Please storm heavens for JBTC

Hi! Today at noon central time our dear JBTC will have a D&C.  We are uniting
in prayer for her, baby B, the doctor and
her family.  Since its at noon we will pray the Angelus.
Knowing full well from experience that a miscarriage and  all medical tests and procedures are so so difficult for any woman all prayers are welcome.
JBTC: we are holding u in prayer.
 St John the Baptist please pray for us,  Our Lady of Guadalupe guard your daughter and baby under your mantle!

Mommy guilt

The last weeks as I blogged have been very hectic,  some of the most difficult weeks in terms of professional challenges in my whole life and I feel I am a terrible mother.

In my mind I know its just a phase, that this will pass, still the feeling that I go to bed at night is one of guilt.    

Basically I am leaving home around 7:15 a.m. giving Josema a kiss good bye and leaving him with my DH until his nanny arrives.   From 8 a.m to 5/ 6 pm is non stop work (by non stop I literally mean non stop, eating in 20 minutes, forgetting to go to the bathroom, having simlutaneous meetings, etc), I arrive dead tired to give Josema a bath (sometimes I do not even arrive for this)  give him dinner, and then off to bed for him  to pray and read books.    Basically one hour and a half hours a day of motherhood and then I connect again to do all the pendings of the day.

Josema spends many hours with his dad and our nanny, both of whom he loves to pieces.   Our nanny is an amazing blessing, brings him gifts each week, prays with him and I see Josema thriving, yet  every week I miss of spending more hours with him  and I feel bad because right now he is preferring his dad over me many times over.  .

Having fought so hard for motherhood these were not my plans.    The first 5 months at my new job I truly had the flexibility to be a mother, spending many days at home, leaving early and even going to baby classes with him, but as I mentioned right now its barely enough.

I know this shall pass, just it sucks right now.

The circumstances are extreme, not planned at all by my company  and boss.

I am not sure how I will mange at this pace in the next 2 months being also a mother.

Basically I have been given 3 people to report to me,  given the money to do 3 times the work,  but the people  are not yet in place so all is falling on my shoulders right now.   One of them arrives end of September , another I have yet to find and I am teaching a great girl the basics of marketing.  She does not come from a marketing background, but its extremely bright so I hope she can truly help me in the next weeks-

And   my  extended team is in crisis and some of their work comes to me.   My boss has 2 currently pregnant women and one in maternity leave and we are only 7 persons!

Just my luck.  All three women from the original team are pregnant or have been pregnant in the last 2 months.  Of 3 , 3  and 2 are leaving very soon with one still on maternity leave.  What are the odds that this infertile woman is surrounded by them?

We are in a space with four desks and guess who is in the middle?

 and more to come...

In the 2nd week of October my team hosts an event for more than 5000 persons and 3rd week of October we host 50 persons from the LATAM team in Mexico for 3 days shock full of activities .  Lets say all September and October we will work at a pace that could kill anybody.   My boss just a few hours ago told me he never ever had this much pressure .

And all my thoughts come back to an amazing, beautiful little 15 month old boy and my heard breaks.

Any advice by anybody that has faced this?  How do you forgive yourself when things such like this get out of control and you just have to face the crisis, but at the same time you are a mother?

Weekends are 100% dedicated to family and specially Josema right now, yet I feel like this is still not enough.

My private blog

Hi!

As  I blogged about a few days ago I have a need to blog about some things that I do not feel comfortable sharing in such an open space.

I have decided to have this blog stay up with our adoption and infertility struggles and any post I feel can help or that I can share a wider audience.    I thank all of those that wrote to me publicly  and privately about wanting to follow and I have made my blog available to you.

  I also know that being one of the few members outside of the USA gives people tremendous hope and makes them  feel less alone so I am hesitant to go private entirely.

How long I will need, be able to do both I have no idea. .

In my private blog I will share the things I have been keeping for a long time now, part because I do not feel I can share with people that live in Mexico because with the details they will  know for sure who I am talking about, but also because its sharing other peoples struggles that have become my own and I do not feel that I can share in a more public  out of respect for them,  but with only a few people, all of whom are part of this community or longtime readers.  

 I hope people can understand this.

