ashnistrike: Why I Haven't Posted Lately

Ashni (

ashnistrike) wrote,
@ 2008-02-03 12:03:00

Why I Haven't Posted Lately
'Cause I've been waiting for permission to post the following (although half of you already know it from off-line conversations, anyway):

Nameseeker is pregnant. She's surrogating for another couple, very dear friends of ours in New York. The woman of the couple (B.), for complicated medical reasons, can't safely use her own eggs, so this one is genetically Nameseeker's and the man's (A.). The plan is that after she's given birth, A will contribute genetic material so that we can have one of our own. These are both going to be very open adoptions--we're planning to be aunts/uncles/back-up parents for each others' children, visit a lot and celebrate some holidays together. We've been planning this for a while and all four of us are very excited.

Nameseeker is about four months along now. I had not gotten it through my head before how much time and energy pregnancy takes up. It's hard work--it's not something you do in the background. It is sacred, it is terrifying, and I can't imagine having the chutzpah to force it on anyone who wasn't ready and willing.

Tangentially, are we and Nameseeker's parents the only people who follow the informal practice of fetal names? Nameseeker and her siblings were all Rufus in the womb; this one is Nancy Bob Schroedinger.

Congratulations, unsolicited advice, and suggestions for how to succinctly describe the relationship between the legally original non-genetic parent of an adopted-out child and that child (raised and legally parented by another couple, and whom she has a close but not quite parental relationship with), all welcome. If anyone knows the original word for the relationship between adults who've made a family alliance by virtue of cross-fostering, that would be useful too.

(Post a new comment)

amatadlc
2008-02-03 06:28 pm UTC (link)

Congrats! (of course)

And yes, I am very familiar with the practice of fetal names. The last pregnancy I was around had a fetal name (which I cann't seem to recall now that I want to...) And the most memorable fetal name I've ever heard was "Cheeto" - after an early visit to the OB/GYN which sparked the comment, "You are healthy and doing well- you're about xxx weeks along, and your baby is currently about the size of .. of... a, umm ... cheeto."

I feel terribly remiss - as kinship networks were one of the areas of particular study for me - but I don't actually recall any useful terminology. Cross-fostering is certainly a well traveled trail in the history of humankind... and yet, I'm drawing a blank here. I can pull out some books, and some old class notes to see if any succinct phrases and keywords jump out at me.

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	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 06:33 pm UTC (link)
	We thought it looked more like a peanut at that stage. :) I can pull out some books, and some old class notes to see if any succinct phrases and keywords jump out at me. That would be wonderful--this seems to be surprisingly difficult information to track down. (Reply to this)(Parent)

ronelyn
2008-02-05 01:57 am UTC (link)

Two of our mutual friends who had a kid a few years back, in the days before his gender was apparent, referred to the ambiguous zygote as "Zoidberg." I like Nancy Bob Schroedinger, too, though you could call it "Pat Schroedinger" instead to keep things brief.

Oh, and of course, WOW!!!!! Big congrats, darlin', to you and the beloved one. That's ENORMOUS news! Ketina and I are still trying to figure out what to do about kids; I have some pre-Ronelyn "material" in cold storage (we refer to it as the Frozen Pop) but whether Ketina is well-advised to carry a child is a tougher question. With her fibromyalgia and some other issues, it'd be tough. I get asked why I don't just carry the child, which sometimes starts complicated explanations. :)

Many congratulations!

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ashnistrike
2008-02-05 02:47 am UTC (link)

Nancy and Bob are the two likely names that B&A have come up with. Schroedinger was the full name during the endless stretches of maybe-pregnant-half-the-month. I don't think they've come up with an if-it's-intersexed name, which strikes me as an untenable lack of foresight, but I hear some people actually wait until the kid is born to pick a name. Weird.

I get asked why I don't just carry the child, which sometimes starts complicated explanations.

They could take care of that for you on Beta Colony, you know. :)

Seriously, that's cool that you've kept your options open. Being a non-traditional couple, we've noticed, gives whole new meanings to "family planning."

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bifemmefatale
2008-02-03 06:30 pm UTC (link)

I'd say, given the description of y'all as back-up parents to each other's kidzels, a good title for you in relationship to this bebeh would be godmother. Or, more whimsically and less religiously, "Oddmother"? :P

No, I've known lots of people who came up with a fetal nickname before they knew the sex and given name. One couple of friends named theirs "The Goat" since she was a prodigious kicker.

