Dreams and False Alarms

laying low

I am about a week away from starting BCP's so the donor and I can sync our cycles, for a transfer sometime in May.  I am exctied, and nevous and as you can see, laying low.

I'm not sure why. I think it is a well needed break from thinking about all of this stuff.  I'm feeling better than I have in a while. I started taking nortriptaline (v low dose) to help with my sleep disorder. It worked wonders for me when I was first diagnosed with Fibromyaligia, and after the series of rapid cycling flare ups I was having starting in January, I was ready for a break.

I went to a very interesting conference yesterday, and it has me thinking, again, about illusions.

In my last post I said that I found myself calling the egg donor "the birth mother" in my head. 

At the conference yesterday, the panelists and the audience were all wrestling with the psychological differences between birth mothers and donors.  One presenter coined the term 'birth other' which I think really does encompass the whole field from sperm donors to surrogates.

From a lot of different things said yesterday, I started to think about what it would be like to consider the egg donor the birth mother. No one suggested this directly, but through a lot of what was said, I started to think about all the ways, and boy howdy could this be controversial to say, that using donor gametes allows us to preserve the illusion, for ourselves, at least in part, that the baby we are carrying is made from our gametes and those of our partner.  But why not at least play with the idea?

Birth mother implies the person who gives birth, so it's sort of the wrong term, but this child, at least in part, could have been one she carried and raised, if not for the choice she made to donate her eggs. And she is a real person. A human, just like me. Just like our child will be. She is not a body part, or a cell, she's a whole person.  Just like a birth mother would be.  And yes this is different, the child will be in my body, it will be my blood sustaining and feeding it, and finally it will enter the world through the portal of my body, not hers. So perhaps we are both birth mothers? And both birth others?

I think what I'm getting at, in my usual round about sort of way is this: If I reduce her to cells, or just turn her into parts, I can much much more easily put aside my own mourning.  If she is real, if she is a mother of a sort, an 'other' mother, then my illusion that there is no one between me and my child is deflated. Now maybe, this isn't your illusion. I don't know. But I know for myself, part of what made the selection process so hard was that I couldn't find my whole self out there ready to donate her eggs. So I did the next best thing: I picked someone I liked, and who shared enough in common with me physically to give the child a chance at the illusion that we all belong together physically.  And sure, if I'd adopted, or if I adopt, that isn't a luxury I'll have the illusion of entertaining.  

So I suppose I'm mourning the baby who could 'pass'; another illusion to retire, another baby to say goodbye to.

What I am really looking forward to is the very good chance that there will a baby to say hello to instead of goodbye to.

whew.

Nipping in to say hello!

Hi! Sorry for the silence. Between getting the taxes prepped for the CPA, and my new work project, I've had little time for blogging, or thinking about blogging. I do have thoughts, but none compelling enough to cut through the other busy work.

Things with our donor continue to move along swimmingly. She has had her psych eval, her legal consult and has called the clinic coordinator to set up her appointmetns. I guess it all hinges on her cycle at this point, since we need to get an FSH/E2 read before we can proceed. Right now, I'm just going "LALALALALA it will all be fine!" because, well frankly, I need to. I can wring a negative thought out of just about any situation, so I'm sitting on it.

One thing I find very interesting is that I find myself trying to imagine the perfect gift for her. These imagined gifts are all presented in a red canvas basket (like the ones you can get for your grocery shopping or gardening? not sure). And then like a bolt of lightening it hit me: I want to presnet her with some sort of womb stand in, something to say "I  need your eggs, but I'm full of good sweet things to give this baby."  Not in a competative sense, at least I don't think it is, but more in a reassuring sense.

Does anyone else find themselves feeling sort of as if the egg donor is the birth mother? I know she isn't, but it is the narrative my mind leaps back to over and over. I wonder if this helps me, or not? Does it make me feel like she needs to be included, or is it that she is what I have of this baby right now, and so I am thinking of her? Color me confused.

Most of the time, I'm excited, anxious, and ready to be getting going already, and then another part of me is happy to have this time to just let my attachment to her wax and wane, and to figure out what is happening inside of me.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't have much time to write a nice long post, but I do want to say that on Thursday we finalized our donor choice!

Our coordinator offered that we could know her first name if we wanted to (we do), and asked us to write a short bio of ourselves, and perhaps we'd get a response back.

