did you know???

how did you feel about terri schiavo’s husband having the right to terminate her life?

how do you feel about a hospital deciding to withhold nutrition to a baby because they felt palliative care was the best option?

if i understsand correctly: the baby, emmie rose, was born in july at 23 weeks. weighing 1lb 5oz, she survived for 44 days. if a micropreemie survives the first month, their chances are looking pretty good. emmie rose was moving toward the two month mark when she was struck with NEC, an intestinal issue common in preemies. life threatening. the doctors operated, but soon declared that the child would die. and they would not intervene. apparently, not intervene also included cutting off not just medicine, but food.

here is the parents blog:

http://23weeks.blogspot.com/

agree or disagree with the hospital’s policy and decision, this is a heartbreaking situation.

*************

did you know that this so called peaceful coup in thailand is also quiet?

quiet because residents no longer have access to typepad and overseas tv channels like cnn or the beeb. here’s an email i received last night at around midnight bangkok time from a friend there. (she hasn’t responded to any of my emails today, nor have any of my other friends who live in bangkok. my calls aren’t getting through. i tried calling the hospital, just to see if that call would get though, no luck.)

actually right now i can barely type, my fingers are shaking badly

from being woken up by an sms from a friend that said "school closed

tomorrow, wednesday, due to military coup". local news channels are

all just playing thai muzak and flashing images of the king and his

subjects. i can see patches of international cnn, but it keeps cutting

out and the other news channels like bbc are cut out.

just this week thaksin shinawatra has been in cuba attending the

summit of the world’s ‘nonaligned nations’, ie venezuela, iran, north

korea, and my husband and i have been sardonically joking about how he

talks out of boths sides of his mouth, cosying up first to the states

and britain, and now…hugo chavez?! well apparently the thai military

have had enough as well, so for the first time in 15 years this

country’s thin veil of attempts at democracy has been lifted again.

my isp is the telephone organisation of thailand, and i noticed before

going to bed that i couldn’t access typepad to update my blog. now i

realise that i can’t access any typepad blogs at all, much less the

homepage from which to work on my own. following the suit of china,

which has blocked all typepad access due to the blogs’ subversive

potential, perhaps t.o.t. set their servers to block typepad (and

other blog hosts as well; i have yet to check).

by theway, as I’ve typed, cnn has gone out for good. tess, if this blows into something

big, and if typepad continues to be blocked, could you please consider

quoting this on your own blog if you allude to the coup? readers need

to know that the new (temporary?) powers-that-be in thailand are

preventing people from seeing the news and apparently from spreading

our views of it. call me alarmist, but a mid-evening coup accompanied

by the cutting of all news broadcasts doesn’t soothe my jangled

nerves.

****************

there are a lot of prayers going out tonight, for people around the world. in "free" countries and in countries that don’t know what they are.

the secret of my success

my girlfriend sandi has to give a talk on success tomorrow evening.

success, like discipline, has accumulated a warped meaning over the years. when i say describe success, someone is more likely to respond, "financial!" "recognition!" which is the second definition of success, ("the attainment of wealth, fame or position") than the first, which is simply, "doing what was desired or attempted".

i consider myself to be very successful. why? because we can live in a city we love, and by making the necessary cutbacks to our lifestyle and goals, i don’t have to go out of the home to work, i can stay home with the children, which is where we feel i should be right now. those are my goals, and i have them.

my definition of success does not gel with many others, who consider a 15 per cent annual increase in take home pay, supporting a younger relative through school, promotions, working for a specific charity, the ability to see one new country per year (that was my old one), restoring a family home,  etc, their definition of success.

if i could give you some advice:

KNOW your definition of success, otherwise how will you know it once you achieve it?

be CONFIDENT in your definition of success. who is anyone to tell you what you want is wrong? being a stay at home mum is successful? unless i am jk rowling, can i really say that with a straight face? yes i can, because this is what i want. and even better, those around me want it too.

success can be a passenger, or a driver. you can chase it, or it can be beside you. don’t let it shape you entirely, but don’t be afraid to take confidence in your successes. and your failures.

failures.

those are the things people want to hear about. those are what make you interesting. people love to hear the rags to riches stories, but not as much as they love to hear how a person toppled off the pedastal.

but people love the failure stories. tabloids don’t make money by reporting that brad and angelina look "So Happy"…reporting their rows sells.

know your definition of success, and own up to your failures. we’ve all got an interesting success story or failure. what’s yours?

cheeky!

an email from one of those anon sites!

