Open Adoption Research

Open Adoption Research

In the last post I showed the news article about current adoption research.  I found the original article, which by the way you should always do.. dont believe the media.  Anyway, Huff Post is a pretty reliable source and correctly represented the research.  In any case the original research article is a good read.  Here it is.. Article 

Open Adoption Gets Some Press

Open Adoption Gets Some Press

I think a lot of people have this stigma about adoption and many "widespread myths and misconceptions about open adoption"  This article reveals that only about 5% of adoptions are the old school "closed" adoption, where there is no contact and hidden records between birth family and adoptive family.  55% is totally open, and 40% are semi-open or facilitated adoptions where there are varying degrees of contact.  Its nice to start seeing articles about current adoption norms in society.  

Read the Huffington Post article here

Hopefully things like this will educate the public about adoption and lower its stigmas.   I am thinking of some family members in particular who brought a photo of an adoptive child and told me..

 "see, they turned out ok and they were adopted"   as if saying..  adoption is not normal and you can end up with damaged kids, but these kids were totally normal, so there is hope for you.

Ideal

Ideal

Baby Name of the Month: West

Baby Name of the Month: West

Are you ready for baby name of the month?  Well too bad, here it is.

West

So this is in the category of "word" names, which are nouns or verbs that are now being given to children. For example, Blue ( you know Jay-z and Beyonce's new baby) is a word name, but so are Ginger, Olive and Lily.West is a very uncommon name, but a recognizable word... so it feels familiar. West has not been ranked in the US top 1000 names, which I really like.

 West is a one syllable name.I love one syllable names for boys,  I feel like they are very manly and debonair.. like Pierce or Clive.

I feel like West evokes a sense of adventure and exploring, very appropriate for a boy.   Most of history people were sailing west to find new land, so it has a very adventurous boy feel to me. Other things that people associate with West are: modern things such as western medicine, sunsets, cowboys, California. This makes West whimsical and manly to me at the same time.

Because it is so close to Wes/ Wesley, I dont think people will think that it is too out there of a name, but he would definitely be unique.  This is also the drawback of the name, I think the T is quite soft in this name and people will assume he is the more common Wes and not West.  I also think that the T blends too much with our last name that sounds like Tray-grrrr... so say it together and you will understand what I mean  West Traygrrr, sounds like Wes Traygrrr, the T gets lost.  So this is the reason it may not be quite at the top of my list, but I still love the name for all of the other above reasons.

Nesting... for someone else's baby

Nesting... for someone else's baby

I am at that age (27) where all of my friends are having babies.. it seem like everywhere I turn there is a damn pregnant lady.  They glow, they talk about names, they talk about boobs, they talk about how difficult pregnancy is, they have 50 facebook posts a day about it.. they plan for the baby room.  Sometimes it can be just so frustrating to know that it is their time to have a baby and not mine, but frankly I like babies way to much to be too bitter yet.

 So one of my friends is having a boy.  She has decided that her baby room theme is going to be little monsters.  The hitch with this is that most things need to be custom made because this is not a common theme.  So she is painting individual monsters for the room, a lady is making the bedding out of the chosen fabric.. and I of course volunteered to make the hand made mobile.  So this weekend I was working on it.. it is going to have 5 custom monsters with 4 stars and a moon.  Here is the inspiration mobile.

Actually, I thrive on this DIY crap.  I have about 30 projects lined up at any given time.  A friends first baby always needs something special.. so this is what I decided to do.  Hand sewing little monsters is quite the time suck.. but I plopped down in front of some trash TV and got to work.

As the night wore on and I was hand stitching on button eyeballs the thought occurred to me, that this is exactly what nesting is.. taking way too much time to make hand made objects a baby doesnt need just to make the room perfect.  Its really for the mother and not the baby.. to prepare her for the babies arrival.  So there I sat and saturday, preparing for someone elses baby, neglecting my list of chores and having fun watching trash TV.  Some day I will be nesting for myself.. and you better believe I expect some freaking hand made items from every one of my friends. 

Her chosen bedding

Couple of my hand made monsters 

The Reveal

The Reveal

I think one of the biggest things I am going to miss about not actually getting pregnant is telling everyone that I am pregnant.  Since I was little I had this amazing idea that I would tell my husband just the way Becky on Full House did.  Do you remember that episode?  She made a baby themed dinner.. with baby shrimp, baby corn and babyback ribs.. silly I know, but hey it was a dream.  Instead, we will have a well thought out plan and about 5 months of paperwork before we are entered into the adoption system.  So technically once the papers are signed, our baby is on the way.. they call this being "paper pregnant", but of course the time of baby's arival is very unknown and could be from 24 hours to 1.5 years.  So I dont think there will ever be a big baby reveal to my husband.

Second.. We wont be having those cute photo shoots where people take professional pictures to send pregnancy announcements out.. and then end with an ultrasound of the little sea monkey.  There will be no grand face book post, no pee stick to save (why people do this one is beyond me), there will be no we are pregnant announcement at all... no glory

Third.. this is a new one, but people are doing those gender reveal parties.  This is where you have all of your friends and family over to tell them if you are having a boy or a girl. A lot of times the parents dont even know.. they get the sex of the baby from the ultrasound tech in an envelope and take it to a baker to make a blue or pink cake covered in white frosting... then in front of your guests you cut the cake and all find out at the same time. Usually they have a poll going to see who can guess correctly and some sort of games.. like if you are craving certain things then you must be having a girl.  I am a sucker for parties and am sad we will miss out on this opportunity..  Love this party idea

I do think that we may do a "paper pregnant" announcement.  When Rich and I finish all the paper work and become activated at the adoption agency.. I think we will send out mailers letting everyone know that we are expecting to be expecting.  This may be as close to the "big announcement" as I can get.  The trouble with doing this is that if we do end up having a long wait.. I forsee many people asking constantly when we are getting a baby and having no answer for them and it just being a painful long conversation.  So there is the downside.  

Just have to keep telling myself that I want to be a mom, and when that happens this stuff will seem insignificant... but its hard to think like that, to me I know I will be missing out on what most people get to do 9 months before baby is born. 

Sarcasm

Sarcasm