Donor Doubt

I wish I could post the whole story with all of the details but I can’t. All I can say is that the dude I thought was the donor, IRL, isn’t. I’m sad about this and I’ll get to why a bit later on. First, I started looking stuff up again after offering advice on what to do with donor info/pictures that have not been provided by the donor. It got me thinking that although I had saved a couple of pictures I hadn’t safely secured any of the written info I had found. That’s when I started searching again and things started to unravel. I will now caution anyone as silly as I am to really think about seeking unauthorized info and the consequence of being wrong.

Without getting too specific, I had 2 pieces of info that put together seemed to be the key to his identity. Everything matched for the guy I had found including his career, geographical location, age and number of siblings. The problem started when I googled his dad for the first time. Up popped a professional website with more info than I could have ever expected! I found his father’s entire resume with education and including extra-curricular activities. With this brought two pieces of conflicting info 1) I had mistaken his father for his grandfather and 2) His father’s career and education does not match what is listed our donor profile. The first piece of information may or may not be significant. The issue was that I found him through his relationship to his paternal grandfather and if I was actually connecting him to his father that is a real blow to my confidence in the match. Also, I hadn't even considered I could be looking for his Maternal relative. That relationship was what zeroed me in on one specific person instead of a large group of people. The reality is, even if that is how I found him, I was focusing on a specific group of candidates and I found someone who matched our donor perfectly... or so I thought! It’s the second bit of information that has really thrown me off. Is it possible our donor lied on his profile to hide his father’s career, to make him LESS successful and LESS educated? I would think not. Bummer.

I know that many people have expressed uneasiness with doing this, with searching out the donor and with even caring. Initially I searched because it was a challenge and it was fun. I was so happy to find an adult picture and info to share with Sadie since I know, despite the fact that he is ID release, she may never have more than a name. I was also happy to find a strong and healthy looking person. As much as this statement excludes D in the process, I did use this person to make a baby. I’m glad he wasn’t creepy looking, or (shame on me) a loser. I was proud that I’d offered her some good genes since some of mine leave a lot to be desired! I guess I’m back to square one and perhaps over my search. I’ve tried digging up dirt on the others on my list of candidates but it’s not easy. I’ve decided to keep the info and picture anyway because he could still be the right guy. Sadie will know the truth if she wants to, at 18. Maybe I’ll have a little extra info for her if I was right.

On the topic of our donor, I met a family last weekend that has 2 little boys from the Fair.fax donor who sold out and ultimately forced us to switch to Xy.tex. It was weird. We weren’t meeting Sadie’s half-sibs, we were meeting half-sibs for the child we wanted so badly but didn’t have, the child from my chemical pregnancy, our first BFP. That’s the crazy thing about using a donor (or 4). Our child would have been very different if try #1-#6 had worked. Would we have had one of these bright blonde children? Maybe a boy? Wow. Weird. Wow.

Now if only we could find a real half-sib. Someone obsessive has to be out there googling our donor number. I’m RIGHT THERE and waiting to be easily contacted.


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Random thought

Since having Sadie I've continued to feel those cute little flutters that people often compare to gas bubbles, a baby inside of me. At first I called them phantom kicks but now I don't know what's going on. What the heck is a gas bubble (rhetorical question) and why had I never felt one before? Did they sew me up wrong? When I have #2 are they going to find my intestine tied like a pretzel?

Just wondering...



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Foto Friday

This photo represents our need to go clothes shopping because Sadie has outgrown pretty much everything!

Outfit details (incase you are jealous):
Old Navy Spiderman T-shirt
Baby legs (on arms), Black skulls
Gymboree Elephant leggings

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Foto (almost) Friday

Upcoming topic: What are we going to do about the Justin Bieber with Baby Mullet hair?

Co-Sleeping

This is what co-sleeping looks like in our house (upside down shot):





See why it's going to be a hard habit to break?

And here's another habit that's going to be hard to break. We've been watching a bit of TV over the "chicken pox lockdown" weekend.