The reason those chicks are not the million dollar models is because they are not the ideal. Ask any guy who he would rather have, that Geisha Girl or someone like Jessica Simpson, and he’ll say Jessica Simpson. You’re missing the point. In the last 30 years cross cultural marriages have become acceptable and typical in Asia. But they are not a first choice, they are an option. And for lots of ugly guys, a great option.

maybe i did miss the point. but anon, i’m safe in assuming you’re not rupert murdoch, right?

on to a very cute anecdote.

you know how at some stage, your children actually believe the parent to be absolutely one hundred percent correct at all times. this could be because the parent speaks with authority, is usually right (this would be the category into which magnificent charles falls under), sweeps everyone along before they can question the decision, talks so loudly that children confuse that for the right decision, or whatever.

but here is a conversation between my friend susan and her four year old son.

mummy, it is true, you know everything.

well, yes, i do, but how do you know that i know everything?

well, i know that you know everything because when i wake up in the middle of the night, and you tell me to go and do a wee, even though i don’t think i have to and i ALWAYS have wee. ALWAYS.

have a great day.

the trend train

it is a well documented and growing phenonmenon: caucasian men from europe/north america marrying asian women.

while many men enter into their mixed race marriages for love and compatibility, others for other reasons. "she is so hot. until i came to asia no girl looked at me, and suddenly the most beautiful thin girls in the world were attracted to me."

in hong kong, it is a difficult life for a single caucasian female. the competition for single caucasian men is fierce. just read the personal ads: at least 40 per cent of them state they are looking for a western man. very few of the ads request a caucasian female.

many men describe asian women as ideal: their petite frames make them feel ultra masculine being an added bonus. their beauty overwhelming.

however

in luxury print ads, caucasian women are typically the models used to display/enhance the product. buy this and you can date me is the not so sublimal message. yet more and more men prefer asian women.

why aren’t asian women figuring in these ads? goodness knows there are many stunning asian models out there. many men state they prefer asian women, so why are caucasian women still upheld as the "ultimate" partner?

marketing companies spend enough on test audiences to follow trends. mixed race marriages are not limited to asia. obviously they feel that the miss universes out there will sell more than an asian model would.

there is a piece missing to all of this. i’m looking for it. maybe being in asia prevents me from seeing the puzzle. there are a few options, none of them palatable.

why is it that the popular and prized first choice isn’t prized internationally?

ultraparanoid during bangkok ultrasound

with gratitude i report that my annual health check went well. looks like i may have to get some surgery on my uterus, my fibroids are growing on the wrong wall and too quickly. trust me to have an ambitious fibroid. but it can be removed laproscopically, probably, which is good news.

i don’t give the health check up much thought going into it, but every year, when i lay down for the internal organ ultrasound, i get a little paranoid. especially since i cannot understand what the x-ray folk are saying. after a couple of minutes the little doubts start darting through the haze of my minimal discomfort.

the x-ray tech seems to be spending a lot of time in that spot.

i try to dismiss that thought, to no avail. yes, it seems she is.

click, she freezes the image.

why? what is wrong?

click. there she goes again, same spot. she didn’t move enough for it to be a different organ…same organ. why did she freeze two images of the same thing is nothing is wrong?

she wouldn’t.

ergo – something is wrong.

from then on, my mind battles as the logical side of my brain tries to track where the ultrasound probe is going, while the fearful side of me starts imagining which organ they have found a shadow, or lump in. i harken back to the human chart and try to remember where each of the organs are, but instead i just remember what colours they were. in desperation i try to remember playing operation, and where the organs were, but i only remember the funny bone, and today, that is not relevant.

i try to fight this rising panic off, and focus on following the reaction of my skin as the gel spreads against it, which is the best way i have of keeping track of where the probe is, and where it is pausing.

one mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi

i want to ask what is wrong but i don’t. this is a routine ultrasound, because of the history of cancer in my family they are being very careful.

is it just me or is the probe coming back to the same spot and just examining it from different angles?

it is, yes, yes it is. im sure of it.

is the ultrasound tech moving the probe that way so spread the gel evenly or because she needs to get yet another look?

why am i being asked to hold my breath? my lungs? they need to measure the spots on my lungs? have the 20 smuggled cigarettes of my youth caught up with me? if nothing was wrong, surely i wouldn’t need to do this inhale exhale thing more than five times. i have done it 12 times now.