So I dashed off a little bio of us, something to give her a sense of us, but without being too fact heavy (including my love of baking and my passion for tomatoes), and she wrote back with a lovely response, and it made me feel 100x more excited about choosing her as a donor. Of course, all of this is still in the realm of my fantasy, she could be a fellow baking and tomato loving bore, but I don't think so.

I will have to exercise quite a lot of motherly discipline to not encourage my children to meet her when they are 18...'cause I certainly want to!

March will probably be the month of testing for her, and figuring out how to deal with my propensity to develop cysts on hormonal birth control (nova ring, mirena, all bcp's even ortho novum, a big reason we didn't do the estrogen priming protocol last spring.)

Anyhoodle, I'm feeling so much better now, as I always do. The nice thing about being a 'pre-processor' is that I get a lot out of the way and can enjoy something when it actually happens, but I'm a pain to live with until then!

Both sides now; or maybe soon.

When the going gets tough, this girl goes for Joni Mitchell.

Over the last week I've been thinking a lot about illusions. How important they are to us, our fantasies, our illusions about what is, what can be, what we contain within ourselves, what it means to retire an illusion, how vital we feel when our illusions are met with reality, and how crushing it feels to have an illusion disintegrate right before your eyes.

We've really been struggling with pulling the trigger on the donor. Hmm, I almost changed that, but really, it has felt like 'pulling the trigger' on ourselves.  We have both been wrestling the end of illusion that there is genetic child in our future, and it's a tough one for each of us to let loose of.  I wonder how different this process would be if were only incorporating one donor.  I know that before we knew about the translocation, in my wrestling with the move to donor eggs, I felt both jealous of, and comforted by, the illusion that my relationship to our child would be strengthened by his or her genetic tie to my husband. And when we thought that donor sperm might be our path, there was the illusion that because we would both have my genetic tie, and our tie to each other to cushion the rough spots.

There have been moments when I feel the desire to keen at the loss of my own fertility. I am reminded of how women describe the moment when they realize they are in menopause, and it is the end of the illusion of childbearing, and how for so many the sadness catches them by surprise.  I feel that now. At my saline sono, I was so bitter when the NP said "here is your follicle for this month." Instead of letting it pass I said "fat lot of good that will do me." Ugly bitter moment.

I know everyone thinks their situation is different, but indulge me for a moment. Ours is different. We are a heterosexual couple, choosing to make our family through donor gametes. We could adopt, we have chosen not to. Probably because of another illusion: if we choose the donors, we will have some sense of who the child might be. Of course, that is the biggest illusion of all. Even if we were to make love today and I got pregnant with our mutually genetic child, we could assign characteristics to that child based on our wish to see the links between us and them, but those are fantasies and illusions as well. We are all both the sum of our genetic makeup, and totally unique. 

It feels as if we are struggling with post modern realities in our very bodies.  And no matter what my mind can do with ideas, my body is less than modern, it is prehistoric (Husband may not see things this way, so I'm not speaking for him in this case.). There are moments when I cannot imagine how I can take this alien into my body. This little creature made from the genetic material of two strangers, who I/we have chosen because of our fantasy that they are enough like us to allow us enough of an illusion of sameness to facilitate the connection.  And then, I hold my friends babies, and kiss their sweet little heads, and field their sticky fingers on my face and neck, and I say "Yes, yes, I can do this. I can love any baby. I can love. Period."

I am scared. I am scared of being pregnant. I am scared to being a mother. I am scared of so much. I am scared of getting my hopes up again.  I'm scared that each little disconnection between me and our child will fuel my illusion that I wouldn't feel this way if this was our (even partially) genetic child.

I think this fear haunts me because I felt so different from my mother, and so insecure in our connection to each other. Even though we are good friends at this point, I still rarely allow myself to 'want my mother'.  Clearly, the illusion that a genetic child guarantees a connection is bull.  It is opening myself, to a genetic child or not, that creates that (healthy) illusion of connection between mother and child. 

