WARNING: Cute Baby Pictures May Cause Peeing (Lots of peeing)

I’m a major sucker for cute baby pictures.

My Pinterest account’s been largely created just so I can scope out adorable, wrinkly, chubby-cheeked darlings in all their precious glory.

So, imagine my excitement at dolling up my own little princess for cutsie pics.

About three weeks before my due date, my family photographer Melissa Jacobs began asking if she could shoot our princess.

Melissa’s more than a photographer – like any great photographer, she’s part of the family.

I met Melissa while working for Supervisor Pam Slater-Price. On the professional front: she’s the best. I’ve seen her all over town, from the PRSA Bernays Awards to weddings to elected official press conferences.

I’ve recommended her to clients (and they’ve always been pleased), plus she’s done my professional headshot and some shots of us when I was five months pregnant which we used for our 2011 Christmas cards.

The one below got rave reviews from family and friends:

Right away, I pilfered my Pinterest account for this little magical shot.

In true Melissa form, she responds saying “no problem” and she can’t wait to meet her when she arrives.

What I loved about the above picture: it focuses on the size difference of the baby. Can’t you just “feel” that cute little baby’s soft skin?

I just happened to have a cute stuffed elephant my mom gave me for the nursery this past Christmas.

Here’s Hank all ready for Dagny to come home:

When Baby Bird arrived two weeks ahead of my due date, it threw off our photo session calendar and instead of being two weeks old – she was three weeks on the dot.

I thought those baby photo sites must be nuts for recommending a baby be 10 days old or younger for newborn pictures.

What’s to shoot? All she did was sleep.

Bingo.

All the mommy sites recommended I have her well-fed, calm and be prepared for another soothing feeding.

But our best-laid plans quickly devolved into a comedy of errors made more intense by her screaming bloody-murder.

• Best lighting caused her to blink angrily.
• Peaceful visions of a naked baby butt replaced by a screaming, kicking, Army-crawling baby.
• Sitting up to snuggle with the elephant. No. Laying down with the elephant. Kinda (see below).
• Peeing. Lots of peeing. Peeing on hubs (he changed his shirt for the family shots), peeing on the nursing glider, peeing on the carpet, nearly peeing on Melissa.
• Pacifier did not earn it’s name. She would either purse her lips or spit it out like a watermelon seed. The only thing that kind of worked was giving her hubs finger to gnaw on between shots.

After the sitting up pose flopped, Melissa re-assessed.

“Let’s lay her sideways with the elephant.”

Worked in theory (like the rest of the shoot), but she kept throwing her leg up in the air as soon as the camera started clicking and showing the world her pikachu.

Hubs sighed: “I’m failing already.”

Here was the best of the lot (it’s not cropped or touched up):

We finally took the elephant out of the equation and went far more simple.

Once Dagny calmed down and focused on Melissa, some beautiful shots materialized.

Hubs and I originally didn’t plan on being part of any shots and so, we didn’t get gussied up.

But since we were throwing plans out the window, what the heck?

I’m glad we did because she snapped some candid shots of hubs calming Dagny that brought tender little tears to my eyes.

Plus, she captured the three of us in our natural three-weeks-postpartum state: tired, unsure and making lots of mistakes.

I thank God everyday for bringing this priceless creature into my life.

She’s already teaching me how to let go (quite literally).

Our deepest appreciation to our dear (and patient) friend Melissa – she’s a celluloid maven.

Here’s some of my favorites from the day:

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Childless no longer…

A slight and soft creature, a tender 7 pounds in weight, with thick dark hair and an angel kiss on her forehead lay still in the crib beside me.

Hubs matched her exhausted, motionless state in the spare bed of the postpartum room at Naval Medical Center San Diego while I absorbed the moment.

After hours of chaos, it was silent.

A nurse walked in quietly and presented a tray of food. If I could have, I might have lunged at him for what amounted to very bland hospital fair.

I ate greedily adding up the hours in my head of my last meal: about 35. The makers of Jell-O would be wise to get hungry new moms to write their ad copy.

With my tray sufficiently scarfed, I turned my attention to the gentle sleeping face of my new little girl eying every strand of hair, her tiny finger nails, the curve of her mouth knowing all that grew within me.

I laid back in bed trying to rest but it was hard. Everything about her fascinated me.