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Distraction: Camping and Update

Lately I've been completely obsessed with going camping. I have been to overnight camp but the one I attended was far from rustic. We had an indoor pool with a sauna. I've been to Muskoka but I've only stayed at resorts. I've never camped. Not even when I was a girl guide.
So what's the deal now? I know I'll hate the washrooms and I'll probably be scared out of my mind at night but I want to camp for Sadie. I want to camp for my family to get away from our tech obsessed world. I want nature to be important.
I'm not sure how we're going to accomplish this goal since we have no gear at all, don't know what to buy and have zero knowledge of how to actually camp. One of my mommy groups does an annual camping trip so I think we'll start there. At least we have a house now and can store whatever gear we collect. I think I should start looking at craigslist.
Any tips or advice?

Update on Sadie: Last night was not fun at all. The itch has started and she was miserable for most of the night. I was so tired that I'm positive I slept through some of her fussing because I kept waking to her in odd positions like at the foot of the bed. Her spots have also increased a lot. On day one she had under 10, day two was under 30, and on day 3/4 there are too many to count. They are through her hair all over her scalp, on her bum, lips, ears, crawling up her neck and wrapping around her torso. At first we thought she had a very mild case but now that it has progressed we're hopeful that she's going to be immune. I had the Chicken Pox twice (do not remember at all) and my mom said I was nothing like her. The reality is that she is still pretty good and this could be a lot worse. We're lucky.





ETA: We got out for a walk this afternoon and tried out our new jogger. It was fun! Sadie had a good time with her friends "Big Minnie" and "Big Mickey".



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Chicken Pox

For the past 2 days I have been beside myself with worry over missing out on plans this weekend. We’d held onto hope that it was just a rash or dry skin and then hung onto the thought that “it wasn’t that bad”. Well, now it is THAT bad and I’m shifting my thoughts from missing out on fun to worrying about my sweet baby who is sick.

I hope this is over with ASAP. ):


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Spots and Cursing

Chicken pox?





Or dry skin?

This really fucking sucks. Especially the part when my mom said we should stay home this weekend and sort through Sadie's clothes instead of going away!!! Sick kid and cleaning vs. a road trip to visit friends?
Let's hope it's dry skin! Please let it be dry skin!!!

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No spots and Co-Sleeping

This may be a gigantic jinx, I certainly hope not, but I think we’re in the clear for Chicken Pox. I’ve become somewhat of an expert on Varicella lately and I think my mom was most contagious on February 22nd. We’re now at 16 days post potential exposure and NO SPOTS. The average incubation period is 14 days, not quite the TWW I’m used to blogging about but I’ve been counting down the days just the same. I think that by the end of the weekend we should know for sure and we hope nothing pops up between now and then because we’re going away. Fingers crossed!

I wanted to take a minute to blog about my comment that D and I sleep in separate rooms. It all started back in May last year when we put our condo for sale. We had always had Sadie in our room in her mini-crib closely beside my side and had just assembled her full crib. Our real estate agent said that the crib couldn’t stay in our room and had to be put in the “nursery”. He also said our bed frame had to go which resulted in our Queen Mattress resting on top of boxes (hoping no one sat on our bed during an open house). Yes, our condo was THAT small.
Around this time we were also having work done on the condo (new carpet and laminate flooring) and I was essentially evicted. In retrospect I have no idea why I didn’t set up our pack n play and encourage Sadie to sleep there. No, we started co-sleeping. First it was at our friends and then as we travelled from relative to relative. Sadie and I slept in the same bed and I was immediately hooked.
After an absence of close to two weeks we returned to the condo which was no longer our “home” but a shell of it. D slept on an air mattress in the living room and Sadie and I balanced on our makeshift bed. It was pretty ghetto. After that we continued to bounce around to different places and D wasn’t always with us. Eventually it became normal that we slept in separate rooms and it worked because D was able to sleep longer without interruption. In the new house D got her own bedroom and the master is where Sadie and I sleep. I assume #2 will join us.
Some people think this is really bad for our relationship. I wish D would co-sleep with us but Sadie tends to kick her a lot. Also, in general, D has a much harder time getting back to sleep after being interrupted. I’m the exact opposite. I can get up and down in the middle of the night and fall back to sleep immediately. Therefore I’m the natural one to take care of Sadie while D gets her full sleep so she is not a beast in the morning (which she can be and it’s scary). So that’s both the story of how we started co-sleeping and stopped sleeping in the same room.