I have received many emails and comments and I truly feel that this community is  a God sent gift in my life. Thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

If you want to  follow write to me at  schatzie1204@gmail.com  (Schatzie is my nickname form childhood which means little treasure in German.  Sew told me it was a dogs name and since then I always smile when I have to write it!)

The name of my private blog is:

My Peace be with you

E.

Thyroids, adoption and work

Last week I got confirmation that my thyroid is Kaputt.  Dead, not working.

Again after years of health with Napro.

I had long suspected it, but was in complete denial.

I had noticed that again I craved sugar and coffee like a mad woman and felt cloudy headed (not sure this is the correct expression in English, but basically I feel most of the day not present.)  

This has been going on for months now, but has gotten worse in the last weeks and the last days have been such a struggle to even function.

 My energy was very low, but I have always been able to manage, but the last 5 days have been hell.  

 But now there is no denying it.    

Basically three medical systems have confirmed it.

• Napro via a high TSH even while on medication and via the return of my symptoms
• Then Traditional chinese medicine which I have been going to in the  last  3 weeks in our efforts to conceive again. Basically the doctor (who is also trained in Western Medicine) without me even telling him told me I had Spleen chi  and Kidney Yang  deficiency which in Western terms all have to do with the thyroid, digestion, metabolism and adrenals.  Basically a mess. 
• And then SC.IO which I have blogged about that is a machine that measures the energy fields in the body  (if you look it up there are tons of crazy people promoting it, but basically is grounded in great science.   I learned about it from a medical doctor who is also a member of the Opus dei who explained to me where the science  was and where the new age was.  So its very very important to have a good practitioner doing it) .  Well  I went last week when I felt at my worst and also without me saying anything  to the woman that does this she  turned the screen to me last week   and the words on the screen said it: metabolism, thyroid, etc  and asked me point blank: "what is going on with your thyroid????"  all screens signal a very,  very bad case of hypothyroid. 

 ARGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

My thyroid starting to give problems at this very time is not a good thing.  Its actually soooo frustrating.  I crave coffee, sugar, chocolate like a crazy woman  and cannot think straight.

It might be well related to stress.   I had been stable for years now, but all of what has been going on  and me not resting enough most probably helped  my symptoms return  full force.   The body does not lie.

So Sunday I decide to rest as much as I could.   I woke up, prepared breakfast and then decided to nap when our son napped after playing with  him.   I could not even wake up to go to mass, later heated some things for lunch and ate only to tell my DH that I needed to rest again.  My DH was soooo surprised and completely took over.

He had never  in our more than 5 years of marriage seen me sleep so much.  Then I wake up again and decide that I am too  tired to do anything and head back to bed again.  So unlike me.

 In 2 days I need to test again and if again high TSH I will go on more T4 or if  the doctor in the Gianna center told me she might do she will put me on Armour (which by the way does not exist here soooo again we start the asking anybody that we know of to bring it to Mexico)

So I after seeing this I decided to focus on my health a 100%, rest, eat very well, exercise, etc.

But right when I had made this decision my world turns upside down again

Today we received the paperwork to start our second adoption.  The process has begun officially today.  Wow.

 This is great news and very as so blessed to be able to do it a second time, but it also means the race to produce tons and tons of updated documents has begun.  Almost a full time job and we have 3 weeks to do all.   And its the next weeks  or they move us to  end of next year

To say I feel overwhelmed is  an understatement.

Also today  on top of all  I had a meeting with my boss.

 I got many unexpected news.   A person  from our team probably will leave in the near future for personal reasons and might right now even be absent from work for a few weeks in the most difficult time of the year.  I had no idea.

And we have one girl who helps out a great deal  pregnant that will give birth soon and another member in maternity leave and she has several months to go.  Since we are a very,  very small team this has put the whole team in crisis mode.  

But I got the shock of my life a few minutes later when he told me that most probably I will absorb  her position  into my area once she leaves and grow my team again and head 2 areas.

Basically I would head most of the marketing personnel in the Mexico office and move from an operative role into a more directive one.  My boss would still be the top guy, but basically he is leaving all the decisions of my area to me and asking me to build a very strong team.

    This is truly amazing amazing news in the professional sense, but it could not have come at a worse time in terms of my personal life (TTC full force, adoption proceedings, Josemaria needing me more and more and thyroid issues).

 Its truly ironic.