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	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 06:32 pm UTC (link)
	I rather like "oddmother." (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	bifemmefatale 2008-02-03 06:33 pm UTC (link)
	And it fits numerically too, since you'd be mother number 3. :D (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 07:23 pm UTC (link)
	:D (Reply to this)(Parent)

	page_of_swords 2008-02-03 06:58 pm UTC (link)
	aww... (Reply to this)(Parent)

	bifemmefatale 2008-02-03 07:10 pm UTC (link)
	Mad Googling suggests the Gaelic word "dearbhfine" (durr-veen, roughly) for the members of an extended family, including those related by fosterage. Next unit down from the tuath, "tribe" or "people". Not sure what members of the dearbhfine would call each other, though. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 07:22 pm UTC (link)
	I suppose the English compound would be dearbhfinemates, but I can't imagine that would roll trippingly off the tongue of a two-year-old. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	tamnonlinear 2008-02-03 07:43 pm UTC (link)
	Wow. That's really lovely. What lucky children these will be, to have so many people working to bring them into the world. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 08:07 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you! We hope so. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	natlyn 2008-02-03 08:48 pm UTC (link)
	Congratulations and best wishes to all involved! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 11:20 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	papersky 2008-02-03 08:55 pm UTC (link)
	Congratulations! But I expect this means you won't be able to get to Farthing Party this year either! Oh well, very exciting news anyway. I like "oddparents" so much that I'm going to suggest it to carandol, Z's father, who is going to be the genetic father of a baby for some friends. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-03 11:25 pm UTC (link)
	Probably not, but I live in hope. I know this is probably the last one, and I'd hate to miss it. On the other hand, that's right about the point where monthly plane tickets between New York and Chicago will be happening again. We'll play it by ear. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	redbird 2008-02-04 12:27 am UTC (link)
	Congratulations. There's a piece of me that's startled, not that you're all doing this, but by the order of the pregnancies--though a moment's thought suggests that not wanting to be pregnant while raising an infant is just good sense. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-04 04:22 am UTC (link)
	The order was a practical choice. B&A are a little older than we are, and we're not quite financially ready yet. The insanity that would have been pregnancy + infant only became apparent to us once she was already pregnant. And we were much relieved that we'd done it this way. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	redbird 2008-02-04 01:10 pm UTC (link)
	That all makes a lot of sense. I hope it all continues to go smoothly. (Reply to this)(Parent)

redbird
2008-02-04 12:30 am UTC (link)

Also, lots of people I know use that sort of fetal nickname, but with things that aren't ordinary names-for-born-children, like "Pod." And a couple I know were using Newton and Pippin--one for the child she was bearing, and one for the not-yet-matched child they hope to adopt. Those sound more like ordinary names, but were selected as apple varieties, because they plan to adopt from Kazakhstan.

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	ashnistrike 2008-02-05 02:49 am UTC (link)
	It took me until today to realize that I have, in fact, no idea what the connection is between apples and Kazakhstan. Enlighten me? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	redbird 2008-02-05 03:15 am UTC (link)
	Sorry. Kazakhstan is where the wild ancestors of all domestic apples grew. (And yes, that is obscure--the problem about having a memory like a lumber room is that I can lose track of which facts are common knowledge.) (Reply to this)(Parent)

	klingonguy 2008-02-04 12:22 pm UTC (link)
	Congratulations indeed! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-04 06:08 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	buymeaclue 2008-02-04 01:38 pm UTC (link)
	Wow, how cool and lovely. Congratulations to all. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	ashnistrike 2008-02-04 06:08 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	almeda 2008-02-10 02:45 pm UTC (link)
	I and my (half-) sisters were Burford. I know a family that referred to their first as Grover before she became an air-breathing organism ... it ended up sticking as a nickname. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	As to kinship names ... almeda 2008-02-10 02:53 pm UTC (link)
	jrittenhouse is in the odd position of being related to another family through his adoptive daughter -- his daughter and their daughter are, as it turns out, twins, and were separated at the Chinese orphanage. They take joint vacations and the like, so the girls can have a relationship; they refer to the other couple as 'our in-laws'. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: As to kinship names ... ashnistrike 2008-02-10 04:46 pm UTC (link)
	I remember hearing him talk about that--such an adorable story! Unfortunately (in the linguistic sense), we already have many actual in-laws involved, so that wouldn't serve the requisite function of decreasing semantic confusion. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	beckyzoole 2008-02-10 07:33 pm UTC (link)
	In my family, fetuses are normally named Petunia. (Except for my daughter's current pregnancy; the one she miscarried was Petunia so this one is Peanut, for luck.) I think the name "oddmother" is inspired, BTW, so CONGRATULATIONS on your soon-to-be oddmotherhood! (Reply to this)

marydell
2008-05-17 04:06 pm UTC (link)

Since nameseeker is the egg donor as well as the surrogate, some of the nicer terminology for "birth mother" might suit. "First mother" is popular nowadays and "natural mother" is the classic version. Some adoptive moms don't like "natural mother" because of the implication that adoptive mothering is unnatural, waah waah, but I think it's fine (I'm a prospective a-mom).

Kinship names - I've always liked the form "cousin" as a generic for "person who is related in a way that takes too long to describe." Likewise "aunt" and "uncle" for semi-parentals who aren't necessarily related.

"oddmother" is great, though, I'll have to remember that.