On the topic of Co-sleeping, I’m having my doubts. There have been some very difficult times where I’ve wanted to quit but mostly it has been a great bonding experience. At 14 months I’m starting to wonder when we’ll move her into her toddler bed and how we’ll do it. It has to happen because I do not want to be like my parents and have a 12 year old in my bed.
I say I have my doubts but that is mostly about Attached Parenting. I had never set out to be AP but I fell into it because that is evidently my natural parenting style. Now I have a very dependant child who doesn’t even want to ride in a shopping cart. Fortunately I had invested in a new carrier because I’m certainly using it! I also have very little freedom to do anything at night unless I have my mom sleeping with her. Have I created a monster? I look at my brother who I’d say was raised by AP crossed with Helicopter parents and he is a horribly spoiled BRAT. I worry when I see him and when I hear stories of my friend’s 13 year old niece who is completely out of control. Is that what kids are like these days? Entitled, out of control, and spoiled rotten? How can I make sure Sadie does not grow up like this? Is AP good for her or is it the early stages of her getting what she wants and controlling me? Don’t get me wrong I love co-sleeping and being AP but I wonder if it’s right in the long run. Am I preparing her for the real world? I'm not sure.


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Bad Parent/Good Parent

I need to preface this by saying that Sadie is such a good baby that we literally haven’t dealt with the following situation before. Sadie rarely cries and when she does we know why. For example, when we take the television remote from her, she cries. When she’s tired she’ll toddle into things, fall over and cry. She’ll also cry when I leave her (not always). Even teething has been relatively easy to deal with so on Friday night when she started screaming her head off we had no idea what to do.
She first woke up crying at 11 pm. I tried to calm her down but she kept screaming. I took her from the bedroom and carried her down the hall a few times and then rocked her on our glider. At this point D is up too (have I ever mentioned we sleep in different rooms?) and is wondering what is going on. I don’t know.
We make a bottle and I take her back to bed. I hold her tight and she falls asleep in my arms. I put her down and she screams. I hold her tight and she falls asleep. I gently recline and fall back asleep with her in my arms.
Midnight: More screaming. She is frantically kicking her legs while crying. I take her out of her sleep sack and look at her legs. I take off her socks because we never let her sleep with socks but she managed to keep them on. I held her tight and she fell back asleep.
1 am – up again, screaming and crying. I put her back in her sleep sack. She kicks her legs and screams in pain. She eventually falls back to sleep.
2 am – up again, screaming and crying. At this point I storm into D’s room and say I have no idea what to do and I can’t get her to stop screaming. D thinks she needs to be in a Footie which she isn’t in because we let her fall asleep in the clothes she was wearing before bed (another sign of bad parenting). I’m losing it by now because it’s been 3 hours of trying to keep the baby happy, I’m tired and upset that we can't mKe her feel better.
We go to change her footie and guess what we find? A poopie diaper! Our daughter is 14 months old and we never thought to check her diaper! Isn’t that basic parenting 101? Even worse, the reason she was screaming was because she had quarter sized welts of diaper rash on her bottom!! The poor thing! We changed her diaper and put good diaper rash cream on and she fell asleep immediately. How could we honestly be THAT dumb?
As far as the rash goes, we’re wondering if maybe it is cantaloupe that is causing it. We’ve only had issues with this rash twice and since she’s been off her antibiotics for a couple of weeks now it can’t be blamed on that anymore. The only thing I could connect would be that its happened the last 2 times we’ve given her cantaloupe (which she loves and eats way too much of). We’re going to avoid it for now and bring it up at her 15 month appointment in less than a month.