I am not sure how to take the news.  Of course I am flattered, but at the same time overwhelmed, not knowing who in the world I will manage.  He told me he had complete trust in me which of course is great, but at the same time I have had a headache since he told me.  

I knew this was a possibility in the future  (one or 2 years), but  this persons problems will probably move everything.

I know I am in a great position to do good things and already we have been able to help several very,  very good organizations  (prolife) with the resources at my hand, I see work as a way to sanctify myself and most importantly right now help support my family.    

I know  that God wants something from all of this, still.......

I want to head to the nearest bed and bury my head under the covers for the next weeks.   Focus only on my family and my health, yet it seems impossible.

My great consolation that maybe God in his wisdom permitted my DH to be out of a job right now so he could be with our son most of the day.  A gift in disguise.

This is the only thing that seems to be working right now.

Going Private

I have been considering going private for a long time now and the time has come.

I really did not want to do it and  I have been stalling about it  (I do not want to lose this community and fear that this will happen once I go private, I did not want to offend people that I have asked not to read this and they continue, etc) , but at the very same I find myself guarding my thoughts, not writing all that I want, etc for  many months now.

And so this blog loses its purpose as an outlet for me and to be able to connect to those that face the same things that I am facing and help them in any way that I can.

This blog community helped  me to keep my sanity during the worse times of my life .

Nobody else that I knew in real life understood what I was going through trying to and  knew about it.   And I wanted to keep it that way.

What has happened is that too many people that know IRL now know about this blog, but not only this now also some of their friends know  because they told them and so it goes.

I have never told people the name of my blog, but since they knew that I had one and was part of this community (I recommended it to several people to help them)  I was very easy to find as the only Mexico member.

But not only this,  they told people that knew me to read it which never was my purpose.   I know it was not with a bad intention, but this made me consider closing the blog for good which I also do not want.

So what happened is that I  started writing less, sometimes not even telling all that I wanted and doing blog posts on my mind that I never wrote.

As we start the adoption proceedings in the next days  and many major decisions that I have not blogged about  I really want to go back to writing regularly about this road  and not guard my thoughts and feelings all the time, yet not lose this community.


So going private and only being read by members of this community or long time readers is what I need to do .

Just an example yesterday  we went to our adoption agency and the news are not good.

The waiting time has increased dramatically (from today it can be more than 18 months),  there are some expenses that are completely new  and  the time commitment it will take is enormous that with a baby, full time work and the biological road still open.

 Just an example:

• One weekend course on parenting (4 full days)
• 12  night sessions on religion (yep, they are so worried about preparation  the parents that are raising these babies that they made  this mandatory. The irony is that both my DH and I have many times taught these same classes)
• 8 sessions on bioethics so they waiting parents do not do IVF on the side and can become ambassadors for a culture of life, etc.  (the agency has seen as sharp increase in waiting parents also doing IVF on the side so they have recently instituted this)
• Donation of 12 hours service time to the agency
• Plus the normal dozens of hours of paper work.

I understand the reasons of all of this,  but it cannot come at a worse time.

I want to blog about the details of my visit yesterday to the agency, all my feelings about all of this, etc but I cannot do it knowing all the people that will read it.

Also last night as I was talking with my DH  that we will need to focus dramatically in our personal lives and  I want to be able to write about all of this again.

We have:
1) an adoption process and our agency is very well known here
2) I only have limited fertility time left so we will need to do it a a 100% or  not do it at all
3) I need to work full time and due to our  situation I cannot risk to deliver at 50% (also my company is very demanding and extremely well known)  and I want to combine motherhood well with this
5) My role as a practitioner and what my next steps with Napro here
4) We have some personal challenges that I have not blogged about.

I really do not how this going private thing works (I have tried to follow several that have done it to no avail.  Its ironic since blogger is part of my company =(  ).  but I will do it  in the coming days.

I want to come back to blogging from my heart  again =)

The gift from Mary

One year ago today our lives changed forever.

We became parents the day of the Assumption.  What a joyous occasion!

My DH had and I had gotten engaged 5 years before on a night of Adoration   starting the 15th of August that ended the next day.

 My DH gave me the engagement ring in front of the Blessed Sacrament and we prayed together as an engaged couple that night for the very first time.  We celebrated with a contemplative convent that was praying also there and had the blessing by the priest that later married us consecrating us to Her.

I like to think that our family was founded under Her mantle.