Just as I was about to drift off, she began to cry in hunger. Hubs hardly stirred as I pulled her crib to me and feebly, awkwardly lifted her out.

Once cradled in my arms, her soft eyes opened and I felt the first of many awesome waves wash over me: I’m her mother, her teacher, her life giver.

We lay embraced for some time before hubs stirred and the spell was broken with the interruptions of nurses and doctors caring for her and me.

Sunday, I celebrated my first Mother’s Day with hubs, my mom and sis, and of course, my Baby Bird.

As I got ready for our celebratory brunch, I thought of a Mother’s Day several years ago when I attended Skyline Church service alone in the midst of our infertility struggles. Countless women filled pews wearing corsages, holding hands with their children, dressed in their Sunday best.

Rev. Jim Garlow began to bless the service with a special prayer for all the women who longed to be mothers and were dealing with infertility. Painful tears streamed from my closed eyes.

The road to motherhood since amounted to as much pain and sorrow as that enormous joy payload in those first precious silent moments alone with Baby Bird.

One day in the midst of my pregnancy, hubs caught me in thought and asked why I was shaking my head to myself.

“Even now, I know that it happened, but I still find it hard to believe.”

He smiled and said: “Everyone keeps saying it’s because we stopped ‘trying.’ But we stopped when we started the foster care process. Maybe it happened because we were finally ready.”

In life, some seeds of happiness just won’t grow no matter what we do.

While they might not be what you expect, life just might surprise you with something (or someone) greater than you ever imagined.

My first postpartum nurse came in to wish our little girl a happy birthday and write a note up on the wipe board for her. She asked how to spell her name and as she began writing with her back to me, she turned around with a confused look.

“Did you make that up?’

In the weeks following our ultrasound, we slogged through the girl’s section of a baby names book several times over. One night in bed while reading “Atlas Shrugged,” hubs was rebuffing my latest name suggestion and I jokingly said gesturing at the book: “How about Dagny?”

He looked it up in the baby name book sitting bedside. Old Norse meaning “rebirth.”

In the months that followed, we “tried it on” to see if it fit and sometimes I wasn’t sure until hubs brought her to me for our first collective snuggle.

She lifted her head, opened her dark and stormy eyes and looked at me.

At 34, my life started anew.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 55 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

A New Year, A New Life

New Year’s Eve. A night for letting go of the past, hoping for the future and counting the many blessings in life. No year brought so many surprises for me as 2011.

I embraced my role as a foster mom and all that entailed – foster parent classes, ceritifications in water safety, CPR and first-aid, professional and personal referrals, baby-proofing, child-rearing education and re-assessing my professional life to make room for three weekly visits with caseworkers and biological parents along with the court records that each visit required to be filed.

It was an immense undertaking, but we were ready.

Then, we found out just as we were about to cross the last “t” that we were expecting.

One might think it would be an easy shift. A better outcome.

But there’s that lingering desire deep inside transformed by compelling stories that longs to be a foster parent.

In the midst of such confusing emotions, we dealt with new weirdness: unwelcome parenting advice, weight-gain assessments, career pressures and a family torn between wanting to be involved but not knowing the child’s sex.

My growing belly and the active girl inside nevers lets me forget for a moment that I must overcome and ignore all fearful obstacles. My life does not belong to me alone anymore.

There’s as much solace in that notion as anxiety.

I try to take each day as it comes and drown out the doubts as I prepare for my most incredible life achievement: child birth.

On Tuesday, we’ll meet our doula who will be our one constant child birth expert throughout the miraculous experience. The Navy system does not assign you the care provider you’ll deliver with –  you get whoever is on duty.

In life, you get so few opportunities to feel the complete understanding and meaning of life. When this year began, I resigned myself to never having a baby.

I thank God for giving me a chance.

For all the difficulties, confusion and heartbreak, I thank God. How else would I have ever so appreciated this experience as I do?

We only get so many days on Earth; never miss a moment to be present in the good as well as bad times. Each second is a precious lesson, a chance to know yourself and be better.

So long, 2011. Thanks for the curve balls. You kept me on my toes.

