What we were doing the day Charlie was born

Since I have no adoption news to report (see yesterday's post, cut and paste to today), I thought I would go backwards and post some things that I would have posted earlier had I started a blog sooner.

This is a photo of what we were up to the day Charlie was born. To be specific, Charlie would have been not quite 24 hours old at the moment this photo was taken. He was born just outside of Seoul on 12-24-09 at around 11 am local time. This photo was taken in Murfreesboro TN on 12-24-09 sometime in the evening. At the moment this photo was taken, we had not yet made our "final" decision to actively pursue adoption. That decision would come just a few days later, however, the same day Charlie was going to live with his foster family, with whom he still lives.

Every adoptive family has a story, or several stories, that the family sees as "signs" their adopted child was meant to be theirs. I never felt that I needed any sort of "sign" to know our child was meant to be ours. Honestly, I just trusted that whichever child we were matched with was meant to be ours, sign or not. And I still feel like calling the timing of Charlie's birth a "sign" is a bit exaggerated, or just a little cheesy, but let's just say that I love the fact that our story of Charlie starts with a day the events of which I can easily recall in great detail and with our decision to adopt just as he was being put up for adoption by his birth mother.

Ain't got nuttin'

Nope, no news this week at all. A lot of adoption people thought that this week, the week after a Korean holiday for which apparently everything in Korea was closed for the whole week, would be full of action. Not so, at least not for us and not so far. We are waiting on EP (emigration permit) approval. Judging by others' recent timelines, we should be getting EP approval any time. Of course, delays are common in this process, so we'll see...

Finally, a boy!

My husband loves food. He loves to cook, and is a very good cook. He loves Korean food, Japanese food, Mediterranean food, Italian food, and (I'll stop here, because I really can't think of any food he doesn't like) Indian food. One of his/our favorite Indian restaurants here in town is a place we used to frequent a lot. Fairly recently, however, Sheref stopped going there. Food poisoning? Bad service? High prices? No. Actually the reason he stopped going there is the sexist owner. Sometimes we went there together, all five of us, but mostly Sheref went alone. Apparently every time he was alone, this owner would ask him when he was going to try for a boy. The last straw was when the guy told Sheref something to the effect of "girls, they're ok, but really they're no good. You need a boy." So Sheref, who never ever gets mad, got mad and decided we were boycotting the place. Consequently, I am really craving vegetable korma or chicken tiki masala, but I suppose ethical standards need to be defended.

I bring this up, because one thing that somewhat bothers me is the suspicion that people will think we chose adoption in order to specify gender of our child. Which we did not. When we decided to adopt, we did discuss gender. I honestly did not care at all if we were matched with a boy or a girl, but I did offer to Sheref that we could request a boy if he wanted. It didn't take us very long (like 2 minutes) to conclude that choosing gender just felt wrong. I could spend a lot of time describing why parents choosing gender, whether in biological or adopted children, just rubs me the wrong way, but I won't. It's just my opinion anyways. I know a lot of really nice families who have specified the gender of their adopted child.

However, I will write that prospective adoptive parents' preference for girls is part of the reason why currently there is an excess of boys in Korea (and I think other countries as well, but I can't vouch for it) awaiting adoption. At least in Asian countries, American parents' preference for girls has been well documented. Last week 4 new babies were listed on our agency's photolisting for waiting children (kids with some sort of medical need or high risk issue, ranging from super minor things that are essentially non-issues to really major life-long or life-threatening medical needs). Three are boys and one is a girl. All have reasonably similar type issues, as far as severity goes (none of the kids has really severe needs -- all of the children have the potential to develop 100% "normally"). So far the girl is no longer up for adoption (i.e. enough people are interested, so her file is closed for now), while none of the boys have interested families. This is one small example of what has been widely documented and confirmed: Americans seeking to adopt in Asian countries have a preference for girls. This phenomenon is further reflected in the fact that our agency just issued a "statement" of sorts that there are an excess of little boys needing families and consequently the wait for boys is shockingly short right now. The wait for a girl, on the other hand, is still very long.

Adoption musings

I was on call again last night, and we (the residents and I) delivered 7 babies. Our institution serves an extremely high risk population, so the fact that every single one of those babies was term and healthy is unusual. Since my profession involves literally delivering infants out of their mothers' bodies, I have a daily connection to biological childbearing. I have also personally given birth to 3 children, so biological childbearing is my point of reference.

