I thought it was quiet...

but it's not that quiet. I am still very confused by Google Analytics, which I moved to after I found I couldn't use statcounter any more (and I can't remember why that was). But Google Analytics says I had no visitors in July at all. Which, er, isn't true.

Anyone got any better hints and tips? It's not that it's broken entirely as it says my other blog had a couple of July visitors.

What I Did On My Holidays

An installment here.

Professionals

This is from the Open Adoption Roundtable #18.

We are obviously not in an open adoption yet but have had interactions with lots of social workers - all of whom are in principle very keen on openness. But fully open adoptions with birth/adoptive parent directed meetings between both sets of parents and children are rare in the UK. Because most adoptions are from foster care the most common forms of openness are either letter contact, supervised and often quite tense birth parent visits, or self-arranged and relaxed visits with siblings or extended family members.

I get the impression the social workers are a little surprised we are so on board about openness - in fact I think they have been, probably quite wisely, preparing us for less openness than we'd be comfortable with. Practically speaking, we're never going to have a weekly visit, drop-in-when-you-want, first day of school and every birthday type of relationship. But we'd be happy (other things being equal) with regular visits with us and birth parent(s) without any agency/social worker involvement.

Our social worker is, I think, assuming that we'd actually have more contact with extended family (e.g.organised maternal grandparents who might have been a possible choice for raising a child, where one issue with a birth parent might be a lack of a permanent home). Oddly, though I imagine this might be a possibility, I can also envisage an opposite scenario, for example a birth parent who has not told their own parents that they have a child, so that we might meet them without being allowed to meet grandparents. This would be hugely unusual in the UK - and I think more UK adopters would have direct contact with extended family - so it's going to take some explaining to our UK social workers if we end up in that type of situation.

OK, now I have your open adoption attention - I need a quick bit of advice. We're just working on our profile, and I have put:

"We think it is very important for our child to know their biological family.

Because Dr Spouse’s mom’s family are from the US, she visited her grandparents there every summer when she was a child. We hope we will be able to take our child back to the US often to get to know their biological family."

Sooo.... I asked around and was told (not by a professional) that perhaps we should hold off on mentioning our hopes for openness, in the profile, in case it was read by expectant parents who were less interested in openness than us.

Now, if we had a link with expectant parents who wanted ongoing letter contact and were open to talking about in-person contact - then I think we'd be OK with that. Because from other people, I know that even if we set up to have ongoing in-person contact we might end up back in a letter contact, discussing in-person contact, situation anyway if circumstances changed.

So, what are people's opinions? Better not to mention our hopes in our profile, and speak about them in person? Or mention the most we'd be able to cope with (we think) and risk putting someone off who would rather have less?

HELLO

Sorry for the silence, but I'm not getting many real comments anyway so I'm not sure if people are just reading and going "meh" or not reading.

I'm in the middle of my media placement and it is such fun but very time-consuming - more because I've got a few urgent day job things to keep on top of in the evenings than because it's really such hard work. I can't really do anything toooo hard for the radio people in case I mess it up! And we are in London, having a nice break from real life, and I've just been to a conference (with digital recorder and fancy mike in tow, and having done a few fancy interviews, well, I thought they were fancy).

Now many of my regular readers know of the good ways to make your period start. I know I shouldn't be complaining having had two ridiculously short cycles, but at the weekend it was over 5 weeks and it was getting a bit ridiculous. We had (mainly) been careful and I was (fairly) sure I had ovulated late but I was trying the usual things. Wearing white knickers, going on a really long journey, and I even thought I was in the final approach when I had a migraine (looking back, it's been about 1 every 3 cycles on the final day or so). But no. It was getting so long that even Mr Spouse was getting anxious.

For the first time ever it was him who suggested getting a test and me who didn't want to. But of course it worked perfectly. Test on Sat afternoon and period started before I went to bed that night.

And, you know, I'm so busy with work, adoption paperwork, doing our profile, that to be frank, I really, really didn't feel disappointed.

Sometimes I amaze myself.

Just lovely

We've had a week away in a part of Greece that I knew absolutely nothing about until Mr Spouse told me - his cousin lives there. It was too short but I know we'll be back.

I was an au pair about 20 years ago in Rhodes and although it is lovely there, it is a lot hotter than here and - even though I was with the family and not doing many touristy things - it was really touristy even then, lots of "resorts", and I'm sure it's a lot busier now. This week we've been on Thassos (no, I'd not heard of it either) and over to Kavala, on the mainland, which is where the cousin lives with his wife and (when he's not at university in the UK) their son.