Merry Christmas, George Bailey! The Richest Man in Town

Nothing, I mean nothing, brings a tear faster to  my eye than the hapless, deeply conflicted and vastly complicated George Bailey played by the affable James Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Each year, hubs holds my Christmas movie obsession at bay as long as possible. It’s not that he doesn’t love Christmas or all the classic films, from the beloved Bing Crosby “White Christmas” to the overplayed but still necessary “A Christmas Story.”

I love them all and to his dismay, I would watch them endlessly from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day.

My absolutely favorite being the heart-string pulling “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It’s a magical combination of true and inconvenient love, business struggles, family strife and a spirit-crushing war. None of the characters lie flat on the screen; they’re human and fallible, most especially our hero George.

He loses his faith in all those things that give life meaning and wishes for nothing but to end it all.

George sacrifices his great dreams and aspirations, living out his life in his small hometown playing the rock in his family, business and love life. The once starry-eyed young man grows cynical and crooked with grief over the loss of things he once yearned to attain.

The older one grows, we see more and more of ourselves in George. He represents all that promise and hope of a bright future gone real.

But for all his despondency, George’s guardian angel (the truly lovely and sweet Clarence) sees what he also has in his life: people who love him. Though he doesn’t realize it until its nearly too late, the love of people you love, to love and be loved, gives us the spiritual and emotional motives to make life worth living.

Love might not pay the bills as George might wish or send him to far away lands, but it brought him a tender and funny wife, beautiful and dear children, family and friends who dote on and accept his every flaw.

Sadly, all he sees until Clarence literally drops into his life, is what he doesn’t have and in the end, his near financial collapse isn’t vindicated. That’s what my husband hates about the film; the bad guy wins.

But that’s where I disagree. When his family, his friends come to his aid they’re repaying all that emotional and spiritual debt he gave to make their lives better while old man Potter will die a bitter and lonely curmudgeon.

The world is full of George Baileys. He gives and gives, he feels like he’s a failure because he sees all the things in the world he wants and doesn’t have. From his old and drafty house to his ratty and threadbare clothes. He feels worthless.

But we, who faithfully watch our friend rise, fall and rise again, see all the virtuous and moral gifts he provides to those around him. He’s brave, gutsy and full of fight until he nearly slips off the edge. That’s when we see that people do love and appreciate him; for the first time, he sees it too.

And he finds it in the faces of those he once viewed with scorn. He even kisses the broken knob on his staircase railing; a symbolic, heartwarming scene.

Merry Christmas, George Bailey! You are truly the richest man in town.

Congratulations! It’s a Type A… (SPOILER ALERT)

After trying to conceive for four years and deciding to go the foster parent route, the response to our news of expecting (unexpectedly) has been touching, personal and highly emotional.

Even guy friends sent me emails and direct messages through Twitter telling me in their own way they shared in our joy.

Let’s face it: Babies are wonderful news. They’re miracles and what’s so beautiful about them is the hope they give us.

Since we waited to share our news publicly until week 14, or the start of our second trimester, it’s been a crush of responses in the last few weeks leading up for the half-way point, or week 20 starting today.

Many readers shared that my posts have inspired them, healed them and even brought them to tears. Fortunately, it’s also opened doors from those who reached out to share their own personal stories, some who say that they had never discussed their experiences before.

In some cases, they never became parents and worse, infertility struggles led to the destruction of relationships leaving aching holes in their hearts.

Other stories gave me a good giggle.

One friend, a man, confessed that he and his wife resorted to a “fertility charm’ of sorts and surprise, they conceived after years of heartbreak. He kept the charm until a second child was on the way.

The human connection to such a precious and deeply rooted desire knows no bounds.

The week of Thanksgiving, I entered my fifth month on the road to Houston. We stopped in a scenic area for a monthly “bump” profile picture. Even as I increasingly show, my mind still resists the reality. Perhaps it’s fear to feel too much excitement; a survival tactic.

Yet, every morning, I pull up my shirt and look at my protruding abdomen while I enjoy a rare moment flat on my back, which isn’t recommended nor comfortable. I watch Brian shave and as he’s about to walk out to start his early day, I point and request: “Kiss the baby.”

Much as I learned about society’s feelings and inability to respond well to infertility, they also respond strangely to pregnancy.

I’ve learned that I don’t look pregnant “enough,” and that they get a “boy feeling.” Even a client’s daughter outright proclaimed that I was having a boy.