We could have  never imagined the road it would take us to become parents, but I do not regret it one little bit.  We did all according to our what our faith told us to do  and we did all in our hands to be parents.

Maybe the only thing I would do differently is open my  heart to adoption much sooner.

All I can say is that I love this little boy with all my heart and soul.

Many times I forget I did not give birth to him and I cannot imagine a more perfect son.

He is perfect in every sense and I really feel adoption has many unique gifts and blessings like no other vocation.



Here is he on the 16th of August 2011,  the day we met him.

And tomorrow  16th of August of  2012 we start the proceedings for our second adoption.

Tomorrow of all days our agency called a meeting for all parents starting second adoptions.  We will go to the exact place where he lived the first 3 months of his life to start the road to another abby and celebrate one year later that we met him that very same day.

I hope that I do not cry tomorrow when we go there.

So many signs of Her presence in our lives and this is why he is called José María.



I am sure all of this is a gift from Her, specially due to my DH strong faith..

A man that can pray like no other with a very,  very deep devotion to the Rosary.   A Carmelite  with profund prayer that reaches out to Mary truly like a Mother.

There is no way all of this is a coincidence.

Here is he on the day of his baptism:   Our gift from Mary




If anybody is considering adoption and can do it (I am well aware that not everybody can and my heart  breaks and I always pray for you)  please consider that Mary will be by your side.

She is our Mother and wants nothing more than see children with the families God always intended for them

 There is no more beautiful gift than adoption.

So many emotions

The last couple of weeks have been full of emotions and I am drained.

Horrible news from a dear friend, the reality of the lack of a job from my DH (still nobody in our families knows, since there has not been even the chance),  and changes in my job from all fronts, plus the advice of a dear priest ... lets say its a lot to handle.

I am simply drained and things do not seem will get easier in the next weeks.  So many things out of the ordinary happening at the very same time its really incredible and hard to handle emotionally.

As I blogged last week I received news that one of my clients was experiencing one of very worst  things I could ever imagine for someone.   This has been constantly in my mind and I have not been able to distance myself from it as perhaps I should.

It hit too close to home.

The diagnosis  that their baby will die shortly after birth from lack of development of the lungs (due to a birth defect) has been confirmed by several doctors now and the only thing is to wait for the baby to be born only to die almost immediately.  The ethical  thing to do in this case is only to give warmth to the baby and  slowly let him die.   There is nothing else to do and the more things the doctors do will only extend his agony.   I even hard a hard time writing this.

But I feel this is the only place where I can truly express what I feel at this time and that the least I could do for them is be there.

All of this, the calls with the doctors and  reading the emails trying to get them help has hit me like a ton of bricks.

Shaken me to the core.

I have no idea how nurses and doctors do it.

Why does God asks anybody to face IF? I have no idea, but I have come to a place of acceptance after years of fighting it.

But face IF and miscarriage  , as I have,  I still have a very hard time accepting. I know its a process, but one that has taken me a long time to at least handle with peace.

But then face IF for years, then miscarriage and now  the death of a child right after birth like this couple will  I cannot comprehend.    I have tried praying about it and I am still in shock.   I really cannot even utter the right words to God.

Then of course is the stress of my DH lack of job.  We have not been able to talk in depth about next steps.  He is still  going to the office to deliver the last part of his projects and when we have had the time  we have preferred to spend playing with Josemaria and having some quiet days at home.

Our families still do not know it and I prefer it like this for now.  I cannot handle right now their worries and inquiries.

All of this has been going on a the same  time  my boss has been away from the office for  2 weeks vacation and  everything at work explodes.

He left me in charge while he was gone and so this  is an  added responsibility and while he was away   they asked me to  grow my department 4 fold  (I had to call him in the middle of his vacation to tell him) and I now need to hire 2 more people in the next days.

I will finally have a team in place as they had promised me, but the ramp  up is truly scary.  I am not sure how I will handle the coming weeks, choosing 2 new people, teaching them, etc while doing the normal job.    Once I have it in place it means I will have some more flexibility like the plan always was, but getting there will be tough.

And  the irony of things.

Out of the blue I receive a call  from a top company (A.pp..le) and 2 head hunters call me offering me great positions, all in 3 days.    

This is when I most would like to work less and spend more time with Josemaria.    Instead of feeling flattered, I felt so much pressure....