In a way, I feel like my job as an obstetrician, despite the fact that it is all about biology and genetics, puts me closer to Charlie. It puts me closer to his birth mother. I understand a little better, a little more intimately, the physical connection that Charlie's birth mom had with him. Although I don't know every detail, I understand her pregnancy, her delivery, what her physical connection to Charlie was like. I love that we've been provided some of the details of Charlie's delivery, because it allows me to better understand Charlie's birth mom and Charlie's arrival into this world. In other words, it allows me to understand Charlie's life story in a more vivid, real way.

I've been trying to anticipate questions that we'll have to field incessantly once Charlie comes home. One of those questions that I imagine having to answer is something to the effect of "Is it different having an adopted child versus biological children?" or "Do you feel differently about Charlie compared to your bio kids?" My answer, I'm sure, is going to be that yes, of course it is different. Different is not bad. I feel differently about each of my children, especially about Ella compared to Rose and Lucy (who are twins). They came about, and arrived in the world, in different ways, with different physical and emotional experiences and very different anxieties. So of course I love them differently. Not more or less, just different.

And the final member of our family...

Ok, Ella is watching me post, and she feels that Willie is being unfairly excluded. So...introducing Willie, our really, really tiny dog. Like the smallest dog you have ever seen. Who doesn't know he is tiny. Despite his really annoying habit of barking like a maniac at every single dog he sees (including those dogs who outweigh him by 100+ lbs), he is a very sweet, very funny little pooch.

Ella Nurshen's First Day of 4th Grade

So I'm a little late on this post (fine, a whole month late). Ella started 4th grade. Hard to believe that my baby is in 4th grade! She is doing great, loves her teachers and her classmates, and is turning into such a big girl. Love this awesome kid!!

Will the real Jin-yeong please stand up?

Sheref occasionally makes fun of me for believing that the moon landing was filmed on a sound stage in L.A. Ok, I don't really believe this, of course. I merely admit to the possibility that the whole space thing is a ruse. And I only said one time, years ago, that I don't entirely rule out this possibility (I was kidding, for the most part:)...

The reason I bring this up is that I sort of have a similar theory, which I don't truly believe, about Holt-provided photographs. Holt is our adoption agency, a wonderful, very established, very respected agency. Which is why I don't really believe that the children in the above photographs are 2 separate little boys. I don't really believe this, of course, though when we received the second photograph, the thought may have crossed my mind...You see, for the first 2 months we knew about Charlie, we had 2 newborn pictures and 3 of the top picture (3 pictures, each from a different angle, but obviously taken that same day). I formed this image of him in my head, what he looks like, what his smile is like, the shape of his face, the gentle angle of his nose, the soft curve of his mouth. The second picture, while also super cute, just looked very different to me than the image I had in my head of what I thought Charlie is like based on the earlier photographs. I was so excited to get the second photograph, and of course I never had any negative thoughts about him looking different than I had imagined. It's just that when your child lives on the other side of the world and you have never met him, you are bonding with an image made by your imagination, based on a few photographs and a couple of pages of medical and social work reports.

Another mom-to-be, who is adopting from Holt, said jokingly that she occasionally wonders if the little girl whose photo hangs on their refrigerator (her new daughter, still in Korea) and whom they talk about on a daily basis, really exists. She was just kidding, but I know what she means.

I also have enough foresight to know that when we do meet Charlie, I'll be able to see both of the above pictures in his face. I'll look into his sweet face and his bright eyes and I'll be able to see both the soft, sweet little baby on the top and the smart, curious little guy on the bottom.

I have been uploading all our family photographs onto my new laptop, so I have been looking at all the hundreds of photographs I haven't seen in a while. Up until fairly recently, I could not tell Rose and Lucy apart in baby photographs. I have never had any difficulty telling them apart in real life, but until they were around 18-24 months, I could not reliably look at photographs of them and tell who was who. Now that I have known them for nearly 5 years, and know their voices, their faces, the ever so slightly different angle of their jawlines, the minute differences in their smiles, the way their teeth come together just a tiny bit differently, the very slightly different way their hair falls, so well that I don't even think about it, I find I can easily distinguish between the 2 in older photographs.