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	ashnistrike 2008-05-17 06:52 pm UTC (link)
	Birth mother is good for explaining to other adults, not so good as something for a two-year-old to call her. And entirely inadequate to describe my relationship with the kid. I suspect he'll come up with a neologism on his own, really. That's one of the things that kids are for. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

marydell
2008-05-17 07:16 pm UTC (link)

Oh, right, gotcha. A lot of kids seem to call their birthmom mommy+first name, and call their a-mom "mommy."

Unfortunately most of mainstream society's attempts to come up with names are geared toward validating the adoptive parent and minimizing the importance of everybody else. So "egg donor" is considered a totally fine designation, "genetic parent" is iffy, and "actually your real mother, depending on how you look at it" is heart-attack-inducing, because it's *true,* and heaven forfend.

I recently learned from a muslim friend that adoption isn't done in Islam, only fostering. So you can take in a child and raise it as your own, but you can't give it your name. He told me about this in the context of saying that a couple he's friends with who had two children recently had a third child so that their infertile best friends could have it to raise as their own. The fertile couple had two boys and the new baby was a girl, and they had always wanted a girl, so after going ahead with the foster arrangement they ended up having a fourth child (also a girl) that they kept to parent themselves. Happy ending all around. Anyway, it was very cool to hear about an arrangement like that in the context of a traditional community, and how it was regarded as a really nice thing to do, without any drama or freakage.

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	marydell 2008-05-17 07:19 pm UTC (link)
	clarification: I'm not suggesting that you're engaging in any drama or freakage; you're doing something really cool. I've encountered a lot of people lately who are freaked out by ethical adoption, because it involves risk of various kinds, so that's who I'm thinking of. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

ashnistrike
2008-05-18 02:54 am UTC (link)

No offense taken. We ran into a lot of that when it looked like we might need medical involvement in kid formation. Everyone threw up their hands in horror at the "complexity" of the situation. It all seems perfectly logical to us, but then, a lot of things that seem perfectly logical to us are confusing to the rest of the world. Especially things having to do with defining/creating family.

Are the people freaked out by ethical adoptions still carrying the remnants of the older way of doing this, where you wouldn't even tell the kid they were adopted? Or is it something else?

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marydell
2008-05-18 07:03 am UTC (link)

I think some people carry the remnants not just of the older way of doing it, but of TeeVee or movies, where adoption involves a victorian orphanage, a basket made of reeds, a nun, or santa. Some people are shocked that the birth mom "gets to" pick the adoptive parents. Many people are surprised, and some are actually offended, at the notion of ongoing contact, even letters. The idea that there's a woman entrusting you with HER child is squicky and uncomfortable for a lot of people; they'd rather see the child as belonging utterly to the adoptive parents, with the whole birth thing just being a technicality.

And the notion of honesty & fair dealing etc is also challenging. Recently I was telling someone that some birth moms might not pick me because I'm going to keep working, and they want a SAHM for their baby. She said "can't you just say you're going to quit work?" The trick is to react to that stuff as simple ignorance, and to gently educate the person, instead of staring at them in horror as if a tarantula is crawling on their face. I'm still working on that.

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ashnistrike
2008-05-18 03:29 pm UTC (link)

Oddly, from the birth parent perspective, it seems to relax people a little if you explain that it's going to be an open adoption. When they're looking at it from this end, what seems "unnatural" is handing over the kid and walking away without a backward glance (or at least without doing anything about it).

And let me tell you how sick we both are of hearing, "Oh, wow, that's so generous. I could never do that!" It is generous, but there's an unpleasant undertone to the comments that makes them not really very flattering. Nameseeker says that "What a cool thing to do--that's a lot of work," would be much more appropriate. (And is closer to what we've gotten from most of our friends, possibly because they all know the intended parents.)

The way people respond to the idea of doing this as an arrangement among honest, consenting adults, reminds me of the reactions some poly friends have gotten to their arrangements. Cheating feels much more natural to some people than "Wait a sec, let me ask my wife first."

I recall that you live in the same general vicinity as us. Do you want to get together some time soon and kvetch about this stuff in person?

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marydell
2008-05-18 04:51 pm UTC (link)

Ooo, you're local, I forgot! Yeah, I'd love to meet you guys. I'll send you private message.

"I could never do that," is almost never a compliment, although it's often meant as one. I've learned, over the years, to react to surprising or uncomfortable-for-me information as if I'm surprised, instead of immediately trying to know what to think. Saying "wow! Ok, you've surprised me. So, what's that like?" covers almost anything, gives my friend a chance to educate me, and gives me a minute to crank my mind open if I'm having a narrow reaction. And to prepare some kind of polite reaction if it turns out I really am horrified, like when I found out one of my friends simply adored George Bush.

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	dbang 2008-06-28 11:47 pm UTC (link)
	aha! found the missing context, posted during a week I was traveling and never caught up on. Sheesh! (Reply to this)

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