and holy mother mary….a doctor just walked in. did the tech call for him? i didn’t hear her. but then again, that could be explained by the fact that she only speaks THAI.

he repeats the ultrasound.

a doctor…this is not good.

still, i refuse to ask what is wrong, because i know i will not be told until they want to tell. like painting taught the karate kid how to block, seeing infertility and epilepsy docs have taught me that you don’t get answers until they’re ready.

finally, the pressure is off my stomach. i don’t realise this because i am weighted down with fear. i don’t try to stare at the ultrasound screen. even when there were babies in the ultrasound screen i could rarely understand what everything meant…ultrasounds just look like one grey where’s waldo’s to me.

‘miss terrrreeeesa muhvnornen (not correct way to pronounce, but i appreciate the effort) leeon..you may move now."

it’s the tech again.

the doctor is still there.

"everything looks okay." he goes to to explain that the fibroid is growing and that my gallbladder is still oversized but i confess i didn’t hear much. i am luxuriating in the world "okay".

i am okay.

i know i could get hit by a bus crossing the street (especially since i am not the most pedantic observer of cross walks) or food poisoning or whatever or whenever..but having charles beside me and h earing the doctor declare us both to be healthy individuals was such a benediction. not that we had been worried, and not that this declaration guarantees us a longer life…but it sweetened the weekend for us, somehow. for those few paranoid minutes, we faced the concept of a shortened life. and suddenly we realised those fears were not coming to fruition. they were just fears and we were just fine.

we had a wonderful weekend together, and sunday morning, i woke up and knew that despite having reservations to fly home the next morning, i wanted to fly home that evening with magnificent. so, i called the agent and changed flights (at a cost of $100us), cancelled my next day appointment and hotel reservations, and got a facial, before heading out to the airport.

and at the airport, we were upgraded to business class.

i won the lottery, for another year.

noxema hopes and dancing woes

i have a not so secret dream: i would love to be a spokesperson for noxema.

i am a true noxema girl, i have been using it since i was 12 years old. i have always loved that smell. cleanliness, youth, summer, showers.

15 years ago, noxema came up with a campaign featuring women in their 50’s and i was thrilled. the women weren’t modelly 50 year old christie brinklie types (complete with erring husbands) they were regular women. maybe maybe i hoped, i could be a noxema woman. because i AM a noxema girl now. all i have to do is keep using. i wouldn’t have to pretend. i do love the product. and maybe they would give me some gratis. don’t tell my dad, but i would do it for free, though.

you can bet that i slathered myself in noxema following yesterday’s tess meets potential avian flu duck feet incident. wow. that was really something. but the kids liked it and are looking forward to going back to "playgoop".

the kids are also liking dora the explorer. i started them watching dora this year in hopes of weaning them off the wiggles. i was getting tired of doing the same old wiggles dance routines over and over again. and of course, since we don’t get dora on television here, i didn’t know that dora has it’s own vaguely addicting bits.

and my dear readers, none of you mentioned it either.

so, now all my kids are attempting to snap. not because they are going to form their own doo-wop gang and make a little extra cash, but because they want to be a real authentic swiper, and snap disappointedly to accompany their "awww maaaaaaaaaaaan!" nice. very classy.

and of course, then there is the fact that at the end of just about every dora episode (and granted, we only have six), there is the triumphant dora dance. she swings her arms back and forth with her silly monkey and maybe diego the cousin…"we did it, we did it! we worked together and we worked real hard and we did it!" oh yes, mummy do the dora dance" (which i am getting quite good at) is a popular request in the house. at least with the wiggles i could vary my routine , but celluloid dora only offers me one dance. she’s an explorer for goodness sake; i expected her to be a little more adventurous and to offer me a little more variety. but apparently not.

aawwww maaan!

rubber duckie you’re so fun

today the triplets joined a cantonese speaking playgroup. it is very local, and in a very colonial old building, with high ceilings, lots of space and sunshine. interestingly, there are only five kids in the class, and four of them are blonde. the other blondie is charlie, who is sebastian’s friend annie’s younger brother. you have seen pictures of charlie before, he is the trip’s age, quite verbal and determined, but not in the same way that annie is determined. (if you forget who annie is, go back to early july when i took them for shoe shine pictures, remember the shoe shines? the girl with the curls is annie. always has been.)