Even I began to tell people I thought I felt I was having a boy. So, I decided to take a few of those silly online “old wives” gender quizzes and every single one said based on my responses, I was having a boy.

Years before we had started trying, I told Brian I would want to be surprised. But after years of wanting a baby, any baby, being pregnant is itself a huge surprise. But my sister and mom both insist they don’t want to know, which seems an exercise in futility.

I set my ultrasound appointment weeks ago at Naval Medical Center San Diego for today.

As I chugged my 32 ounces of water an hour before my appointment, I began to get nervous. I could learn something scary about the baby. Anything could be going on inside as the baby develops without me knowing.

Sitting in the waiting room, neither husband nor sister were there as I was called back by the ultrasound technician. As I walked in, husband sent a text asking where I was when he realized that my calendar invite was not wrong about the appointment location – he was. He even convinced my sister it was in a different building.

(Please, let this not be an indication of the hospital drive.)

As the technician began sliding the instrument around my stomach, I watched her face intently.

“I’m doing measurements for the doctor’s records and taking pictures of development,” she said.

“So, does it look good?” I asked.

She smiled, eyes still on the monitor, and gave a vague “u-huh.”

Husband and sister walked in to watch her wrap up her measurements when she turned the monitor toward me and switched on the wall screen for everyone to watch.

She pointed out all the important details of a healthy, well-developing baby. The baby never sat still for a second as the technician tried to show us the heart chambers, the spinal cord, feet and face.

“Strong heart at 146 beats a minute, blood flowing through the spinal cord, no club feet or cleft pallet concerns,” she concluded. “Looks real, real good.”

Once sister was safely out of the room, she rolled the wand over to the baby’s pelvis.

“So, here’s the hips and pelvic bones,” she said. “Want to guess?”

Brian leaned over my legs toward the monitor while we examined the shifting image.

“It’s a girl,” he said.

“Congratulations, it’s a girl,” she said.

She printed out some photos, like the one featured in this post. Finally, it’s real. Its not some fantasy. Come April, I’m going to be a mom.

As we walked out, my friend sent me a direct message begging me not to make her wait for this post.

Stories of all the baby activity gave her a sense that it might be a girl; her daughter also was a very active baby in utero.

Well, that’s just what the world needs, I laughed, one more Type A girl.

Dobby the Wonderdog, Truck Stop Coffee and Other Roadtrip Ruminations

At about three hours into our road trip to Houston from San Diego for a week of Thanksgiving eating, I finally decided to reach down for my neglected pile of public relations trade magazines.

Somehow, I wasn’t months behind in my reading, but I don’t imagine I gave the articles nearly the same attention as I did with nothing else but endless sky to distract me.

Road trips force you to slow down your brain, think deeply about what you want and also what you don’t want (another Sonic burger…).

I read some thought-provoking pieces out loud to my patient husband on the role of CEOs and the importance of self branding. Bridging those two takes time and I realized that I do what we all probably do throughout our workdays. I grind. There’s not a lot of personal thought that goes into my work sometimes and that causes a nasty side-effect: I lose the chance to tell stories.

My clients range from politically-adjacent to completely grassroots and independent-thinking, but they all have the same two basic goals: grow membership and increase influence.

But what makes a Steve Jobs stand out with his product compared to Bill Gates and his product? In recent years, we’ve grown to like Gates but not in the way that we love Jobs. Perhaps because we saw a person in Jobs, not just a CEO, who founded a company he ended up losing to another leader for a time. He learned much and humbled himself in later years at the helm once again making light of his failure.

Gates lost our support during the monopoly scandal and then started a nonprofit with his wife to benefit public education. We like him, but we don’t love him and the brand loyalty of Microsoft certainly isn’t as rabid or personal as Apple.

Perhaps that’s why CEO blogs rose in popularity for some companies. When used properly and with a certain level of transparency, our fondness grows for their product and perhaps we’re more forgiving of mistakes.

On the second day of driving, I enjoyed some of the most delicious coffee I’ve had in a while and it wasn’t from Starbucks. In fact, I hadn’t seen a designer coffee place anywhere between San Diego and San Antonio. No, it was from a Love’s truck stop. I liked the coffee and the unpolished, but friendly service so much, I stopped there on my way back for two tank fill ups – my car and my caffeine levels.

