Marketing yourself for a successful adoption?

Even though we can't place ads yet and probably won't be for months, I am engrossed on starting to think how we will advertise to find a birthmother. I want to find the right birthmother ASAP. Like yesterday!! A fertility friend member advised me of an adoption situation of a baby that will be born in December. We can't get approved that fast and the baby was bi-racial. Too bad it would not wok out-both parents signed consent to adopt. That was really nice of her to think of me and I think more of that networking should go on with folks adopting independently!

I revamped our old adoption site and really spruced it up with Winnie the Pooh stuff and some slick features. Hopefully it will make it more attractive.

Should we place newspaper ads-which I don't perceive as very effective, but adoptive parents tell me otherwise. The good thing is you can place ads within your own state or neighboring states and hope to adopt somewhat locally and save lots of time and money in travel.

The internet is full of sites that we can post our profile. People say that do receive a lot of contact from potential birthmoms, but not all of them are on the up and up. It's less expensive and reaches a much broader audience. But you can wind up adopting anywhere in the country.

How about just promoting my adoption website and trying to get more hits. Maybe buy webhits or pay to have it moved higher up on search engines like Yahoo or Google??

I have lots of ideas, so I hope I will be successful quickly in finding our Birthmom. I will probably do a combination of internet and newspaper ads.

Here is revamped website-please feel free to let me know what can be done to improve it or any other comments...

We are hoping to adopt a baby soon!

Tiny Dancer

Today was a gift. I got to take my daughter to her first ever dance class (tap and ballet). We were both excited and were talking about it for months. I really honestly enjoyed it! I was going to drop her off and go, but almost all the parents stayed, so I did as well. I was curious to see what they do and how she follows instructions. I am so glad I did stay. I got to see her dance in her first dance class. She is a miracle. I savored the moment, knowing realistically, I may never had this chance again. I am afraid I may never have another child and even if I do, it may be a boy! My eyes were glued on her, it was like I was watching a four star movie! She did great! She looked so cute!! I am so glad I had a chance to enjoy this moment as a parent. Parents who have to drive their kids to activies should not complain. At least they have normal kids that can join activities. There are many women who only wish they can watch their little girl in her first dance class.

The girls in her class were funny. One yelled out that her arms were hurting from holding them up, another yelled out she had to go potty and another girl surprised the teacher with a high five while they were doing their steps. At some point all the girls in the class just hugged. It was cute! Nobody fell and that is a good thing!!

All I could think of was the song Tiny Dancer by Elton John. She is my tiny dancer-her petite 30 pound body almost made for dancing.

"..Ballerina, You must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand..."

We were in the car on the way home and she said "Thank you Mommy!" I said "Thanks for what?" She said "For taking me to dance class!"

It was so worth it! I will re-arrange my Saturdays anyday for dance!!!

I did take a few pictures of Tiny Dancer before her class...here's one!

Tragedy in the Suburbs

Very early Monday morning (5AM), a tragedy occurred on a local highway that cost a 16 year old girl her life. Our local high school last two students in two days in two separate incidents. What bothers me about this car accident that cost an innocent girl her life is the details of how it played out.

Here is the local new article so you can read it for yourself:


Article

A 46 year old mother of four decided to go "clubbing" at a punk rock club that was closing with her 16 year old daugther and her daughters best friend. This was on a Sunday night. Hello-don't these girls have school. They were out partying all night and the mother was very drunk. They stopped at a diner to have breakfast and got back on the highway-but the mother got on the wrong ramp and drove for one mile going north in the Southbound lane. There was a head on collision. The driver of the other car had to be extricated and survived. The mother and her daughter were in the front seat of the van and survived as they had seatbelts and airbags. The daugther's friend died instantly-she had no seatbelt on.

The mother and daugther were transported to the hospital and are being treated for injuries. The mother was given a breathlizer test which she failed and was notably about the .08 limit in NY. She has already been arraigned and faces a slew of charges. The town is in an uproar. This mother was a stay at home mom who was well liked in the community. Why did she get in the car drunk? Why were they all out all night? There are a million questions.