Thassos is a charter destination and we decided it would be a lot easier to do it as a package - Mr Spouse came independently previously - but we've got the typical 7 nights hotel, bed and breakfast and foraging for gorgeous food in the evenings. It's the kind of destination which attracts couples like us (over 25 and no kids) though most of the tourists aren't British - there are quite a few Germans, who tend to drive here, and a lot of Romanians and Bulgarians - it's just over the border from Bulgaria and a couple of hundred km from Istanbul.

It's also really popular with Greek families (it's a lot cooler than most other places and has nice sandy beaches) so seems to be a lay-on-the-beach holiday for most. That's not really our thing and the island is 100km round and the highest point is as high as Snowdon, so you won't really be surprised we headed up into the hills a couple of times for short walks. There is a mad lady who goes round and spray paints route marks onto rocks and trees and has written a little book. We didn't make it all the way up to the top... though we had planned to go on a jeep tour, it absolutely poured with rain the night before so the tour was cancelled. Several of the tours available were cheesy beyond words but it is the kind of place that you can drift from cafe to cafe (I'm very fond of Greek coffee), sample the pastries, read by the pool, and generally chill out.

Probably because of my exposure to home-cooked Greek food, I adore it, and we don't get very much of it in the North of England (some Turkish, and the same in London, where there is some Greek food, but it's not quite the same, plus I know the Greek words for it rather than the Turkish). I had some peaches the other day that were, seriously, the most peachy peaches I have EVER tasted in my life - including peaches in SoCal and in the south of France and in Spain.

The city where Cousin Spouse lives is apparently the largest seaside city in Greece - as I say, completely off my radar and indeed everyone I have spoken to about the trip. It is ripe for the city-break picking, I'd say. Unfortunately the only direct UK (and other N. European country) flights are weekly charters - not ideal for weekends - but you can go via Athens or I think some other choices. Easyjet are missing a trick. You've got gorgeous ocean views, steep rambling historic streets (though some of the historic buildings are a little hidden), harbourside restaurants, a bit of light shopping (there's Max Mara, Zara, and a street market that Primark-lovers would drool over, which also has olives, herbs, flowers, and a load of gorgeous fruit and veg you couldn't really get in the suitcase); Thassos itself is famous for olives and honey.

It's not what you'd call unspoilt as it is a big city with its own life and sadly - state of the economy and that - lots of empty shops - but we haven't seen or done everything by any means. We didn't venture inland but hiring a car and pootling round a huge set of ancient sights should be on the agenda at some point (heard of Philipi? did you know Drama was a place?). It's very historic in itself - a Byzantine aqueduct, as well as Roman/Ottoman/I can't remember ruins - it has a couple of small museums but typically they were "under renovation" - but the new museum on Thassos was pretty fabulous, so we didn't feel hard done by to miss that.

Cousin Spouse and his wife are lovely - he is very good value, full of stories, she is quite quiet and I felt a bit bad that she was always getting things for us, though I do know this is fairly typically Greek and even when I was "staff" people would get things for me, "people" especially meaning "women". We took a couple of group photos to prove for the adoption profile that Mr Spouse does have some family and I can't help feeling a little relieved that Mr Spouse looks younger than Cousin Spouse, even though he's 5 years older. We've been working on our profile and browsing other people's profiles and thinking we might play down a little the "we-are-always-travelling" angle as it can come across that couples don't have time to have kids - but it should be nice to show that the cousins live in a gorgeous Mediterranean city.

Anyway last night tonight and we're going back to the best restaurant of the week (there's always one we say 'got to go back there') for the mixed meze.

Just a quickie

Still on holiday - we're trying to get free tickets for a Prom that go on "sale" today and I'm currently number 400-and-something in a queue - hope you all like the new look.

Greek food/mountains/sea/weather all very acceptable (though Greek weather isn't all sun and clear skies - who'd have thought it - certainly not me as I spent a summer as a mistreated au pair in Southern Greece and I'm currently in Northern Greece). In London next week, then away for a week, then back in London for a further two weeks, in case anyone fancies getting together for a blog meetup. What's a blog meet, a bleet?

Pieces of paper no 4

Oh yes - forgot about this - form from what is now the Department for Education to ask who is our notary (and I have lost the quote from Experienced But Distant Notary so we are having to go with Local Notary) and who is our agency overseas. That will be piece no 19.