I know that when I meet Charlie and know him in 3 dimensions, in colorful reality, his face, his laugh, his mannerisms, I will look back and wonder how it is that I ever thought the 2 photographs above don't look the same. I can't wait!

Post-call musings of a tired Mama

So I have just finished a 24 hour on-call shift. I am very used to being on call, very used to working 24-36 hours straight with no sleep. I love my job, am immensely satisfied with my job, and have no desire to ever do anything else as my chosen profession. And if you call me at 2am because you are bleeding, or your baby is not moving or you are having severe pain, fevers, whatever, I will bend over backwards to make sure you get the most compassionate, most up-to-date, most excellent medical care I can provide. However, if you consider calling me at 2am for the any of the following reasons, please think twice about the best use of your time, and mine:

1) to ask if you are too far along to have an abortion (for any concerned readers, if there even are any readers, I don't do abortions...fyi)

2) to ask if you can ride roller coasters while you're pregnant

3) to tell me you think you have a yeast infection and could I please call something into your pharmacy for your life-threatening emergency yeast infection

4) to ask why my office called you 4 days ago and left a message that you didn't bother to return

5) to ask what causes headaches (yes, seriously, this has happened before -- the caller didn't have a headache; she was just wondering what causes them)

6) to ask if I can refill your birth control pills

7) to ask how you got chlamydia

There are so many more examples that make me laugh just thinking about, but I need to sleep.

Superheros and Girls' Night

Superhero day was a huge hit. Lucy loved wearing her Wonderwoman shirt, and Rose was equally as happy wearing a regular dress. Superhero day then morphed into "Girls' Night," which is what we call any evening where Sheref goes out and we girls stay home together and do "fun stuff." Sheref is at a Black Crowes' concert tonight with a friend. So for us girls, tonight "fun stuff" consisted of going shopping for a birthday present for Rose and Lucy's friend, who is having her 5th birthday party tomorrow, then boring shopping with mom for a purse ($18 on sale black leather Nine West hobo-type bag -- love it!), and finally to the cupcake store for a treat. Unfortunately, my children's eyes are bigger than their stomachs, so I ended up eating about half of each cupcake. I had to, right? Couldn't waste good cake and icing. Oh well.

Right now girls' night is culminating in dress up (I gave them each a old knit type top of mine to wear, so each girl has a "dress" just barely covering her bottom...Ella told me "Mom, we're teenagers, going on a date." Uh, say what??), combined with our family's (approximately) 98th viewing of Sleeping Beauty. Oh, and some Pinot Grigio for mama...

Tomorrow is Superhero Day at **A

**A is **Academy. Yes, my twins go to an academy. Well, ok, fine. It is glorified day care. With an organic garden, playground equipment special-ordered from Scandinavia, and Spanish class for all children over the age of 2. Which is wonderful, actually. We love the "academy," and our kids do too. The word "academy" just makes me feel like I'm trying too hard to be cool...

Anyways, tomorrow is Superhero Day. All the Stingrays (Rose and Lucy's class) have made capes over the past week, and tomorrow they are going to wear the capes. They can also come to school dressed as superheros, a theme that is straight up Lulu's alley. A few months ago, she whispered in my ear, "Mama, I think I'm just like Spiderman, don't you?" So this past weekend we went out and bought Lucy a Wonderwoman shirt for tomorrow. We offered Spiderman, but apparently her tastes have evolved.

Rose on the other hand, adamantly does NOT want to dress up. She has made this point abundantly clear. In fact, I suspect she has made this point abundantly clear to her teachers as well, because our weekly email "Stingray Scoop" included the specific statement that certain children have expressed that they do not want to dress up, and we as parents should know that is perfectly acceptable. Whew.

So tomorrow we have a Wonderwoman, and a regular every day Wondertwin. Wondertwin powers, activate!

Pictures to follow...

Final newborn picture of Jin-yeong, and some obstetric philosophizing

This is the second and last newborn picture we have of Jin-yeong. I love it that I know exactly what we were doing when this photo was taken. We were at Shannon (my sister's) house for Christmas. We were at that time making our decision to actively pursue adoption, though we had not yet settled on South Korea. How fitting that Charlie entered the world at exactly this same time.

