Another day

My dad received two blood transfusions today (from a young Spanish woman he hoped - that is his humor). He is not doing much better. His body is weak and he is barely eating anything. Just a little pudding. The last time he had a sepsis/pneumonia last year, he felt better much sooner. But the long fight and the chemotherapy have weakened his body. He said to my mom today that he doesn't know whether he will wake up tomorrow.

I told my mom that she needed to tell me if she wanted me to come. She told me she was concerned about the long travel for Lilli, because it was so hard on me last time. I told her that this was because I was sick. She then promised me to tell me if she needs me.

I gave her a little book about angels for Mother's day. It is about how an Angel is there for you to consolidate you if you feel you can't go on. She really likes this book and brought it to the hospital today and was reading it while my dad was sleeping. At least it seems like she is drawing some strength out of this.

Another day

My dad received two blood transfusions today (from a young Spanish woman he hoped - that is his humor). He is not doing much better. His body is weak and he is barely eating anything. Just a little pudding. The last time he had a sepsis/pneumonia last year, he felt better much sooner. But the long fight and the chemotherapy have weakened his body. He said to my mom today that he doesn't know whether he will wake up tomorrow.

I told my mom that she needed to tell me if she wanted me to come. She told me she was concerned about the long travel for Lilli, because it was so hard on me last time. I told her that this was because I was sick. She then promised me to tell me if she needs me.

I gave her a little book about angels for Mother's day. It is about how an Angel is there for you to consolidate you if you feel you can't go on. She really likes this book and brought it to the hospital today and was reading it while my dad was sleeping. At least it seems like she is drawing some strength out of this.

Update on my dad

Thank you so much for your prayers and thoughts. I can't tell you how much it means to me to have so many people praying for my dad and our family. When dh and I were praying last night, I felt like God was telling me that my dad will survive the night and that I shouldn't worry so much.

This morning I woke up really early and because of the time difference, I started calling my mom. Of course she wouldn't pick up the phone because she was in the hospital. I called my brother's cellphone. No answer. I ended up calling the hospital about a million times because the connection was cut off several times. Finally thanks Vonage I got through and ended up talking to a nurse. I was wondering whether she was going to be the one to tell me that my dad died last night.

Fortunately he has survived the night. It turns out he has pneumonia. Not a good thing to have if you are battling lung cancer at the same time. The doctor said that he is not doing very well. I didn't expect this to happen so fast. I haven't even talked to him a single time since I came back to Venezuela. I am so not ready to loose him.

Prayers appreciated

Just got off the phone with my mom. My dad is in the hospital. He is septic. My mom and the doctor believe that he might not survive the night. I would appreciate any prayers.

10 months post - a little late

Lilli turned 10 months on Sunday. We were at the beach for the weekend of Memorial Day. While it was a very basic place - we didn't have any fresh water supply in our lodge - we really enjoyed spending time as a family at the beach. Lilli had a great time. The first day she was a little frightened by the waves, but the two next days she just loved crawling around in the water, eating sand, spending time with Daddy, etc. It was just great. It was a two hour drive from Caracas, so not to bad either. Lilli ate all the food that they served us at the lodge. I felt like in heaven not having to cook for a couple of days.

Lilli's upper teeth are coming in. The right one is peeking through first. She can tolerate it o.k., but is a little more irritable than usual. She still is not walking by herself (except short distances), but I have a feeling that we are getting close. She seems to be getting safer in standing. She is smiling all the time at everybody, waving goodbye, blowing kisses. She is just supercute.

I also started working last week. The maid is watching Lilli while I am at work and I am only working part-time. This works really well, because it gives me a chance to get out of the house and talk to other adults. I will hire a nanny two days a week in addition, because I just got a second part-time job. It is nice to have an additional stream of income, even if it is very small...

A quick recap from my last post: that was the saddest birthday I ever had. I didn't get to talk to my Dad (he had tried calling while I was out and hasn't called since), and while I received tons of congratulations via email and facebook, I didn't get a single present. I had told dh before that the beach could be my birthday present. And it kind of was. The first night there he surprised me with a huge cake to share with everybody there. Very sweet. But I still had hoped for a little extra surprise: a facial, a haircut, pedicure, whatever... Women. Men will never understand us. When we say, we don't want anything does this not mean that you don't have to get us anything. It means you should still get us something as a little surprise. It doesn't have to be expensive, but it should be something we would enjoy...

5 years ago

It is my 35th birthday today. Five years ago I had a really big party at my parent's house. I had invited friends from all over the country to join us. We started on Friday night with a visit to a restaurant, had a guided tour through the city on Saturday morning and the party in the evening. On Sunday we had a farewell breakfast for everyone.

I was terrified of turning 30. I felt like an old woman and thought back to the days when I was 21. I only I could turn back time I thought back then. The fact that I wasn't married, made me sad.

When I was 16 I always thought by the time I am 25 I will be married with two children. The number 30 had something so threatening in my eyes.