Many of my friends who are mothers by more conventional means tell me that my fears of not being able to connect to my baby are not unusual. Indulge me in a bit of philosophizing here:

One of DW Winnicott's most important ideas is of the transitional object.  It is a concrete placeholder for the developmental transition between the "me" and "not me" that allows an illusion of connection to the mother when she is gone (the blanket, the binky, the stuffed animal etc). I wonder if, for all mothers and fathers, the genetic connection (mostly unconscious for the vast majority of those who conceive) serves as this transitional object to smooth the transition between being a non parent to being a parent; between the "me" and the "not me" of this totally separate human being. For example, my fears of being a mother and parent, and the way it will transform and disrupt my life, are normal. If we were to conceive a mutually genetic child, my illusion of sameness, or my fantasy that I will recognize myself or my husband in the child (the 'me' in Winnicott's theory), would serve as a transitional experience/object to soothe me as I make this developmental shift. In my case, the fact that it is a much more conscious illusion leaves me scrabbling and scratching to hold onto some illusion of sameness with the donor, be it in appearance, or outlook, and it is difficult to sustain.  This is all to say that perhaps my fears are less about the real baby, and more about myself and my fear that if I don't have the transitional mental space of an illusion of sameness, that I will fail to connect to the child.

So how do I create enough of a transitional object to transport me from this place to that one?  Well, nothing like good old awareness, eh?

What I want is to get to that place of being able to feel and hold 'both sides'. The side where I have my real losses, and grief and trauma, and the other side where I accept that my losses, grief and trauma are part of my package, and I don't fear that it will affect my mothering, and my greatest wish of all to be a  mother who fiercely loves her children, and whose children feel deeply loved.

On Friday I was remembering a girl I knew in high school who loved the story of her adoption: her parents and brothers went to the home for unwed mothers, and of all the babies there, they picked her. She exuded a sense of being loved and wanted and special--sort of like what it is like to find the love of your life. It seems impossible to be in a relationship with anyone else.  I know that there are more factors that went into her experience than just her family's attitude, but at the same time, that story always spoke so strongly to me of the power of being wanted and cherished.  That was something sorely lacking from my own entrance into my family.  I understand why (brother died, marriage already in disarray, mother depressed etc), but it has been my mission in life to welcome my child(ren) into the world wholeheartedly, even if only to assuage my own wounds.

So here we are, with our illusions in disrepair, our dreams a bit unscripted, and our hearts mired in confusion, searching for a guarantee of connection in the smallest of elements.

And yet, just in writing this, I feel clearer. Clearer about why I am struggling so hard to stay in my fantasies that don't serve my reality, and  reality feeling a little less daunting

.

I'm starting to see the appeal of arranged marriages, oops I mean arranged donor matches

I am so FRUSTRATED! ARGH!

Those you you who read the last post know I finally swallowed my pride, and asked for money so that we could use an agency donor. Well, one thing I didn't anticipate is that the intended parents get to control how much information is shared about their cycle. Basically it can go all the way from number of eggs retrieved and mature and fertilized and frozen and pregnant or not to "Yes, she did a cycle."

One of the donors I'm interested in had 30 eggs retrieved, but the intended parents won't release any information beyond that!  WHAT THE FUCK?????????????????????????  Hello? It's not like I'll be able to know jack about you just by knowing that? But geeze, she's basically useless to me because I don't know anything about her cycle!  The other donor that is available through that agency is just not as resonant for me. However, I know myself, once I start thinking about a donor, I get invested. So she'll probably be "Miss Wednesday"

Husband and I met just when internet dating was starting up, so I never directly experienced the 'agony of the profile.'  But this is REALLY giving me a taste of it, and it takes like SHEEIT. 

I know that there is no perfect donor. I am so tired of being thwarted at many turns along the way. Hopefully we'll get some one pinned down, and I can stop feeling so ungrounded.

I did decide to take on the new work project, and luckily, it's picking up very quickly, so that will be a nice distraction!

Wingeing my way through

Thanks for all the support on Tuesday. My smart therapist pointed out that 'losing' a donor is yet another miscarriage. That helped me so much. I was actually not too much of a wreck Wed through Friday. Husband and I had a good talk, and then I decided to start 'looking around'.  The big outside donor sources didn't really have any donors I was drawn to, so I looked at a smaller, sort of 'corner store' agency, and found that they are less expensive, and I found a donor who looks a bit like me, is 23, has done a previous cycle, and the cycle resulted in a pregnancy. The not so good thing was that she had 15 follicles, but only 4 mature eggs, all of which became embryos (two transferred, two frozen, day three).  The woman from the agency said that the doctor said he would use a different protocol next time.  She also said another donor had a similar cycle with that doctor, and then went to a, and I quote "better" doctor, and had much better cycles. So, the agency has sent the records they have, and the donor is going to request her actual records from the other clinic and our doctor will review them. I hope hope hope that we don't have the same effect on this donor of focusing our attention on her and then Blamo! someone else is willing to move faster, and were ass-out again.