Good Parenting
I’m really just going to brag about how awesome Sadie is and call it good parenting because aside from believing that 12 hour diapers are good for the full 12 hours, we’re good parents!

Sadie doesn’t say much but she’s so cute when she “talks”. She gets a favourite word and sticks with it. Right now it’a Buh Bye. To truly understand how she says it you need to imagine it said with “Y’all”. Buh Byeeee Y’all. We’ve joked that her southern drawl is an inherited trait from her donor (who is from the south). Other favourites include MA, MOM, and MAMA. Caps are no coincidence. She comes off a bit demanding when she wants our attention. Duck, quack and gock (sock) round out her vocabulary.

I feel like we are able to communicate well. Sadie grunts yes when we ask her questions (we mostly know the answers to). Do you want Milk? Grunt. Do you want to go to Bed? Grunt. Do you want a Bath? Grunt. I really wish we had worked harder on signing with her. I’ve been focusing on “All Done” so she doesn’t shoot her food off her tray when she’s “All Done”. So far she hasn’t gotten the hint and I’ve been saying/signing this since she started solids!

Anyway.... We’re in the process of teaching Sadie body parts. She knows how to point to her belly, nose, and hair but often sticks her finger right up her nose! We can ask her to “Point to Sadie’s” or “Point to Momma/Mommy’s” and she knows the difference. We also ask her to go get things for us and she’s pretty accurate. She probably wonders why we need so many things from her!

Sadie’s favourite book right now is a Disney book (don’t know the name) that exclaims “You’re such a Silly Baby”! She laughs and laughs when I read her this book. She’s SUCH a SILLY Baby!!! Really, she is!

As far as mobility goes, she’s picking up speed which has resulted in tripping over her feet. She seems to want to move faster than she is currently balanced and able to. She cracks us up when we’re at The Little Gym because she goes crazy running around and trips all over the place. Compared to the other kids in the class she’s wild and a bit out of control! My mother refers to her as “busy”. She is VERY busy. She wonked her head into her beloved parallel bars last week and was treated to a Cinderella ice pack. I need to get some of those for in the house because she’s constantly going face first into things! Oy Vey!

Such a silly baby!

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Happy March

At the beginning of any month last year I would have been moaning and groaning about how fast time was going. Not this year. Time has changed. It hasn’t really slowed down, I suppose, but it feels different. Last year was a whirlwind and as much as I loved being home it also felt like a year on death row. Sadie aged towards something that I was trying to run from. I wanted her to stop growing, stay the same and for time to stop. It didn’t and now that I’m on the other side of her first birthday things are starting to feel really good. I’m happy to see her develop and grow and I’m happy at work. I can’t help but wonder what my second experience with mat leave will be like? Now that I’ve seen that January 4th, 2011 wasn’t the end of the world, will I be able to remember that and not spend the year in a state of panic?

February felt longer than all twelve months of last year and not surprisingly it went out with a bang. Actually, it wasn’t a bang, it was a barf. Last night Sadie coughed until she projectile vomited on me, the bed, her sleep sack and pretty much everything else within 2 feet of her. Yay February!

In more exciting news, I bought my bike trailer last night. I move fast! I actually found a used one for sale while searching online for where to buy them in the GTA. The Ad was new and the trailer was presumably exactly what I’d wanted so I quickly contacted the seller and arranged to go and see it. This was an “act first, think later” decision so I spent most of my lunch hour researching bike trailer brands and prices and determined that for the price it was going for, $150, the trailer I’d secured was a bargain even if it wasn’t new. So I packed Sadie in the car and drove into the country to go to pick up the trailer at what turned out to be a rather large home with very expensive cars in the driveway. Sadie played with the little boy that lived there while I took in all of the instructions on how to use it and then we schlepped back home. It was a 2 hour trip in total but it is fun to see how rich people, who sell expensive things for cheap, live. Please spring, come soon, I want to try out our new toy!




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