In Northern Germany when you turn 30 as a woman and you aren't married you have to clean doorhandles. So my friends brought these doorhandles mounted on a piece of wood that were "dirty" with toothpaste and let me clean them. They gave me a headpiece and a cleaning lady dress. Whenever I had finished one they put more toothpaste on. It seemed like I was never going to be done. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoy thinking back now. I said to DH yesterday: five years ago we were so innocent. Little did we know about what was going to happen. Infertility hadn't kicked our asses back then. My dad didn't have his stroke. He didn't suffer from lung cancer. Life seemed so easy back then. We were happy and didn't worry about the future.

Here we go five years later: I am turning the corner for conception today. Everybody knows that trying to conceive when you are over 35 is more difficult and is considered high risk. Not that conception was ever easy for us, but I always thought at least I am under 35. Now that advantage point is gone. How I feel about it? The pain is still there, but having a child makes it a little more bearable. But if I could turn back time, I might turn it back five years.

Unsolicited Advice

It has finally happened. At a happy hour last week this lady walked up to us and told us that she wanted to give us a recommendation. The shoes Lilli was wearing were bad for her and we should buy orthopedic shoes. She also recommended a brand. I know she didn't mean bad, but I felt like she was telling us we are bad parents for letting our daughter wear the wrong shoes.

For the record: I only had put shoes on her because she sometimes wants to walk (holding on to our hands) and I didn't want her to walk on the dirty floor barefoot. Usually she is not wearing any shoes at all because this is best. Of course I don't want her to get problems with her feet. Buying shoes for her is on the top of my priority list. But please Lady, give me a break... It is none of your business.

On Saturday we were at a birthday party. Lilli got up and walked through the room. Dh and I were just stunned.

We installed her big girl car seat yesterday. It is still facing backwards, but soon we will be able to turn it around. Lilli's long legs are kind of squeezed in right now.

Not what I thought it would be

I promised to blog about the trip to my family. It was really different from what I had expected it to be. The flight over there was pretty easy because Lilli was sleeping about 5 hours. I didn't really sleep a lot because I was always on the lookout for her jumping out of her baby bassinet. When we finally arrived, my brother picked us up from the airport. He always does it, when we ask him to and I am very grateful to be blessed with such a great brother and Lilli with such a great uncle.

We then drove to my parent's house and I was all excited. I had just seen them for Christmas, but my Dad didn't know it was going to be a surprise present for him for his 70th birthday. When we pulled into the driveway he was sitting outside. I let my brother go first and pulled Lilli out of the car. Finally my Dad noticed us. He was putting his hands in front of his face. He was so happy to see us as we clearly didn't expect our visit. Later that day I went to the city with my brother to buy a highchair for Lilli while my Mom was watching Lilli.

But the surprise and joy of this first day wore off quickly. It turns out that my Dad is very depressive. I mean, who wouldn't be after a stroke and with lung cancer? Nothing can be done the right way. He doesn't like the food my Mom cooks, she puts his clothes in the wrong place, etc. They are basically fighting all day long. Yelling at each other, etc. I think the problem is also that they are together 24 hours/day. My Dad is frustrated and the only person he can take his frustrations out on is my Mom. My Mom has so much work all day long with the house, garden and my Dad, that she is frustrated, too. It is a vicious cycle.

One day I talked to the doctor about getting my Dad on some antidepressants. The doctor came to our house and talked to my Dad and my Dad said that he didn't think it was necessary, but when I told my Dad how angry he is all the time, finally he agreed that it would be o.k. to take something. The doctor told me to get the prescription the next day. So I went down there and it turns out that all the antidepressants he had in mind cause epilepsy. My Dad has had epileptic seizures after his stroke that we finally have under control with medication. So we all thought, it probably wasn't a good idea to put him under the risk of epileptic seizures through the antidepressants. I felt horrible that there doesn't seem to be anything we can do about it.

Another day, I picked my Dad up from his chemotherapy with Lilli. It was so depressing to go through the practice and see all those people hanging on the IVs receiving their chemotherapies. I brought Lilli on purpose to cheer my Dad (and hopefully some of the other patients up). He was nearly ready. I noticed that his arm was unusually swollen. It turned out that they had given him the chemotherapy in his arm instead of his vein. They even blamed him because he didn't say anything. He told me later that when he felt pain, nobody was around to look after him. Because of his earlier vocal cords cancer (in 2002) he couldn't scream for help. Fortunately he didn't have any complications from this incident.

His aggressions even turned against me a couple of times. And it was very painful because he can be so mean. I realize that he is sick and all, but it was still hard. He threw a handkerchief with snot in it towards me once after he had threatened to beat me with his walking stick. All of this because I wanted to watch some TV while he was reading. My Dad loves to read and everything else is less important than him reading. I had even turned on the volume on a really low level. I was so angry after that behaviour I said some things I shouldn't have said.