Road signs flew past me along the desolate West Texas highway. It seemed to take forever, but time does pass and experiences collect.

How do we capitalize on making a lasting impression on just one passer through enough to love and benefit our brand for life?

I shared some of my ruminations with my brother, Jeff, who handled human relations for some 15 years at Exxon. He learned much and some the hard way about what resonates with the public for CEOs and what doesn’t. He now works in a similar capacity in foreign relations for a private oil company, but the challenges to humanize CEOs remains a challenge.

In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the company CEO took a back burner and became a case study of what not to do. In the end, another “face” might have been better to look at than his but he needed to step up and learn how to be his company’s brand. It’s where we public relations professionals can make such a difference  by making sure our people are prepared for the sharp fork in the road.

“What the CEOs don’t get is that they’re the company,” he said, as we watched our hometown team lose – a long-standing Thanksgiving tradition for Detroit.

When the game was truly hopeless, Jeff walked me around his ranch grounds visit with his horses, sheep and some dang noisy chickens. As we walked, some plucky dogs and sneaky cats zipped in and out of fence lines.

One dog rescued in the 11th hour was fondly named Dobby for her strange appearance of large eyes and ears similar to that of the Harry Potter character. She’s not a traditional sheep dog, but she has the love and enthusiasm for it. The sheep resist at first, but then they respond eventually and go with the program more readily than they do with the other ranch dog more suited to the work. In fact, they actually try to bite the other dog.

You could say Dobby dresses for the job she wants and my brother happily encourages her good work.

Companies aren’t much different. Some people “look” the part, others work at being the part despite rough edges. In the end, it’s the heart and passion behind the job that motivates the best results and loyalty.

With the notion of being personal on my mind, I prepared a client during a conference call for what’s to be a great opportunity for her organization and decided that her focus shouldn’t be all work and no play.

“Be personal and visionary,” I suggested, while stretching out my mom’s house phone cord to my laptop. “Tell your story about what leading this organization means to you. With all the jobs in the world, why do you love this one?”

Sounds a tad touchy-feely, doesn’t it? But think back to those narratives that tells us about the lifes-blood of people’s work.

What drove Mark Twain to write about a poor boy in the south? Why did James Watt dedicate his life to building the steam engine? How did Tom Brady forge ahead after being a bench-sitter in college to winning three Super Bowls? Can a middle-aged Julia Child just rise to French-food stardom in a freezer-dinner world?

We’re suckers for the story behind the story.

And while most CEOs struggle to seem cool, calm and collected under pressure, as my brother pointed out, sometimes the best approach is the human one.

Standing at what seemed like my 20th fast-food counter somewhere in west Arizona, I thought about the parallel to my work ethic. I’m more of a from-scratch type who bakes my proposals with personal love.

As a friend who shares my mantra says to clients: “For better or worse, you get me.”

But I’ll admit, during a hard and heavy work week, those french-fry ideas do seem better. They save time, money and lots of people think they’re just fine. Plus, just imagine how many more clients I could serve with a few fry cooks. Fresh idea require research, vetting and sometimes, a few trials before they’re just right.

Even still, visions of poulet a la creme looking, smelling and tasting good enough to make Julia warble “Bon Appetit!”danced in my head as I looked contemptuously at my final handful of fries. I dumped the remainder in the bag.

After a full week away from my desk, I’m back to work cooking up new approaches to help my clients speak their language, not a “CEO” language, but in genuine terms that are practical, ambitious and true. We should all aspire for the lasting impressions Dobby the Wonder Dog and Love’s coffee.

Be real, be yourself, do what you love and do it well. And try to stay away from French fries – figuratively and literally.

Thank You for Your Business: What Holiday Gifts Say To Clients

Thank you for your business.

Such a simple sentiment, but so necessary to business survival. So it can be especially tough to express in a holiday gift.

Last year, I showered my burgeoning client list with homemade gift baskets filled with cardamom pear jam, rosemary-garlic infused olive oil, sugar cookies, chocolate truffles and of course, champagne splits. Just delicious and beautiful.

In the end, I spent nearly as much if not more doing it myself than buying ready-made baskets. But the big difference was personal sentiment and quality control. I was rewarded with generous words of appreciation all year through plus continued business support. Well worth the effort.

This year, my client roster has grown such that a similar endeavor would eat up weeks not to mention precious billable hours better spent serving my clients.