so the four walked into the cantonese school quite confidently, looking like blonde bounty hunters. they were wary of the talking puppet (how come the hands were moving?) but liked the exercises, and the learning. one of the fun learning counting exercises was hiding a bucket of squeaky little plastic ducks and then each child was given a bucket and told to collect the little rubber duckies. they happily raced around the room, trying to recall where they had hidden the yellow escapees. then it was back to the circle, where everyone counted their bounty. yat, yee, sam, sey, mm, lok…

of course the triplets aren’t counting like that, but they were getting the point.

at one point the teacher had the kids sit down and brought out something covered in aluminium foil. having been to my share of these playschool things, i cast my practised eye to the the clock and thought, hmm, a little early for snack, but maybe since it’s the first day…

she asked everyone to put their fingers under the foil and feel the content. i caught the colour and thought it was chips. but the substance made me think of tofu.

she ripped off the foil and i found myself staring at duck feet ( i actually thought they were chicken at first). REAL DUCK. feathers, quacking…that sort of duck. except for the feet (legs?) were no longer attached to the body and the feet (legs?) were definitely in the deceased category.

the teacher pulled out some paper and paint, and picked up a duck foot, and said that we should daub the foot in the paint, then press it on the paper. she placed a foot on the green, yellow, blue, purple, brown, red and black paint and told us to go to it. i picked up a foot and sela let me know she would not be touching it. for whatever reasons. fine. i gamely pressed on.

and of course, at a time like this, i am looking around the colours and wondering,

"hey, i’m working with duck, aren’t they supposed to serve it with orange?"

and then we had snack. biscuits and plums.

not caught, no cot

the minute people found out charles and i were expecting triplets, many announced, "i bet you will now have one naturally". they said it in a knowing sort of voice.

what is so unnatural about conceiving children in a laboratory? that the woman is passed out? don’t know what part of the world you’re from, folks, but let me reassure you, it is not uncommon for children to be created while one or both partners are passed out. (or pretending to be).

three years post triplets, the predictions for their miracle sibling continue. magnificent chalres and i continue along in our non birth control manner. we’re careful-ish with dates, but not extraordinarily. the best way to describe our birth control is to say we are confident in our infertility. i’ve got fibroids growing all over the place, i barely ovulate…not a good candidate for pregnancy. not to worry.

yet people like to believe we will have another baby, and thus have plenty to say when they hear we are ridding ourselves of baby gear.

to be honest, losing the baby gear is tough.

there was the little white crib, sebastian’s fourth home. his first home was my chest where he slept for the first two nights at the matilda hospital. what a good baby he was. the third night, he slept on charles chest. the fourth night, he slept in a a4 box that charles lined with a blanket for him (can you tell we had experience taking in stray animals? but not so much experience with kids at the time?). and after fretting that the box wasn’t such a great home, he was moved to the little white crib.

the little white crib was also home to the triplets. first jasper, then sela, then jasper and sela, then jasper, sela and carys. they slept together side by side, swaddled like sausages in their casings. until it was time for jasper and carys to find their own little white cribs. (sela got the little white crib because it was apparent from the first that she was the one who would try to climb out of the crib first and lo and behold, she was. the little white crib was deeper than the other two.)

the little white crib has teethmarks of rage from "undeserved" timeouts, dents from falls, absorbed tears…the little white crib was the scene of where every mother has that watermark moment in her life, when her child raises their arms to be lifted up.

the little white crib has been searched as thoroughly as any suspected drug thief for hidden soothers, the little white crib almost shone in the darkness when sweaty children were coughing and getting over three day sicknesses.

the little white crib is just a symbol of days gone by.

i think that’s the problem. they are days gone by. i certainly dont want to relive those days with my four or any more, but letting go of the physical is such a definite acknowledgement those days are gone.

today i was lying reading "Franklin in the dark" to sebastian and i was stroking his leg and i realised that there is going to be a time when he doesn’t let me scratch his calf.

i wonder if i will want to, when he is all grown up, if i will ever get the urge just to cuddle him again.

i have always disliked the book "LOVE YOU FOREVER" thinking that the mother is a little bit off her rocker, but as i get rid of the cots and rockers in my house, i am beginning to feel a little sorry for her.