Still working on the agency form but making photos a priority. Appointment to pretend our neighbour's cot is ours at 6pm.

I had something else... oh yes. In typical husband fashion, Mr Spouse now says that he has always said that he is fine with saying we'll hope to adopt a child who is either white or Hispanic* - which is not actually my memory of the conversation, but whatever.

*and I have recently discovered this is not actually an ethnic classification on the new US census but it is there on the agency form. So.

Spinning

The wheels, my head, something.

We're off on Saturday for a week's holiday and then I have the first part of my Being Slightly Famous placement, plus a conference. So I won't be back here for 5 weeks.

This creates lots of last-minute tasks, though it's a bit easier to plan to be away from the office for about 4 or 5 weeks than to suddenly find oneself landed on ones back with a broken shoulder and no way to pick up the pieces for 6 weeks (like last summer).

At the forefront of my mind is however a very important issue - what to pack. Last summer the weather was mainly rotten and I could only wear a very limited range of clothing - I remember some agonising changing room sessions trying to put on front-buttoning blouses. So I've, erm, splurged a bit this year (though the post office are getting very used to me sending back returns, too). But I can't fit it all in the one and a half cases I'm allowed! I'm reduced to standing in front of my wardrobe gazing longingly at brand new, over the head, dresses.

Too much information?

This is from Open Adoption Roundtable no 17 - which asks:

Are there any things that you don’t want the other members of your triad to know—or that you don’t want to know about them? I’ve heard first mothers talk about not sharing their birth stories with adoptive parents because those are for the adoptees and for themselves only. I've also heard of adoptees concealing their reunions from adoptive parents so as not to cause them pain. What don’t you want shared in your adoptive relationships?

We don't have our adoption yet but one of the things I've thought about a lot is how much to share with future children about our miscarriages. And if we have an open relationship with our child's biological parent(s) then this is something we'll need to share, or decide not to/how much to share with them. Plus we'll need to talk, I assume, with any expectant parents who are considering placing with us, about why we don't have biological children (and I've just read A+A's post).

Although I am very much for openness with children it's also not surprisingly something I find very upsetting to talk about. I think I'm more wary of making a child feel responsible for our happiness - in the sense of making us feel better when talking about something major and upsetting, rather than in the sense of having "made our lives complete". And I actively avoid talking about miscarriage with pregnant women - even though I often feel they are oblivious and complacent.

Though I did recently become Grumpy Old Woman when someone was ranting about how "everyone in the past used to X when pregnant, what's with all this crazy new medical advice". Yes, I said - and they lost babies. That's why the medical advice. I don't always try and spare people's feelings.

The other side to the story that isn't really mine to tell completely but which is very relevant, is some of the circumstances behind A and my fostering him. I can share that he came to us under very random and upsetting circumstances and that I had to find another placement for him and how difficult and sad that was for me. But I can't share all the things that have happened to him, or some of the things he may have done. And if I share exactly how he's done, recently, well it doesn't sound like a major success story - but compared to the alternative, it is.

Cheating

It is a beautiful day and we are thinking of photos, of our house and of us, for our "hello we are lovely people please think of placing your baby with us" letter, which I don't like calling a "dear birthparent" letter. Profile. That's the word.

We have decorated our back bedroom in a child-friendly style but we don't have any appropriate furniture - we are working on it being less of a dumping ground though we have loads of toys. One of my colleagues lives on our street and has two under-4s so, since I have to tell her some time that we're adopting, I thought I'd ask her for the rather unusual favour of borrowing a cot.

We spent quite a while discussing the whole adoption process - she knew a bit from our mutual colleagues S & M who are the ones who adopted from Central America - I didn't go into the horrible history of our miscarriages, and she did make the usual "now you'll get pregnant" joke though she wasn't offended when I said "it's not funny when you've heard it 50 times!".

Their cot is not really very portable - but she had a bright idea - we're going to bring some props and photograph it in situ. Happily the lower part of their nursery walls are the same as our back bedroom so I feel a little Photoshopping coming on...

US 1, England 1

Well, something like that. You've got to make it topical, haven't you?

We had a long phone call with a lawyer tonight - quite productive and reassuring - though of course now we have more homework.

I'm in the middle of cutting out some red-eye from some pictures of us with the nieces, and then going to have an initial look at the form for the lawyer. We'd like to work with another agency as well though they recommend doing some networking ourselves. I am not quite so sure about that but I suppose it gives me something to do. I have a large number of contacts in the US of course (just looking down my Facebook list) and some of them are just the kind of people to hand out letters for us.