So, as I consider some of the ways I’m going to thank my terrific clients for a great 2011, it occurs to me that each client gift needs will vary. A large gift basket for an entire office might suffice for one whereas a carefully selected book might do the trick for another.

Here’s a few goals:

1 – Make it memorable by standing out and adding even just one personal touch. Take note of little office items, such as collectibles, or even scour social media pages for hints.

2 – Select from brands or gifts that represent you and your company’s values. The products, services or endeavors you appreciate say so much about you.

3 – Don’t eat all the good stuff. Include one thoughtful gift that sticks around all year to remind the client that you appreciate their business.

Simply put: The holiday gifts doesn’t mean all candy, all the time.

You can give the gift of giving. One year, I gave a co-worker the gift of a donation to Rescue Task Force to benefit wounded troops and another, I adopted a military family in their name through Operation Homefront.

Entertainment can be a great way to thank clients with a night out, especially if they’re artistically inclined. In San Diego, the options are endless with The Old Globe Theatre, the San Diego Opera, and the San Diego Symphony among many others.

Books and other industry-related materials can be a great way to mix business and pleasure. In my field, there’s no limit to political and public relations- related books. If you know them well enough, make a personal selection of a book they would enjoy.

And of course, a crowd-pleaser staple – edibles. Everything from chocolate and cookies to champagne and fruit can perk up a busy office. Delight a foodie client with a gift card to their favorite eatery. For clients outside the region, share a little taste of your local favorites from a beloved winery, farm or ranch.

What’s great about your client gift selections? They’re saying something to the client about who you are – be it that you support families in need, patron the arts, know the best writers in your field or enjoy a fine wine.

Still at a loss? Give the gift of business.

Order your holiday gifts from a client or make a holiday-time referral. Nothing shows you appreciate a business like giving them a little, especially if you can cross-promote clients to each other.

After all, business is all about connections.

Gifts to avoid:

Clothes. You don’t want your client gift to end up as the Ugly Sweater of the Day.

Fruitcake, figgy pudding, mince meat pies and other traditional holiday foods. They’re an acquired tasted typically not acquired by most.

What are the best — and worst — client gifts you’ve ever sent or received?

Expecting the Unexpected

Just a week after our Angels Foster Family Network classes concluded, Brian found out he finally made Chief Petty Officer after 14 years of service.

It’s an exciting and highly honorable distinction among enlisted sailors, but the time requirements during induction ate up his clock from 4 a.m. sometimes until midnight or later.

Reluctantly, I contacted our caseworker Emma to let her know our home visit would have to be rescheduled hoping there would be some way she could do the 2 to 4 hour visit without him. Of course, she couldn’t but said to contact her once we were ready. We still had just a few basic items to finish in our checklist, including the burdensome floor plan which requires square footage and diagrams of our entire house including outdoor landscaping.

Tedious. But I knew I wasn’t in control. I had to let go and follow the process; no use in fighting it.

During his many hours gone during the day, I busied myself with those foster paperwork chores, cleaned the house over and over, bought a combined carrier and stroller and a hiking backpack for a little one, searched online endlessly for baby furniture (why is it so expensive?) and found a few bedding sets I loved.

I was in full nesting mode.

Aside from all those baby tasks, I picked up a couple clients and got downright busy sun up to sundown and hardly stirred when he would collapse next to me in the wee hours of morning. Suddenly, I was tired every night and passing out before 9 p.m.

As he approached the end of his induction phase, I began to think of scheduling our home visit and finishing off those little red tape chores when one night, hubs made a startling declaration. The next day, he expected me to get an Aunt Flow visit.

Trouble was – I had no indications she would be in town. None. Zero. Zip.

A few days later, he was helping me unpack the groceries when he pulled out turkey lunch meat and a pint of mint chocolate chip gelato.

“What is this?” he asked, comically. “I don’t think I asked for this.”

“I wanted it,” I said. His eyes widened.

“Who are you?” he asked, laughing. “You want a sandwich and ice cream? You’re pregnant.”

But after a four-year struggle with infertility, one doesn’t jump to rash conclusions. In fact, you flat out ignore such things and move on.

In this case, I ignored it for five whole days.

Finally, on my way home from a Padres game with a client, I decided to stop at CVS and face what I’d faced many other tearful times before – a negative pregnancy test.