I have tried and tried to want to use the one donor at our clinic who is left. But when I look at her, I just don't feel drawn to her. Of course, using an outside donor is more expensive, so yesterday I went and asked my father for money. He has it to lend, and understands why we need it, and in the grand scheme of things, it is a small amount of money. But to me, it felt like a defeat. I can't even get pregnant without my parents help. Yes rationally this is silly, but I am one of those people who feel things on a very symbolic level. It feels like a failure of generativity.  And yes, I know it is just money, and this is what family's do for each other, but still. To at least be able to pay for making your own child seems like not much to ask for. I have accepted that I will not make love to my husband and get pregnant, I have accepted that I will not get pregnant using IVF, I have accepted (sort of, more in a minute) that I need donor eggs to get pregnant. But to need money from them feels like a failure of this private act of making a child. It is odd, I have been able to handle having all these doctors and nurses and various other medical people in this experience with me, but somehow, involving my parents feels like a loss of autonomy.  I feel humiliated.  Utterly humiliated. To be clear, my father was nothing by kind and generous. But for me, it was a ding this piece of adulthood.

A friend a year younger than me posted an elliptical message on Facebook and asked people to guess, I guessed engaged, and someone else guessed pregnant. Turns out both are true. I didn't guess pregnant for a lot of obvious reasons, but also because she has always been ambivalent abut having children, I guess that's shifted.  I'm feeling a new wave of disbelief that this is what is real, this is what is happening. I am not going to use my eggs ever again.  It makes absolute sense in every direction to go to donor eggs, and frankly we can't afford to take any more time with my eggs, but it just seems impossible. Impossible that my eggs are this bad. I just can't figure out why I can't accept it. There is a loud screamy part of me that says "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They are fine, this is crazy!" And then the part of me that can look at the evidence and say "Its time to move on"  Sort of like a relationship that is bad, but not awful, and you think "I could stay, I could go, is it better out there? Worse?"

I think that borrowing money from my parents also makes this seem final. This is it; it has to work. If it doesn't work, it will take time to gather up the resources to do the next thing, and we are getting older and older. My husband will be 40 in June and I'll be 40 in October.  How the fuck did that happen? How did we end up here with no money left , and no baby and looking down the barrel into this gun? It's sort of like when something bad happens, and there is a part of your brain that just wants to rewind and start over, and make it so that everything that just happened, never happened. For the most part I can stay in the present (not the moment, just 2010), but other times I feel like I'm reeling back 4 years and trying to find that juncture that would have taken us on a different path.

And then, I feel selfish and awful. My beautiful, smart, wonderful unique husband doesn't get to play this game the way I do. Sure, maybe someone else could have gotten pregnant with his translocation, maybe my eggs are just too fucked up, and someone else's would have done it, but no matter what, the likelihood that he would have had genetic offspring is low. And here I am wingeing because I don't get any more chances.

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In other news, I'm thinking of taking on a work project that will probably help me make some more money, but will also be a bit of a commute, and if I do get pregnant, I might not be in the best shape to do it, but for 3 years I've done as little as possible because I might be pregnant next month, and that has gotten me a whole lotta nowhere in my career.  In Sept I took on another project and have made wonderful connection that will probably serve my personal life and my career very well for years to come. And I did that because I was tired of sitting on the sidelines waiting to be pregnant. 

My back is getting a bit better, but it's still quite a mess. I've been taking a lot of Motrin, and it is helping with the inflammation.  I'm hoping I can go to a Pilates Reformer class next week. It's within our finical constraints (unlike working one on one with a trainer), and it is the only exercise I feel safe doing, and it works for my back and my looks. I haven't had a bad fibromyalgia flare up like this in a few years, and good lord, I had forgotten how exhausting it is to be in constant pain. The Motrin is really helping with the inflammation, as is using my pelvic floor muscles to stabilize my spine when I turn over in bed. Yup, I have to wake up slightly to turn over or I'll hurt myself. No matter what else happens, I can get a steroid injection in my spine if needed. I did one 8 years ago and it changed my life. It's my escape valve thought, and safe to do when you are pregnant.