I've put Mr Spouse on to finding us a notary and picking more photos...

I am relieved to hear that: we don't have to do more than one application form (they will forward all our information to the other agency); we don't have to do a new home study (updating the home study seems to just involve a letter from our agency here saying nothing has changed/we've got a new cat/Mr Spouse has finished his course); we probably have to find one new referee but already have a candidate; we probably have all our other paperwork in order.

Later - I've got to page 12 out of 23 and am flagging...

Because it's there...

I avoid Mother's Day and we don't really do Father's Day but there are some lovely posts I've been reading today:

Cheese and Beans got some beer and camped out on the school field.

Mr Luna seems to be walking very, very slowly.

A is a great dad and has a great father-in-law too.

Production not Reproduction is thinking about a blank space on a birth certificate, and some other fathers, some absent, some not.

My favourite non-adoption Dad, Daddy Types, got a hand-painted mug.

I didn't ask Mr S what he thought of Father's Day (we don't do it, as I say, he didn't do it when his dad was alive so I know it is not particularly sad for him) but today, he worked out, is Bring Your Screaming Toddlers To The Supermarket Day. I told him he can take ours when we have one.

I hate skinny doctors

I guess it should have given me a clue that this particular GP has loads of spaces.

So - and I suppose this is marginally logical - I'm either having much, much shorter cycles getting shorter all the time (26 days going down to 22 days going down to 12 days) or I'm having slightly shorter cycles (or randomly fluctuating cycles) with mid-cycle bleeding. Or, of course, I'm having completely random cycles. And, since I've only had one 12-day interval, we don't yet know which it is. What happens next is probably worth recording, and I'm to go back and see her in 3 months' time if it's still screwy.

Oh, and could I be pregnant? Well, technically, perhaps I WAS pregnant but do I want to know if I had another miscarriage? But it wouldn't be a disaster if I was? Well, not a disaster, but we know where pregnancy goes for me, and we're in the middle of adopting. So it wouldn't be a disaster?

Clearly someone who has no idea of the process of adoption in the UK (though to be fair we were a bit blase about getting pregnant during adoption a couple of years ago, although for us it was mainly because we thought it wouldn't happen).

So, shall we do a pregnancy test? Well, no, because I'm clearly not pregnant any more EVEN IF I EVER WAS.

Well, if you are bleeding in the middle of your cycles, we'd want to worry about that, but I'm not going to tell you why. But if you just have reeely reeely short cycles that's OK (is it? not OK with me thanks!). Not much we can do about it - we could put you on the mini pill but that tends to cause spotting. But you're over 35 and then there's your weight... so we shouldn't really put you on the combined pill.

Now maybe I look completely HUGE to this woman (estimated BMI about 18). But I am actually no longer obese, I may still be in the overweight bracket but I'm damn fit and I'm 2 stone lighter than I was when someone said that to me before (aged 35 and about 2 months). And the next doctor who saw me took one look at me and said "erm, overcautious much? you'd be fine". And she didn't even BLOOMIN' WEIGH ME! Do they bring all the skinny GPs in and say "look, if they appear to have eaten any cream cakes recently, or are fatter than you, don't give them the pill".

I didn't actually want to take the combined pill (unless this gets worse and there's no other treatment). But now of course this makes me want to just to spite her.

I'm facing it

CD 12 and more bleeding. I am assuming this is really the beginning of the end, unlike the other times when I thought it was the beginning of the end. Mirena has been mentioned. I don't know what to think. Except to feel a little sad.

Flashbacks

I am not normally too bad, but at the moment on the forum I frequent there is a very lengthy thread by/about/to a much-loved poster who is waiting to find out if she is miscarrying. I am repeatedly drawn back to it and yet it is giving me awful flashbacks.

I need a distraction - and the rather sloppily-written paper I'm trying to review isn't helping.

I would dearly like to know what is up ...

(though if you don't feel like examining the contents of my M&S briefs, click away now)

1st observation: my last cycle was 26 days long, much shorter than my normal 28-30, though otherwise normal.

2nd observation: normal fertile CM at a normal point (10-14ish days)

3rd observation: a little bit more, possibly, around 20 days.

4th observation: around 22-23 days, a whole bunch more, but blood-tinged. Have never had that before except bang in the middle of a cycle after a miscarriage

5th observation: day 23, spotting, followed the next day by full bleeding

6th observation: hair-tearing on account of not really wishing to have much, much shorter cycles

7th observation: day 3, the fertile CM is back. Erm, what???!

