time to speak up.

So I posted this:
I'm 35 weeks & craving sleep. After 4.5 years of infertility, that's true. You know what's not true? That posting fake pregnancy announcements raises breast cancer awareness. In fact, many cancer survivors, male & female, are left infertile by the treatments that saved their lives. Silly status updates don't help them. To actually help, donate to www.fertilehope.org to help cancer survivors build their families.

I hope it helps to open a few eyes amongst my friends and family. I'm hopeful that the reaction will be mostly positive. The cousin who posted is the daughter of a breast cancer survivor. I'm sure she posted in support of her mom--but thinking this sort of thing is actually supportive to anyone is just not right. And yeah, she already got a comment from her boyfriend's brother asking if she was really pregnant. So in addition to hurting those who are infertile, due to cancer or other randomness of fate (like me), and embarrassing those who are duped by these announcements, they are also causing senseless and potentially harmful teenage drama. For NO REASON. There are plenty of funny-yet-relevant things to be posted in support of breast cancer awareness--Save the Tatas, anyone? But this meme is not funny. At best, it's stupid. At worst, it's cruel to some of the very people it's supposedly trying to help. No upside, there.

UPDATE: I've already gotten 13 likes on my status from a wide range of friends, and 5 very supportive comments--4 from infertile friends, one of whom is facing infertility in the wake of her husband's cancer treatment (hi, friend!) & whose mother is a breast cancer survivor, and one from my aunt, who had 4 children with zero trouble but who has been very supportive since I started confiding in her about some of our struggles.  Yay, people who get it!

Birthfather

Becky, a fellow open adoption blogger, asked a great question about a rather glaring omission from our open adoption story--what about Bonsai's birthfather? This is something of a glaring omission in our lives, as well. Although we share a close and loving relationship with Bonsai's birthmother and her family, we have never met his birthfather. When the open adoption counselor met with him to get his waiver of rights, back when Bonsai was a month old, he said he would be happy to meet us. The counselor wanted to schedule this meeting for us, but although we kept following up with her--we were eager to meet him and learn more about him too!--it never happened.

At one point, his response was that he was going out of town for the weekend, and then would be starting college so he'd be too busy. Except his school is 25 minutes from our house, so it's not like we couldn't have gone over there! I imagine it was overwhelming for him, learning that his ex-girlfriend was pregnant just two weeks before the baby arrived. They did not have a good breakup (& I don't think they were together for very long to begin with), so they hadn't been in touch since. He was very supportive of the adoption, but perhaps meeting us and Bonsai would have made it all too real. He also told the counselor he would fill out the medical history form, but despite frequent followups from us on that count too, it never materialized. This is problematic, of course, since it would be useful to have medical information from both sides of Bonsai's biological family.

The good news is that we do have some contact info for his birthfather, so if we need to reach him for medical or other reasons, we can. Juniper's family really dislikes him, and our visits have always been all together (rather than one-on-one with her), so we haven't been able to get much information on him, though I'm sure she would tell us more if we asked. We just haven't wanted to make it awkward, but I know that as Bonsai gets older, he will want more information and probably contact with his birthfather, and we are committed to providing that for him. The adoption counselor said he was a nice boy, but a 17-year-old boy--I can understand it all being a bit much for him at that age. I hope as he gets older, he'll want contact as much as we do. I've seen photos of him on his FB page, and I know from his page that he likes basketball. I know he went to an all-boys school that did a lot of events with Juniper's all-girl's school, which is how they met. When he transferred to a public school, they broke up. He is African-American and the counselor says he's kind of short. And that's about all we know. I do tend to forget about him in a way because while Juniper and her family are such a big part of our lives, he just--isn't. His choice for now, but again, I hope for Bonsai's sake that that will change with time.