I wish I could chalk it up to PMS

Oh wait, I can, but it doesn't usually hit this early.

I am a grumpy, angry mess.

My back, which went out, was in, and then went out in nearly the same way on Sunday, and is still out, and pretty painful. Because of my schedule, and some non negotiable items on it, I can't see my osteopath until Thursday.

I was curt with a friend of my mother's who offered me condolences on my miscarriage. I just couldn't be gracious. I just couldn't. I was probably more gracious than I know, but  I felt like losing my shit, and then she offered me some weird remedy. I just cut her off, I don't need any more helpful suggestions about how to get my body to do something it is just not going to do.

And I'm feeling jealous. Really jealous. You know you've been at the IF game for a long time when you are jealous of other people, whose numbers look WAY worse than yours, continuing to do cycles, or saying their not going stop or whatever. I don't know if it's really jealousy, I guess it's just being sort of nuts. Of course everyone get's to do what they want to do, and just because I've stepped off that particular train, doesn't mean jack.  If we had more time or money, I could probably do a lot more IUI's, and one might work. Or it might not. Or might, and it might turn out badly.  So yes, this is our choice, and it makes sense, but I think getting ready to cross this bridge is bringing up all the last bits of yuck around this issue.

I think also, not being able to move directly into a cycle has disoriented me. This whole process of trying to get pregnant, by any means necessary, brings up such powerful issues of powerlessness.  And in the DE process, we're coming up against that again. We have decided to put a hold on the donor we wanted, so pending the results from the cycle she's going to do in Feb or March (recipient may need to do a mock cycle, which will push it back), if she is still our number 1, and is medically cleared to cycle, she'll be our gal.  We are also still thinking about other clinics and outside donors, but that all depends on asking others for help, which may or may not be available.  So just more powerlessness, and having to rely on others for what many do with some or no thought at all.  Yes, yes, I know, I'm feeling bitter,and being bitchy, but that is what I have today. Bitter and bitchy.

Also, one of our cats is quite ill. She's got toxoplasmosis, and maybe something else. She's only 7 months old! WTF! and it seems like one of our other cats is developing the same illness, which may or may not be toxoplasmosis. Husband and I are getting tested as well, oy. I'm pretty sure if she dies from this, I'm going to lose my mind. I know, she's a cat, and cats die and blah blah blah, but REALLY! REALLY! A translocation? Miscarriages? 3 1/2 years of  fucking futility. One cat dying when were on vacation,and another dying the morning we were going to take her to the vet (after they sent us home from the all night vet saying there wasn't too much wrong!!!!!!!!!).  Husband and I are just frazzled trying to stay on top of her condition, and worrying about the next one to succumb. I can't go to sleep because I'm scared she'll die in the night.

I'm not an angry person, and I'm not a person who is comfortable being angry, so this is really uncomfortable for me.

I think when the coordinator told us that someone else had signed the donor we wanted, I just started to crumble.  Whatever it was that was holding me together, crumbled.  I know that bad things happen to good people, and all that, but at the moment, I'm feeling overwhelmed, and persecuted, and just exhausted. Oh, and no chance of a vacation to recharge, nope. Need to save all those ducats for our cycles. GRRR.

Moving right along

Sorry for the silence this week. I've been unusually busy, and then yesterday, my back went out, so this will be short so I can return to my little pod o'healing.

We talked to Dr Calm yesterday about the three donors we are considering:

Donor Three: made a lot of eggs, but has low FSH and low LH and so she requires a lot of stimming, and the only pregnancy to result from her three cycles ended in miscarriage.  She seems like too much of a risk, and our resemblance is nil. Whew. Nice to have another off the list.

Donor Two: Makes a good amount of eggs, but has only done once cycle. The reason the fresh cycle likely didn't result in a pregnancy is the the recipient had a thin lining. Ok, she gets a pass on that one. However, the doctor said that one of the twins that resulted from the FET has a problem with his tongue, but there weren't any further details, so she was going to dig into that. She said it could be a short frenulum, or something worse, but there were no details.  Furthermore, she doesn't look that much like me. I'll just be honest here, she has the wrong sort of eyes. I know, that is sort of vague and not all that useful, but she just looks wrong. However, she is still in the running.

