Adoption / baby questions

Let me strart this blog by saying I have been reading and trying to comment on most blogs for weeks now and it has been horrible. I have not been able most of the time and I have daily issues with blogger as well as with updating my blog, if anybody has any advice on this also please let me know. !

Somehow adoptions via our agency have stopped in the last 2 weeks (maybe due to vacations), but we are sure they will restart soon full force.

We are now expecting parents with an unknown due date. As I have mentioned here we can be matched any day now and we will probably only know one day in advance. It can also take up to 6 months or more. Its nerve racking, but I am reaching a place of peace now.

During these last weeks several questions have come to mind constantly and I wanted to reach out to the blogosphere which has been so very helpful during my IF/ Napro/ alternative medicine journey.

My questions are on the following subjects:
Breastfeeding/ bottle feeding
Key products for the baby
How to inform everybody and who should attend when they give us the baby
Books

BREASTFEEDING
Most probably I will not be able to do it. The reasons are: we do not know how old the baby will be, most probably older than 3 months so he/she will already been bottle fed all this time and will not be able to switch to my milk and also due to my hormonal issues. My local doctor is not very open to this due to all my medicines I normally take and has told me that it has taken me so long to be well hormonally that he would strongly advice against pumping myself with other hormones and getting off several of my normal ones. I have written to PPVI to ask them what they think, but my gut it telling me they will be of the same opinion.

This part is perhaps the hardest for me. My family is completly pro breastfeeding. My mom and sister always breastfed until it was no longer possible and I was raised with the belief that this was the very best way to give the baby have a good head start in life . In the last months I have also grown also far more health concious and giving soy or cows milk via the commercial formulas really worries me. The other thing is that I have always been a big believer in the communication between the baby and mother that happens via breast feeding.

So:

Any commercial formulas that are better than others?

Can I make my own milk and make it much healthier?

how can I establish the best link possible with the baby if I do not breastfeed?

Has anybody used one of those devices you attach to the breast to supplement when using only formula?

BABY PRODUCTS

We have the baby room almost ready. A crib, the bedding, several clothes, bottles, a baby monitor, many stuffed animals (without even realizing it I had been collecting some for our future baby), a guardian angel medal for the crib (its a tradition here to put a medal of a guardian angel or the Virgin on top of the crib with a bow to ask for protection for the baby) and also my sister and SIL have sent several packages of clothes. I also brought a type of baby wrap like the moby.

What have been the baby products that have been key for you? what couldn´t you live without?

BOOKS:

Which books would you recommend on adoption once the baby arrives or normal baby books?

These are the ones that I have already :
Before we decided to adopt I read the following books to better prepare (in addition to several Spanish ones):

Adopted for life by Russel Moore. A Christian book on adoption.
Keys to parenting and adopted child Kathy Lancaster
Adoption choosing it, living it, loving it by Dr. Ray Gaurendi My favourite one in English

General baby books:

Baby´s first year by Sandy and Marcie Jones I really like it

What to expect the first year from the same authors as What to expect when you are expecting.

any others that saved your life during the first months?

DELIVERING THE NEWS/ ATTENDING THE PRESENTATION

All the people close to us know full well that we are adopting, but we have decided to keep from the rest of the world this as private or on as needed to know basis. By the rest of the world I mean far away or long lost friends, some extended family and most of Face book. Why? because it was getting too stressful that everytbody has kept asking when the baby was coming and since we do not know when it was making us very nervous .

Daily questions that we did not know how to answer. Also some extended family members have some strong opinions about adoption and we did not want them to be saying anything to upset us during this time. They are not close to us and we are sure they will come around when the baby arrives or we will keep apart from them, still we did not want at this time to hear their opinions.

We will have a closed adoption (like most of the countries adscribed to the international adoption protocols Mexico favours closed adoption). This means that we will only get a call once the baby´s legal status is completly cleared and we will be asked to come to pick the baby up in our agency. The agency chooses the best family for the baby on several basis, but one key ingredient is prayer. That very same day the baby is fully ours. We still will have to do some legal proceedings, but the baby will be 100% ours and this is the reason why the babies do not come to the families as newborns, but some weeks or months later when the birth mother has been given the chance to really think things over and has signed twice in front of a judge.

The agency has a beautiful room prepared where the baby is placed and the parents come in to meet the baby, Afterwards there is normally a Mass said in the chapel of the agency to give thanks and to bless the new family. Everybody I know that has been there tell me its absolutely beautiful.

In this special room the baby is dressed in very special clothes, placed in a beautiful crib, under a painting of our Lady of Guadalupe.

My parents, sister and SIL are fully supportive of our adoption and ecstatic, my FIL and my brother are supportive, but afraid, my BIL is supportive and very happy for us, but his wife will be a problem since she has kept saying stupid things all this time (sorry but there is no other word for her words. I have not even blogged about it since I do not want to make any adoptive parents upset) Nieces and nephews are ecstatic .

So this is the situation right now of our family.

I really do not know what will be best and wanted opinions/ experiences which could help us decide:

To invite all to come to the special room so we can all receive the baby as a family and then have mass.

Come in first DH and I and have a few moments with the baby alone and then they come in and then mass?

Ask them only to join us for the mass afterwards and leave the room as a private place for us ( a friend of mine called this room her delivery room and wanted this for it to be as private as possible for an hour)?

Join us only at home?

We want this to be a joyful occasion and would love to include our families which are very close to us, yet know all are at different stages and I want to set the rules right now so we do not end up with issues beforehand. How did you do it? in case it was open adoption when did your families join you?

and last how did you inform the world? via facebook? an email? personally?

Thanks for any advice you could give me. =)