The clerk double-bagged the kit. I laughed, flashed my wedding ring and said: “It’s cool. I’m not worried.” He laughed and shrugged as if to say: “That’s not the norm in here.”

At 10 o’clock at night, I certainly didn’t expect the test to be positive even if I were preggers. Your hormone levels are quite low.

Shaking my head in disbelief that I was even going through with the exercise, I read the box, unsheathed the test strip and waited … about a second. My eyebrows crinkled. I grabbed the box, looked at the picture, then at the test strip and then back at the picture.

“Plus means positive,” I read out-loud quietly, slowly.

It was the first time I wept with joy holding a test strip.

I crept upstairs with the strip in my hand, touched hubs leg and switched on the light. His eyes barely cracked open. I couldn’t speak, I held the strip in front of his face.

He sat up, grabbed the strip, looked up at me and asked sleepily: “Did you just pee on this?”

“No,” I joked. “I’ve had it for years. Just been hiding it.”

He did the math. I was five weeks and all the signs hit us at once. In fact, I had lots of them beyond the dietary switch ups and fatigue, only how would we know?

The next day, I had a doctor’s appointment which happened to be pregnancy related. Hubs bolted home from work early, his first since induction started, and walked into the doctor’s office just as the results came back from the lab.

She greeted him at the door with a smile: “Congrats dad!”

That day, I called Angels and told the office manager Annika. She eased my strange feeling of survivor’s guilt when she burst into laughter: “So, you’re the couple.”

Apparently, there’s at least one couple a class who gets pregnant just before or right after a first placement. She prefers our situation because pregnancies can be stressful enough without dealing with the rigors of foster parenting. She put us on the respite list for now and told me to focus on having a healthy pregnancy.

At 10 weeks, I met hubs at Liberty Station to meet our certified nurse midwife for our first ultrasound. After all the questions and basic exam stuff, we got down to the moment we dreamed of.

Suddenly, it was there on the screen. It had a head, hands and feet, tiny fingers and toes, a fluttering heartbeat and then just like that, it kicked and jumped.

Pure magic.

“It’s a dancer,” I said.

Our midwife giggled and warned: “An indication of the months to come.”

I hope so. I’m enjoying every moment until I meet this miracle baby in April, who forever changed me in immeasurable ways because it wasn’t another obligatory check in the blocks of life. It forced me to really question how deeply I wanted to be a parent and to let go of controlling outcomes.

In our silent weeks since finding out, I’ve had to fib many times to many loving friends and family wanting to know when we’d start fostering.

A few nights ago, hubs and I celebrated our last day of the first trimester. He made a confession: “At first, I thought about Angels and felt bad. Then, I felt relief that we didn’t have to go through all that garbage right now.”

But we did go through “all that garbage.” It was just different than we expected and every new opportunity presented new challenges.

We didn’t choose our baby, like a luxury item we thought we deserved, it chose us when the time was right. It’s the pregnancy of none expected ever.

Perhaps, it’s the future older sibling of foster or adopted children. Maybe it will have other biological siblings, maybe not.

I’ve learned it’s best to leave the future alone. You’ll never figure it out, anyway.

Baby Steps…

After a few months of wrestling with the idea of open adoption, we reluctantly decided it could not be afforded right now. I sent an email to my friend, Mindy, who recommended the Adoption Center of San Diego and told her about our decision.

“I understand,” she wrote back. “But there are other ways. There’s Angels. I know its tough, but let me know how I can help.”

Fast forward six months, and here we are – eight weeks of classes completed and just a couple more steps to take before we foster a baby.

At first, we could not see ourselves providing care to a child we may not adopt. You love a baby, feed, cloth, change its diapers for possibly up to 18 months and then may relinquish your obligation. On one hand, that could feel good knowing the parents did right by their child. On the other hand, you will hurt and miss a baby you grew to love.

Oh, so many months ago, I wrote back to Mindy and told her I wanted to know more. We agreed to talk and before we met up, I called the Angels office to sign us up for the next orientation.

What could it hurt?

I remember back to the orientation where Angels’ founder Cathy Richman gave us an honest, full explanation of the program and answered our questions in about an hour.