Donor One: Did a cycle in 2002, back with the lab wasn't as good as it is today and they had a positive on the fresh cycle (twins) and a negative on the first FET, and a positive on the third (twins as well, eek!), and there are still two on ice, or not, but there were.  If she is interested in doing the cycle, she'll be 32, which our doctor said wasn't a significant difference in terms of downs risk from a 25 year old, and she said that donor performance tends to be pretty consistent. At age 31 her FSH was 6.0 and her antral follicle count was 18, and her e2 was 44.  Mostly, she looks right. Not like me, but the eyes are right. They have the right kind of clarity. But the big 'if' is will she perform as well as a 25 year old? Will her egg quality be as good as a 25 year olds?  Our doctor seems to think so. She actually said of the three, this donor was her first choice.  So, we're sitting with it. I've asked the donor coordinator to contact her and find out if she is still interested in doing cycles, and when she would be available,and then of course, they'd have to do the FSH and antral follicle count business again. And on a cosmic connection level, she shares a birthday with my best friend and my college mentor. It's so amazing how much we want to identify with our donors. Any little snippet feels like a gold mine.

Well, that is all the news I can bear to sit here and impart.

More scintillating details, no really! Or at least gossip...

First things first, Cycle Day 1 was yesterday, so that means that cycle number 2 should be showing up around the 2nd week of February, and if MY donor (ahem) was available, I'd be off to the races. But alas, it looks like someone is interested in doing the shared cycle, and the office should know soon.

The gossip is this: Our first pick donor was asked to leave the program because her FSH was 9, and the program requires it to be between 4 and 8, so even if I hadn't gotten pregnant in Oct, our Nov/Dec cycle would have been derailed. Poor thing! Can you imagine? You've done two cycles, you're a hot young thing, and they call to say, sorry, your ovaries are getting a little wrinkly!  I hope she's ok. Oy.

So, as reported last time, the donor we want is already reserved, and we might get her, but it will take a couple of months...so we've been looking at other donors, and it's looking kinda, well, disappointing.

Basically, all of the donors we're looking at have pretty good egg production numbers, reasonable amount of frozens, but none of their recipients get pregnant on the fresh cycle. Of course, there are reasonable reasons (i.e. even with day 5 embryos, you can't predict which are really the best of the best), it still feels less secure. Ya know?  We've got a call into our uber busy Doc, and hopefully she'll call us sometime today and lay it out for us.

We really can't afford to go to an outside donor, so we're going to have to work with who is there. I guess we could go to another clinic, but oy. I like this clinic! Everyone is wonderful and helpful, from the front desk people through the billing office. But maybe I'll traipse over to another clinic and see if I can peek at the donors. Oy.

Scintillating Details

Okeydokey:

I promised you scintillating details, so here they are:

The Donor Manager called back this morning, and basically said that the person who has her on hold, and is waiting for a person to share the cycle has priority. Boo. Of course, I asked all sorts of bossy questions about time limits and other stuff, essentially "What about me? What about my needs!", all in a very understated way, I assure you. She said that she will confirm with the donor that she indeed wants to do a 5 cycle (which ours would be if the shared cycle gets off the ground), and if not, I'm going to NYC and signing up for Ms Donor Fantastica and then Sprogblogger and I can have genetically related children. Ok, not really, but oy, this is the best donor at the clinic, and I want her dammit!

The plan of action is thus:

The donor manager will reach out to both the donor and the recipient and find out about the possibility of the 5th cycle, as well as the recipients time line for releasing the donor, or converting to a single cycle.

The donor manager and the donor nurse will look at the current first time donors who are wrapping up cycles and see if any seem like a good match for us (and are HUGE egg producers, cause that is mandatory, oh and also don't look like mean cheerleaders...).

Husband and I will remain patient and consider our options and attempt to not hound the nice donor manager about this. That is just my secret pledge. Husband only hounds through me, on this matter.

We will also check to see if there are any Jewish or half Jewish embryo's for adoption in our clinics embryo adoption plan.

The Jewish thing is a big deal.

Whew.

So we're a little discouraged, but not disheartened.

Scintillated?