Still hoping to be a mommy

Since I last wrote - I got my second hepatitis B shot and we had our 3 month LID anniversary. That’s about it - I’ve been trying to keep busy and get my mind off the wait.

I was reading today on the women’s bioethics blog about a study published in the American Sociological Review says that “couples who adopt spend more money on their children and invest more time on such activities as reading to them, eating together and talking with them about their problems.” The research was part of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and can be found here: http://www.asanet.org/galleries/default-file/Feb07ASRAdoption.pdf

We got a catalog in the mail recently from National Wildlife and it had lots of cute ladybug items in it. A bracelet with matching earrings and necklace, shirts and lots of other things. If I had lots of spare money, I’d buy a few of those things - but I don’t right now.

I started my hepatitis A and B shots today!  I guess that makes the whole thing feel a little bit more real.

I know  I still have a lot of time before I really needed to get started with them, but I didn’t see the point in putting it off.  Even outside of traveling to China eventually, they are both a good idea to get.

I got one in each arm, and they are both a little sore, but not too bad.  I have to go back in a month to get another B shot.

Many people who adopt internationally try to learn a little of the language of the country their child was born in. Many people also try to make sure their kids learn at least a little bit of that language too. Now there is another reason to do that. Some research recently by researchers at Toronto’s York University shows that people who are “fully bilingual and speak both languages every day for most of their lives” can delay the onset of dementia by a few years.

Learning a new language, especially as an adult isn’t easy - I know, I’ve been working on it for a long time and haven’t made much progress.

It’s so much easier to learn as kids, so I hope to teach mine (if this adoption ever goes through!) as much as I can.

The research doesn’t say that it will prevent people from getting dementia like Alzheimer’s disease, just that it can delay it. They aren’t really sure of why. Even if it turns out to not be true - knowing another language can be really helpful for anyone!

And with this really long wait time, learning Mandarin is just one good way to keep myself busy!

I read a news story recently in Reuter’s about how folic acid supplements in early pregnancy can reduce the risk of cleft lip in babies by up to 40 percent.  Cleft lip and palate problems are more common in Asian people anyway.  I also read once that environmental pollutants can also increase the risk, I don’t remember where I read it though, so I could be mistaken.

I wonder how many women in China, especially rural women, have access to  folic acid supplements while they are pregnant?  Folic acid is also high in green leafy vegetables and some other foods, so maybe many Chinese women get enough anyway.   I wonder though if folic acid defiencies are  in part responsible for the large number of cleft babies in China.   On the other hand, with China’s large population I don’t really  know if  the  percent of cleft babies is really that much higher than other places, especially if the asian tendency for it is taken  into account.

The reuter’s article is here - (They don’t keep all pages on their site though, so that link won’t work forever) .

So far I’m not doing a good job of writing in here am I?

I hardly know what to write at this point though - we have such a long wait ahead! We haven’t even had a LID for a full month yet!

I try not to think about it too much, I’m too afraid it will never happen and I will never be a parent.

But other times I can’t help but think about it and imagine what it will be like to be a mommy.

And its not as if I don’t have plenty to do to keep me busy, but sometimes it is still hard to be motivated when there are so many unknowns in this process. I think if I knew for certain that the wait would be x number of months I could plan better.

Anyone else out there waiting too? How are you getting through it?

We don’t have any other kids to  show pictures of here, so I’ll show the closest things I have:

Our cat:

Baby birds that had a nest in our yard:

A baby butterfly in my butterfly garden:

A baby preying mantis that had just hatched out near our house:

A baby orangutan  from the zoo:

A baby giraffe at the zoo that had just been born the day before:

And a preying mantis laying eggs on our house: 

That’s the best I can do!

I have so many ideas of things to write about here, but I can’t seem to get started!

One place to start would be where we are in the process - we finished up our paperwork this fall and were DTC on 11/16/06. It took us a long time to get our LID - we just got it this week! It is 12/19/06.

I don’t know what to say about the wait times now. I keep believing, because I want to, that it will shorten, I don’t think I can wait 2 years!