The fact is lives are shattered. The girl killed was best friends with the girl that survived. They were like family. The deceased girl went on vacation with them, slept over, ate over, etc. I know the mother loved that girl too.

What disturbs me as a parent is how you grow to trust a parent and the trust is lost in a split second. I went to the Mom's myspace site (which is now private) and the entire page distrurbed me. Punk rock music and videos player, all her "friends" were teenagers and pictures showed her with alcohol around her and out with teenagers. She is supposed to be a parent, not a friend to the kids. They trusted her and she let them down by making a horrible decision to get behind the wheel that night. She acted like a kid-even admitting on myspace that she was going back to her punk days.

I am so naive, I think all suburban moms are normal, driving a minivan, and helping out in the community. I never would think they were drinking and driving kids around and not parenting their children. It makes me think, when my daughter gets older, how well will I have to get to know the friend and her parents before I can trust that Mom to drive my daughter to the movies???

My innocence is now lost. I was so ready to trust Moms I felt comfortable with. I live in one of the most expensive and exclusive counties in the United States. If it could happen here, it can happen anyhere.

Lessons learned:

1) When you are back seat passenger ALWAYS wear your seat belt (I have since Princess Diana died)

2)Parents-make every effort to get to know your kids friends and their parents. What you see on the surface may not be the reality.

This could have been avoided. Now lives are destroyed and a community up in arms. One bad decision will live with them forever. The victim was an only child!
All I can do is pray for everyone involved-that there will be forgiveness and healing.

My experience on myspace.com

I had no intention of signing up for myspace.com, but I did cross paths with a potential birthmother today who lives one hour from me and claims she is determined to give the baby up. We exchanged emails and we last left off where I sent her the website to our profile. Let's see if any more communication goes back and forth. The only way I could communicate with her was to join myspace.com.

OK then I started to build a profile and search for people I went to High School with. I found a few but I unexpectedly found my former best friend from High School. "P" was always into punk, dying her hair pink at the age of 14, but in spite of how opposite we were, we were best buds for almost all of high school. Her family liked me.

Anyway, I did send her a note to contact her. I have her cell phone number but we don't call and I had not seen her in years. She got married and I did get to see a few pictures of her husband.

I have to say I am happy she got married but kind of upset by how she had changed. She has many tattoos. She had a couple last I say her. I am even used to the earring in her nose. It just seems the things she likes are kinda dark and she is very much a changed person than I knew. I knew she was going in that direction, but I thought the maturity of being in her mid 30s would stop the progession. Sounds like she drinks a lot too. I guess when we have our high school reunion next summer, I will be prepared.

I can't describe it. I was sitting at the computer and swear I could smell her distinct perfume (Gloria Vanderbilt). I was looking at a very familiar face, but the face staring back at me was totally different-does that make sense? Let's see how or if she responds to my greeting.

The "what ifs" of adoption

I spoke to my best friend briefly today and told her I was revamping our adoption website in preparation for a possible upcoming adoption. I added a page of family pictures and a page about our daughter. She asked me if that was a good idea. She said "What if a birthmother sees you put pictures of Jacqueline up there and thinks you won't love her baby as much as your daughter?"

I said that is rediculous. Of course I would love both children equally. I said "If she feels that way, then she is not the birthmother for us to be matched with". Good answer huh?? The words just came to me.

I have to admit a few months ago, I was fearful of us not being picked because we have a biological daughter. But in reality and in talking to adoptive parents and an adoption attorney, that is usually not the case. The birthparents usually find something they like about you are have in common with you. Your sister looks like her best friend. You have a Maltese dog. You are a nascar fan. Your daugther looks like his neice. Somehow a connection is made and it grows from there. It's an amazing thing. I have faith that in time an amazing connection will be made between us and birthparents who have a bond with us. I will not lie or misrepresent myself to have a birthmom pick us. It's just not me. In the long run, it's just plain wrong. This is a lifelong relationship you are entering. I think it's awful when adoptive parents promise pictures, updates, emails, visits, etc and never follow through, leaving the birthmother hurt. I could never hurt another person who gave me such a beautiful gift as a baby that way.

