West meets East

I've been spending recent Saturday mornings stretched out with a pillow under each end of me, stuck full of tiny needles. Classical Chinese music plays softly in the background, helping me conjure up images of robustly bursting follicles or eggs romancing sperm or sticky uterine walls or whatever is appropriate for that point in the cycle. When my mind drifts from that more purposeful imagery, I have a lot of time to think and what I think is this: We will have another baby someday and the odds are stacked in favor of a strong Asian influence in the process.

It's not just the acupuncture, though my hope is that eastern medicine is taking me down the right path and my body will soon cooperate. It's also the fact that I'm feeling more and more drawn to adoption in China if we reach that point. At first we had dismissed it, not being able to sort out the logistics of an extended stay with Eli to think about. But something keeps pulling me right back to it. One specific pull was a book that happened to jump out at me when I was in Borders a couple of weeks ago. It's called Forever Lily, and it's the memoir of a woman who never intended to adopt a girl from China yet somehow does.

While I have some problems with the book in general (her oversimplification of the roots of infant abandonment in China, as well as her Eurocentrism, for example) it was incredibly helpful to me as I started trying to imagine what the whole process would be like. She describes, in detail, her journey to China and the process - emotional, bureaucratic, etc. - she goes through to bring her daughter home. It made it easy to put myself there and think, "Yes, I could do that." So there you have it. Yes, I could do that.

We're not at that point yet. I'm probably closer than David is, but even I'm not there. This week I'll go to my first adoption information night. I'll go alone because, like I said, we're not at that point yet. I just need information when it comes to things like this. I need stuff to chew on and I'm done chewing on my Google searches. I also need to feel like we're moving toward something. I don't want another year to go by of TTC, only to look back and wish I'd started doing something earlier. So we'll get this moving forward and see what direction it takes us in. I'm thinking East.