The next day he treated me like everything was fine and this incident had never happened.

The other problem was that my Mom is reconstructing parts of the house. So we had to empty out those rooms (her bedroom and her kitchen amongst them) and were basically working every day.

Some friends from out of town had wanted to visit me, but she asked me to cancel the visit.

My Mom didn't really spend a lot of time with Lilli. She took her sometimes in the mornings when I had to shower, but that was basically it. She was working all day long and not really enjoying having her granddaughter around. I felt horrible of having brought Lilli in that difficult environment between my parents. I don't want her to remember her grandparents as fighting all the time. I don't want her to think this is normal.

The last evening when I came back from buying bread (for my Mom) she wasn't around. I had thought she might want to use our last evening to spend some time with Lilli and take her to bed at least. But she was working in her garden. I always feel like her garden is more important than anything else for her. Like us.

On our last morning the day of our flight my Mom gave me 50 Euros for "Shoes for Lilli". I felt really bad. She is spending a couple of hundred of thousands of Euros to reconstruct the house (she is not taking out a mortgage for this, she has the money in the bank) and she is not even offering to pay the gas to the airport. Or part of the flight (since they don't come visit us). Nothing. I have my birthday next Wednesday and she knows that she won't be able to buy me something.

I was really hurt by this especially because she still owed me some money for moving boxes I had bought (15 Euros) anyway. It just makes me sad that she has all that money, but she doesn't want to help us with our expenses while we are struggling to make ends meet. We still haven't paid off our adoption. And we still paid the flight to go to visit them. Because seeing them and spending time with them was more important for us than anything else. More important than books or a garden.

Oh, what a flight...

I don't even know where to start to update you on everything that has been going on with us. Therefore I'll start with Miss Lillian.

She has started crawling the day we left for Europe. Poor daddy didn't get to see it before our trip. However, Lilli has a very strange way of doing it. One leg stays straight while the other one is moving around. But she doesn't seem to be willing to be convinced to do it any other way. It is Lilli's way. She has started saying "Da da!" all day long. I first thought it meant "Daddy", but now everything is Da da. When she wants to go somewhere she is pointing with her finger and says "Da da!" She also is waving like a champ and is blowing kisses (well, actually she is doing everything except the blowing thing). But it is very cute. If I ask her how tall she is, she is raising her arms up in the air and showing me how tall she is. She can also point to "Mommy's nose" and "Mommy's mouth".

She is eating little pieces very nicely by herself. Lilli loves cheese and if there is cheese on her tray, everything else stands back. But she also enjoys pasta and chicken. And most other foods we introduced her to. She has an amazing personality, always in a good mood (except if she is tired) and always looking to get a smile from someone. She is charming everybody.

Even the crew in the airplane during our long 10 hour airplane ride. I guess the stewards would have really liked to take her home. I had a really hard time during the flight. I had gotten sick the day before the flight with a very sore throat and a cold (no, not the swine flu, but rather a really nasty sinusitis) and had to blow my nose all the time. I hadn't slept a lot the two previous nights. Lilli was very active. She wasn't into sleeping so much as there were so many interesting things to see in the airplane. All the people that went to the bathroom were standing right in front of us, waiting and flirting with Lilli who was sitting in her baby bassinet. It was a long fight to get that bassinet, but it helps, especially if you are traveling alone on an international flight (Lufthansa offers them, I don't know about other airlines who do). Strangely instead of blocking the bassinet seats for people with children, they give them away to random travelers which ticks me off every time. This time I waited and waited at the gate until the end of boarding when they finally told the woman in the baby bassinet seat that refused to leave her seat that she would have two seats for herself if she changed. After we boarded I told the man sitting next to me (squeezed in between two more or less noisy and inquisitive babies) that there were free seats in the airplane and he happily left. It was nice to have an additional seat for Lilli as well.

When we finally arrived (have I mentioned that 10 hour flights can be very long when traveling with a baby by yourself?) I was sick and groggy. All I wanted to do was go to bed.

But lovely husband had cooked a wonderful meal in our slow cooker, so we enjoyed the "beer chicken with corn and rice". It was my first mother's day after all. Hubby had bought beautiful flowers and gave me a big box of chocolates and a beautiful silver bracelet. It was - despite the circumstances of my health - a wonderful day. I remember so well the last couple of mother's days where my heart was longing for a child. It was so hard to be at church during those days when they honored the mothers - and to not break out in tears. Most times I didn't succeed. Every year I hoped that it would finally be the last without a baby and this year, miraculously it is. It was the best mother's day of my life so far.

I wonder how Lilli's first mom felt on Sunday. It must have been hard for her for a completely different reason. I recently read that the Saturday before Mother's day is Birthmother's day. Has any one of you adopted moms (sorry, if I haven't caught up with all your blogs) honored your babies birthmother in a special way for that day? Or for mother's day? Or would that just add to their grief?

I will update on my trip another day. Now it's time to catch up with your blogs.