In recent weeks I have taken the time to read letter from birthmoms. I have read the flip side to adoption. Their hurt, their loss and unsure feelings related to the whole adoption. Many birthmoms were pressured into giving up their babies years ago and many of them have lived with the hurt. The instance of pressured adoptive in the last 10-2o years or so is reduced, but still many birthmoms go through a myriad of feelings. We have to respect that.

I have this gut feeling that although 2006 proved to be a lousy year for us in trying to grow our family, something good will happen quickly in 2007 if we choose the adoption route. I can just feel it-2007 is going to be a great year!!!

Bye bye to my spinach!

Well Monday for the first time in my entire life I bought a bag of fresh Spinach. I was hoping to surprise my husband with a fresh veggie we rarely have at dinner time. I was so proud that I bought something healthy and fresh. Luckily I held off making it, having opted for other veggies with dinner this week. It seems E.Coli has found it's way into bags of fresh Spinach! I would have been freaking out if I had eaten this earlier this week. I don't know if boiling it would have killed the E.Coli. I know washing it doesn't.

I know chances are this bag of Spinach was fine, but I'm not taking a chance so...bye bye to my Spinach! The garbage is where you belong. I am not even going to waste my gas returning it to the store. I chucked in into the garbage. Popeye never had to worry about E.Coli!!!

In Search of Trenton Duckett

Has anyone been following the story about Trenton Duckett? A two year old boy went missing in Central Florida on August 17th. His 21 year old mother claims he was in his room in bed. She went to check on him around 9PM and he was gone-a hole cut in the bedroom window screen. He went to bed around 7PM.

The story gets more intriguing. Authorities are searching a construction site where the mother and son were seen together shortly before his disappearance. They have been digging, but have come up with nothing. On Sept 8th, the boy's mother committed suicide after the CNN's Nancy Grace grilled her on the show. Here's a transcript:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/08/ng.01.html

The boy is still missing and now his mother is dead. They are not releasing to the media if the mother was a suspect or if a diary or computer may have provided information. The family is sayingher being on CNN and being "bashed" was the reason she committed suicide. The whole story sounds fishy. She won't disclose where they were that day, nobody has seen the boy the day before he disappeared. It doesn't sound good.

Poor little two year old boy did not stand a chance. I wonder if she was connected to his disappearance or possible death. Maybe she took her life out of guilt. We will never know. Finding Trenton alive is a longshot according to police. I believe in miracles, and I'm hoping he is found safe very soon. I hope this is not another unsolved casethat will fade away at the expense of a toddler. My prayers to you Trenton.

9/11-we will never forget

It's hard to believe it's been five years since the 9/11 attacks. In some ways, it feels as if time has stood still.

I live about 45 miles North of NYC. My husband was in midtown that morning and it was a twist of fate that he was not across the street from the towers. It was just like any other September day, but Sept 11, 2001 was special. As I walked from my car into my building, I distinctly remember how beautiful the weather was. There was not a could in the blue sky and it there was a slight crispness to the morning. I remember thinking it reminded me of our wedding day (Sept 13th) and what a picture perfect day with bright blue skies.

A little before 9AM, the day takes a terrible turn when my brother in law, who works for the same company (and right down the hall) instant messages me to tell me a plane hit one of the towers. I did not think much of it. I thought it was an accident, a small plane clipped a huge building-minimal damage and impact. I turned on the radio and started to hear traffic reports and the traffic guys in the helicopter talking about raging fires and major damage to the first tower. Now people are talking about it in the halls. We hear the second tower was hit. We all knew at that instant, it was no accident and we were the target of an attack. I heard of the attacks in Washington and feared they would attack every major city in the US within hours.

Things started to get kaotic even about my office in the suburbs. People trying to reach family and friends, parents leaving work to pick up their kids at school, women getting hysterical.
I will never forget watching the first tower fall. We had gotten two TV in the main lobby of IBM where I worked and dozens were gathering around. It was our first chance to see with our own eyes what had really happened. We saw the first tower fall in front of our eyes as if it were a planed implosion. EVERYONE gasped and screamed, so unprepared for what was happening.