"i can’t believe that with all the unwanted children in the world just waiting for a good home that people spend so much on infertility treatments."

why do so many fertile’s of the world believe it is the sole duty of the infertile couples to adopt? the natural order of things, as it may? WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWHY. what exempts you, oh fertile ones*, from adopting? because you can conceive naturally you don’t HAVE TO?

a woman had the gall to ask an infertile friend of mine the above question the other day. she knew my friend had just endured another negative ivf cycle, and felt it appropriate to ask. my friend, was silent. however, a few minutes later, she found the woman and asked her, "why didn’t you and your husband adopt?"

the response? come on, i am sure you can predict it. say it with me…..

"we don’t need to, we can have our own."

what gives these fertiles the right to judge infertile couples on the quest for a child? isn’t their road tough enough without condemnation? don’t they have the right to spend the money in the manner they wish? certainly they could have adopted. but instead of eating dinner out the other night, the fertiles could have given a child in a third world country clean drinking water for one year. vitamins. a blanket, maybe. oh, that’s different, is it? excuse me, i wasn’t aware.

is adoption only for infertile couples? as someone who hasn’t adopted (but tried before pursuing fertility treatment) it seems that a large percentage of people who adopt have had fertility issues. it is "traditional" to have children "the good old fashioned way". fair enough. it seems odd, having a baby where drugs and doctors are only involved in delivery instead of at conception (not to mention the petri dish). or as magnificent says, "i’m the father of our babies, but our doctor is the man who got you pregnant."

i’m digressing.

i have never adopted a child so i cannot adequately write what it IS. but i know what it isn’t. adoption is not a BURDEN that automatically falls to infertiles by default.

* i don’t mean all fertile people. you know i don’t.

goodbye mila

i didn’t have time to post this earlier, but one of our helpers, mila, left our family.

as lovingly and as quietly as she entered our home, mila exited in late july, after cleaning the flat from top to bottom.

why did she leave? no acrimony, no amah drama, rather she has moved to kuwait to be with her husband and her son, who have opened a canteen there. i don’t know more details than that. all i know is that for the first time in her married life, she is going to be with her husband.

mila’s exit brought back a plethora of memories of mila’s earliest days with us. when the babies first came home and mila proved herself to be the true baby whisperer of the family. how she would lay her worn hands on carys’ back, and slowly slowly, our colicy baby would stop the anguished crying. how she could judge which swallows meant, "i can take another ounce or two" and which ones meant, "if you give me any more i will vomit." very few babies decorated milas shoulder with "cottage cheese carpet", but the rest of us, less tuned in to baby language, often were surprised when a seemingly innocent cough turned into a white waterfall of milk and parental despair. all we were doing was trying to fatten them up….it was such a victory to get even a few extra millimetres into them…and then despair/self hatred when they vomitted everything up again and we were back at square one again with the added bonus of a sticky floor, carpets and couch.

as time passed and the babies thrived, jasper developed a strong penchant for mila. she was the softest touch and would carry him around most. sela and sebastian were most mila free, seb had his own life and sela is a lita-girl…she loves lita and has laughingly been called, "lita’s little shadow". sela is definitely lita’s favourite as well.

if de was throwing a ball with jasper, mila would often be with carys and the two of them, walking together or silently sitting holding hands was a common sight. carys was very fond of mila and it was definitely to mila that she would run if she was in trouble, or had hurt herself. mila was very good at soothing. jasper would also run to mila in case of trouble, particularly if he was to blame.

so when mila approached me at the end of june, three days before our departure and told me that she knew it was terrible timing but this great job opportunity had come up for her, i told her if she wanted to take it, she must, and that we would of course write a great reference letter for her.

and she said that she would leave here in mid october.

mid october.

my kids loving her. my kids being away from her all summer, then returning home and being with her for six weeks, then her departing again.

i just didn’t see it working.

i told mila that i would rather she left over the summer, that this way was probably easiest on the kids.

the day we left was tough, not just because of the 18 hour flight to canada aspect, but because we had to say goodbye to mila. she was incredibly teary, as was i. i couldn’t think of her, i could only think of what she had been to our family. we weren’t a family with toddlers again, we were a family with sick infants and a two year old, with her soothing, praying and seeing us through relentless tango. mila. off to kuwait of all places. dependent on her wages on her son. the son that regularly asks her for money. living with the husband frequently would call requesting cash transfers. what can i do. she is a grown woman. i had to say goodbye.

she took many pictures and hugged all the kids tightly. jasper and sela commented "mila crying". we told sebastian mila was leaving and he told her goodbye and said that he loved her. we told him mila was going to live with her son and husband, just like mummy lives with her sons and daddy. seb thought that was great, as things should be.

as i hope things will be.

goodbye mila.