I've got a notebook and I'm not afraid to use it...

I just bought a shiny new notebook* to use in my new role (over the summer) on my media placement. We had our induction day today; the various interns are going to different papers and media outlets but we all got together today, and chatted about our varied experience with science and the media. Most of us either do a lot already or are very keen about interacting with the media though there is one old codger who was cynical about the value of science and media and who grumbled about how the media "make things up". And who was told off for adding "facts" to a story-writing exercise we were given...

I'm thinking about anonymity. I told most of the other interns about my semi-professional blog and people are very interested and obviously I want readership; I have Web presence both in this pseudonym and also in my real name, with only a few people linking the two. I suppose I can link to that blog from pieces under my real name, but change my posting moniker on there (it doesn't link from there to here, though I've posted a couple of links under the Dr Spouse handle to the other blog).

I really don't want this particular blog public, and especially don't want my family and colleagues finding this (and it would be a complete nightmare if anyone from any of the adoption agencies found it), but I'm keen for readership to be open. It's a poser.

*Paper variety. Lack of electronic variety daily source of woe.

Will not think about it... will not think about it...

My friend whose family emergency prevented us getting together yesterday made it down to see us today. We hadn't seen each other for ages and though we'd been on the phone, it hadn't been for long enough to completely update on the adoption process. We tried to explain as best possible - she is very pragmatic and doesn't faint in horror at the thought of long legal processes nor the thought of becoming parents costing us a lot of money - and Mr Spouse has now become Official Legal Process Explainer and also Official Advocate For Openness in Adoption. Go Mr Spouse!

Anyway, and I think she was going to offer anyway, when she heard how we will have little or no notice of a match and will really not be wanting to buy all our baby stuff months in advance, she offered us her entire loft full of cot/buggy/other baby stuff. I doubt we'll need to buy any newborn clothes either as I gather these all just turn up as gifts left, right and centre. As I mainly have hippy breastfeeding friends, I imagine all we'll need to buy will be a cot mattress, a car seat, and bottles.

But I just said I wasn't going to start thinking about buying baby stuff, didn't I?

Last

Nothing philosophical... but, with a surname that puts me first or second in pretty much every list below about 100 names, I've realised that my blog name actually puts me last in most lists (or near there).

I didn't do it on purpose, but I don't know if it means I get overlooked on blogrolls (especially long ones where people give up by the time they get that far) or in fact if it means people skim the middle and see my link.

It's not such an interesting blog name, anyway - I was thinking of changing it. Don't know what to yet.

What do you do...

about flaky friends?
Some people do just have complicated lives. One of my friends has just let me down on first an arrangement and then its rearrangement. The first time she had got her work weekends wrong (so really shouldn't have made the arrangement at all) but the second time she's had a family disaster (and it only just happened so she didn't know before I just asked her if she was still on).

I try to be sympathetic to those with kids, especially those with kids and complicated family arrangements (this friend is a single mum, though the disaster is not child-related). And a couple of my most flaky friends do not have children - just an inability to organise their diaries (or in some cases even keep one). And, given a couple of rather unpredictable aspects of our lives in recent years (first dominant theme is of course me being pregnant and then not again, several times, and the more recent dominant theme is the increasing, though perhaps now slowed, decline of mother-in-law's grasp on reality), I sometimes feel a bit grumpy at the implication made by many of my friends and acquaintances with children that they are a get-out-of-jail-free card. Any cancelled arrangements that are to do with children are allowable - any other reason is not.

I hope I am not flaky though I have no real perspective on this. I think I used to be semi-flaky when I lived in London and tried to go out a lot - I always ended up saying I'd go out and then getting home and feeling too exhausted to trek back to central London, or else saying I'd go out straight from work and ending up going home instead.

But perhaps this is what my currently flaky friend, and I in the past, have in common - we are/were single. When you are single, your social life revolves around people who do not live in your house - and who you inconvenience more when you let down. If Mr Spouse and I make firm arrangements involving train tickets or films/shows that are paid for, we know we'll keep to them unless something really dire comes up. If we've said "maybe we'll go to the cinema" but something comes up, we tend not to. We can be spontaneous most of the time because, well, he's right there and I tend to know what he's doing.

Where this leaves me - with friend 1 who has a genuinely complicated life, and other friends, who have an inability to manage their diary - is still feeling frustrated, and lacking in someone to go out and play with (this being an event that Mr Spouse doesn't really want to participate in, and besides, he has exams).