The other thing this picture makes me think about is his delivery. As an obstetrician, I am particularly interested in the details of his delivery. From his records, we know that the delivery was vaginal and was at 41 weeks gestation. We also know that he weighed 3280 grams (7.2lbs). So he was the only one of my children who was term and a normal birth weight!! Was she induced? American obstetricians often recommend inducing labor at 41 weeks because the risk of stillbirth rises quite a bit between 41 and 42 weeks. From what I am gathering about Korean doctors, they seem even more interventional than American MDs, so my guess is that they do routinely induce at 41 weeks, although I have no proof or concrete knowledge of that. Did she have an epidural? The marks on Charlie's face in the picture (see them on either side of his cheekbones?) suggest to me that he was delivered via forceps, though this is not noted in his records. There is a space for "vacuum/forceps" in his records, and that space is left blank. If the delivery was via forceps, why? Did his heart rate dip at the end? Maybe she pushed for a long time with no success. As an obstetrician, it makes me happy for her that she had a vaginal delivery and not a Cesarean. I think this for 2 reasons. One (and primarily) is that it bodes well for the rest of her obstetric health. The first delivery going "well" (meaning a normal vaginal delivery -- even with forceps) paves the way for normal, even faster and "easier" vaginal deliveries in the future, thus avoiding the risks with Cesarean. Second, she has no physical scars from her experience. I can imagine that perhaps having a physical scar is a welcome reminder that she really did carry and give birth to a baby boy, sort of a physical validation of her emotional scar. But something tells me that not having that physical scar is better...

My fascination with his delivery is, of course, not just professional obstetric interest. His delivery was close to (or perhaps it actually was) his birth mom's last encounter with Jin-yeong. She had carried him for 9 months, made the decision to have him be adopted during her pregnancy (we know this from Charlie's records), and of course delivered him. As wonderful as we think adoption can be, I don't at all underestimate the connection that comes from having carried a child, and I don't just mean that from her perspective. There is no way that a baby doesn't bond with his mother during that time. There is just no way that he doesn't somehow, subconsciously, know that she is gone, even when he goes to a foster family at just 3 days old. She is a huge part of him, and therefore, of our lives. We thank her and wish her a bright and fulfilling life. We may even meet her someday.

Red Casserole

When I was around 5 years old, my mother, normally a wonderful cook, made something that would forever be remembered as "red casserole." In my five-year-old memory, it was a mushy casserole in a clear glass dish, with hues of red, purple, brown and green. My adult self thinks it must have been eggplant, along with other unmentionable ingredients. I recall it being the most horrible, awful, inedible thing I had ever been told to eat. I can remember gagging trying to eat it. Now, can it really have been that awful? Seriously? Probably not, although both my siblings felt the same as I did. I recall my Dad didn't care for it either. My mom swears we only had it that one time, but I'm fairly sure red casserole will forever remain in my memory as the most disgusting dish ever.

Which brings us forward thirty...um, twenty-some...uh, whatever...a few years to tonight. Tonight was my girls' "red casserole" moment. Sheref made a stew that to adult tastes was actually really good. Not so to the ten-and-under set. Rose said it made her head hurt and it tasted like dog poop. Ella cried 3 times. Both Rose and Ella spent an entire hour at the dinner table, most of it whining and writhing in agony about the horrible, disgusting, awful mass of food in front of them. Only Lucy, though still not enjoying her dinner and asking about 10 times if she could be done, finished her dinner with a minimum of pain inflicted on me.

So yes, tonight was a monumental event in Unal history. In years to come, Lucy, Rose and Ella will tell Charlie how lucky he is that he never had to experience "the stew."

New Picture!!

So we actually got this updated picture about 2 weeks ago, but it has taken me that long to figure out how to convert it to a jpeg to upload, and also how to blur his foster mom's face. Well, okay, I didn't figure it out. Let me rephrase: it took me that long to find someone else to do it for me! Thanks Rachel:)

The stuff in front of him is the care package we sent. Looks like he already likes the froggie lovey.

Charlie has changed so much! He looks so different to me than the referral pictures we have of him. In those pictures, he looks like a sweet little baby, soft and sweet. In this picture he also looks sweet, but he looks so grown up! He looks like a happy and fun kid. We are so excited to meet him...