My best friend found me in front of the monitors and started screaming "Where is Jerry?"
I had trouble reaching my husband as cell phone circuits were all busy. I did hear from him later and found out his meeting in lower Manhattan was cancelled, and he was near Grand Central Station (which I feared was a target) and was just trapped as no trains were running on the Metro North. She said we should leave work in case they declare a state of emergency and close all the highways, so we packed up our laptops and left for home.

I wanted my husband to walk over the 59th Street Bridge and into Queens to his grandmother's apartment in Astoria. It was a nice day and he was young-he could do it. He was considering it and then the trains started running and he managed to get on one of the first trains to White Plains.

Once he was home, we were just glued to the TV. I was not really working. People were calling like crazy to check if Jerry was OK. We were calling lots of people as well to check on how their friends and family were. We were in shock, watching over and over again the horrific images of the planes going through the towers, people jumping from the buildings, and the two building falling to pieces. I had nightmares about these images for weeks. I think the people jumping out of windows bothered me the most. I gulp every time I see a plane go through one of the towers.

I had bowling league that night. It was the 2nd week of the season and I was hoping they would cancel-but they did not. The mood was somber, quite a few women did not show and all we talked about was what happened. I don't know if we understood the magnitude of what happened.

We were lucky, a twist of fate kept us safe. Our close friends and family were also unaffected. Others were not so lucky. Six people (some quite young) died that day from my small town.
Many friends lost loved ones and their bodies never recovered. For months and months, the obituaries of our newspaper were full of 9/11 victims, mostly young people. The impact was felt for months and months without a chance to catch our breath.

I cried today for so many reasons-the thousands of innocent lives lost, our nations loss of security and innocence, how my daughter will never visit the twin towers and how I will have to explain to her what evil too place there. So many stories of people who missed a flight that day or called in sick for the first time in years. They were saved. So many stories of people who had a meeting in one of the towers or came in early to get some work done.

I think 9/11 should me made a National holiday. I feel it should be a National day of mouring. Nobody was upbeat. It was a somber day. Some people took off to go to memorials of former co workers. The years may have passed, but in so many ways it was like a wound being opened all over again. 9/11 taught me to live every day as if it were your last and "when you get the choice to sit it out or dance-I hope you dance!"

Five years have passed. I have a different job and a wonderful daughter. In many ways, my life has changed. Time stood still today, it may as well have been 2001. I felt like today somebody ripped a band aid off of me and exposed an old open wound. Today, like every day in the past five years, this nation has lived with this permanent wound. It hurts today more than other days. We lost our innocence as a nation and we must live with that every single day forever more.

Amniotic Fluid Embolism (AFE) is scary

I started reading about Amniotic Fluid Embolism (AFE) after a woman in one of my adoption groups told us about it. Her birthmother, who just gave birth a few days ago is now in ICU and fighting for her life when she suddenly fell under the attack of AFE. To read more about this disease where the mortality rate for the mothers is 86%, go to this link:

AFE

I never know this disease existed. I never knew it was out there and it is quite rare. There is no way of knowing if you have it until you are in labor and by then it is too late. There seems to be some link between having allergies, a male fetus and pitocin. It's scary for me to read-If I do get pregnant-could it happen to me? I have tons of allergies. Would having a c section two weeks before my due date safeguard me from this?? I am almost sorry I read about it, but it is better to be know then not to know.

For now, I will pray for a birthmother in California, whom I have heard wonderful things about and is fighting for her life. Nobody deserves to be stricken like this. It sounds like one of obstetrics "dirty little secrets". My prayers to you Cameron! My prayers to all those families who have lost a woman in the prime of her life to this terrible mysterious medical phenomenon.

Happy Birthday to me!!!