Why these offers do not come to all of those in need of a job I have no idea.

These days I really do not understand life.

I already  had the interview  by the top company and its clear its not something that I need or want right now.    I still have to write the letter telling them no thanks in the best manner possible  even though they were super positive to me  (I would have never ever imagined saying no to such a company, but it was very clear this position was not compatible with a family at all and this made the choice very clear)

And this is  not all on the job front..... last week I receive an updated version of my company HR  policies.   I search for maternity leave in the case of adoption and I see one month.  ONE .

When I was recruited the policy said 5 months and this was a very important point in my decision and now only one?   how did that happen?

Well my heart sank and I had to reread the policy many times over.  

How in the world would I mange  in a case of adoption?  Return to work full time after only one month?  Biological maternity leave  is 5 months, but this is nothing.  

My time home with Josemaria  for 5 month was so precious that reading this almost made me cry.   I know we would survive, but its really pathetic.

I write to HR and today I have a call with them.  

The policy for Latin America used to be exactly the same as the one in the USA which is 5 months of fully paid maternity leave, but in their efforts to follow local laws and have clearer policies they have done local policies which match almost exactly local laws.  

So Brasil has 5 months maternity leave as part of their laws, Argentina 3 and Mexico NOTHING.

 The  adoption maternal leave  law  has been stuck in the congress for years now so nothing exists.

So the company rather than give nothing in Mexico says they will give in the case of us one month which is more than the law states.  

And the irony...... the only person in the region that  has ever asked about maternity leave in cases of adoption is me .   The poor girl from HR did not really know what to tell me,  only that I was her only case  asking about adoption and that she felt terrible for me.  

So she has asked me to submit a case in the next days for a board to review this and  in case they could consider changes this could  become applicable next year in case we were to adopt.  Arghhhh!


As its normal with me  when stress hits  I have been lacking in prayer and have been again too much Martha.   I truly need to be more Mary....

Since I know this is not right I  went to confession about it last Sunday  and the priest who knows me very well asked me to consult with my normal  confessor about his advice which was:

Focus mostly on my marriage which he felt was being threatened by too many things at once  (while we are  not having marital issues, he felt they would come soon),  focus on keeping my job as a way to provide for my family and then our quest for additional children via adoption or biological .   He felt very strongly that I should not do any work for Napro for now.

He says its simply too much facing the situation I am in now at home and starting an adoption process.   He wants me to go on a retreat and do the minimal outside of my family and work.  

I still do not know what I think about it, but I promised to speak to my confessor and be open about his advice.   Lets say that his advice rather than give me peace only added to the many emotions I am feeling.

Prayer warriors needed for baby and mother

I cannot even contain the tears.

 A dear client and friend of mine just received the most devastating news a woman can receive after years and years of IF.

 She is 20 weeks pregnant after 6 plus years of infertility. They were misdiagnosed for years, pushed countless times to do ivf  which she refused and last year they finally got pregnant to miscarry at 7 weeks after a lap in Omaha.

She trusted Napro completely from the very beinning with no system here,  nor any success cases she knew of.  Only that she felt it was the Truth.

 They went back to PPIV late last year  and had an ovarian wedge resection and got pregnant this March.

They were fearful,  but finally announced it to the world a few weeks ago. They are a couple that have long inspired me and in times of darkness have recharged me to keep working to help bring this here.
Today very early O receive an email from her. The baby has been diagnosed with a devastating birth defect. Its called bilateral renal agenesis.  This means the baby has no kidneys, there is low amniotic fluid and its lungs will not develop. He will  mostly die a few hours after birth.

They have been sent from doctor to doctor and the only doctor that has confirmed the diagnosis asked her to induce. This means abortion and she is refusing.

We are scrambling now to have a bioethicist look at the case, waiting for advice from dr H, calling all prolife doctors we know to have a second opinion. With such limited local resources this is three times worse.

There is no support system for cases like this and most doctors will push her to do the unthinkable.

Its at times like this that is so clear that we are so alone here and we need to continue to fight to bring this here.

We need all the  prayers we can get  for this baby (He is called Francisco after St. Francis of Assis and his father), for his brave mother fighting a horrible culture of death, that we find the help that we need for them.

Please if you can spare a prayer it is really needed at this time.