Cathy worked in foster care for years and saw two things: babies residing in three living situations before their first birthday and a system that didn’t support the foster parents enough to succeed for the children. As a result, those children failed to attach to any one caregiver and learn empathy or trust. At worst,  the child develops reactive attachment disorder, which can lead to sociopath-like behavior.

Today, nearly 80 percent of those incarcerated were at one time in foster care.

“So what’s different about us?” she asked rhetorically. “Well, we do a lot of hand holding to make sure you and the babies you care for have the best experience possible. You will not go through this alone.”

Angels provides one caseworker to just a handful of families, provides the parental training and other arrangements to qualify as a licensed foster family, helps fascilitate the sometimes tense visitations with the birthparents, offers counseling and support for the families, and works through all the court-related matters.

What do they ask for in return?

You must submit to a mental health evaluation, background check, commit to only taking one foster child at a time possibly from birth to 18 months, and – the biggie – one parent must stay home during the length of the fostering.

In her 11th year, Cathy has placed more than 460 babies. When the county calls her with a referral, she goes down her list of waiting families and starts making calls. Sadly, there’s more babies than families.

During our classes from the wonderful Angels caseworkers, we learned about the power of human bonding and what breaks those bonds. It’s not always the physical abuse that leaves the most damage, but the neglect leading to failure to thrive. It’s hard to imagine leaving a child alone for hours at a time unattended, but it happens.

In basic, the system works like this: Angels receives a call, they place the child with a family, and then follow the orders of the court on reunification. If the judge determines the child was removed hastily, it will be reunified within a couple months. Otherwise, the judge sets a list of requirements that parents must abide by in order to regain custody and the case is reassessed every six months up to 18 months.

Roughly 50 percent of the Angels foster children are adopted.

Before she let us go at the orientation, she told us her last of many stories.

A 20-year-old drug addict gave birth, the baby tested positive for drugs in the hospital and was removed from her care. An Angels family fostered and eventually adopted the baby. Less than two years later, the same woman had another child that tested positive for drugs and the same family adopted that child to keep the siblings together.  

Eight years later, that Angels family had adopted all six of that woman’s children when Cathy received a call that the woman delivered her seventh child, which tested positive for drugs. The Angels family finally said no more – they had already moved twice into bigger homes.

“What we say around here is ‘be careful what you wish for,’ ” she said, half kidding. “Of the many struggles our biological parents have, fertility does not seem to be one of them.”

Our sweet caseworker, Emma, set our appointment to walk through our home in a couple weeks to make sure we have knives, chemicals, prescription drugs, and lighters under lock-and-key. We’ve nailed down a few options to install locks throughout the home. From all the mind-numbing paperwork to all the classes, plus a 4-hour CPR/ First Aide class, a 2-hour water-safety class, to the walk-through – we’re only just beginning.

Once we’re placed, we’ll see Emma, the County caseworker and the biological parents each at least once each week. We must document every clothing item purchased with a minimum expense required, register for WIC formula, take and file court notes from our bio-parent visits, take regular pictures and keep a memory book to go home with the child, run and log regular fire drills, maintain all our safety certifications and above all – make the child’s safety and care our top priority.

It’s a heck of a lot to keep track of and just thinking about what we’re in for sometimes gives me anxiety. But I try to take it one day at a time and reassure myself that it’s all going to be worth it.

Of all the emotions our Angels workers said foster parents experience, it’s anger and frustration. Anger at a system that puts so much pressure on us knowing the child came from an unsafe environment.

A friend recently told me he considered fostering, but he said all the paper work made him and his wife feel like criminals.

“What the heck does the County care what my home floor plan looks like?” he asked rhetorically. “These babies come from terrible conditions and somehow, what my lawn shrubbery looks like is a concern.”

It does feel silly, even downright aggravating. Especially when you find out that joblessness and homelessness are not reasons a child cannot be reunified with their parents. The standards are a bit askew. But you can’t fight city hall, I guess.

I visited my darling friend and new mommy, Tanya, this week to see her little man. She doesn’t have the space for a nursery at the moment. I instantly thought of all that would keep her from fostering, simply because of her home environment, and yet you couldn’t find a more doting mom.

It’s a damn shame; the world’s all topsy-turvy and a kid’s just lucky to survive.

But I’m going to jump these hurdles and keep jumping because somewhere out there, my little prince or princess needs me to keep going.