Yesterday, I turned 37. A quiet birthday that was marked by a day at work (catching up from my vacation) and dinner out with my husband. Cool gifts from my daughter and husband which included a bluetooth for my new cell phone! All and all a nice day!!! I wish I was off, but you can't have everything.

I did catch a break. I went out at lunchtime to pick up Chinese food (calories don't count on your birthday) and got stopped for speeding by a local cop. I knew him from High School. When he asked for my license and registration, I asked what the chances were of letting me slide on my birthday-he looked at my license and told me to go and have a happy birthday! Wow what a break. He was hiding-a speedtrap. I go home and go back on the same road 5 minutes later only to find two more victims pulled over by the same officer for speeding! One was a friend of mine. They weren't getting out of their tickets!!

I watched the season premier of Nip/Tuck. It was OK. I did not like the scene where Christian bedded the mother and daughter. I thought it was disgusting and had gone too far. Maybe it was just me. As a parent of a daughter, I could not even imagine something like that! UGH!
SICK!!! Let's see what next week brings!!!

Fun at the US Open

Last night we went to the US Open in Flushing Meadow, Queens, NY. It is now called the Billie Jean King tennis center. We went to the night session, so we did not get to see Agassi finish out his carreer, but we did see Maria Sharapova play as well as James Blake (a New Yorker). I love going to the Open and have gone every year for the past 10 years.

OK it costed of $13 to park and food is outrageously expensive, but it is an experience. I wanted to buy my daughter a sweatshirt, but could not justify the $44 on a size 4t sweatshirt. A melting pot of New Yorkers coming together with many forgeign visitors. You can listen to conversation and here almost every language spoken. The people are unusually friendly. They will take a picture if you ask (and not steal the camera) or let you look in their binoculars, if they overhear you can't see the players.

I always loved Agassi, a great player and humble athlete. We are the same age and 20 years ago, I thought he was quite the cutie with his long hair. We've watched him shed his youth, and mature into a husband and father right before our eyes. I wish I could have been at that session. The rain played havoc with the scheduling, but lots of great tennis was played. Sharapova is tall in person (over 6 feet) and men constantly yell out things like "Marry me Maria" while she plays. She always signs a few balls and hits them into the crowd when she finishes a match. Although she is from Siberia, Russia-she speaks perfect English with barely a hint of an accent. Blake loves playing in New York and you can tell. He hails from Yonkers, NY which is halfway between where I live and the tennis center.

The support he had was incredible. For the first time I did take pictures. I love the US Open grounds, which is the site of the 1964 World's Fair that my parents and inlaws always talk about going to. Here are a few pictures, they did not come out great because it was night time.

Vacation highlights

Vacation. We just got back but today's cold windy rainy weather makes it feel like vacation was a lifetime ago. I did take some cool pictures in Wildwood, so I thought I would share them with you....We did go to the beach a few times, we rode the tram, went to some restaurants, visited the arcades on the boardwalk and went to the Cape May Zoo.

I always wanted to take a picture of this sign. We are the three J's, Joanne, Jerry and Jacqueline.

Here is our daughter at the zoo entrance....









Here we all are at the zoo...



My little gambler....(it's OK it was an arcade and she was playing for tickets)

Love those Wildwood days...

Well I am back from vacation-one day early. We had the worst weather we have ever had down in Wildwood. The condo was great-no complaints there. Every day it was overcast, cloudy, cool and windy. Always threatening to rain. We barely went to the boardwalk or the beach. My jeans and jacket got too much exposure on this trip! Needless to say we are disappointed. We did not get to ride bikes or go to Cape May or spend much time at the beach.

We heard the remnants of Tropical depression Ernesto were on the way up the coast, so we decided to get ahead of the storm and leave this morning. We did fine, made good time and got out of the wind and rain. When we left there this morning, it was like a hurricane in progress. Very windy, (the wind was howling all night) and the rain was pelting us. Better luck next year right??

I'm still on somewhat of a vacation this weekend and look forward to a BBQ and Sunday nights tennis at the US Open. I'll post some vacation pics soon, honestly-I did not take many pictures and most of there were at the Cape May zoo!