Homecoming, Part 3

Hurricane Joaquin continues to charge across our landscape fast and furious and with new levels of spittle, angst and pin wheeling arms. I feel helpless in the face of his continuing unhappiness, especially since I am the only victim and reason for his pain. Any look, laugh, non-telepathic-intuiting of his immediate needs lends itself to body jerking fits, complete with whines and screams and snot. With Gregg he is primarily calm and happy. With me, that thin line between love and hate is continuously crossed...like a drunken man trying to walk at the end of the night, wavering between mushy love, self-pity and furor and occasional puking from too much vodka, or in this case, too much crying.

Madelena has continued to eat, sleep, play, talk, walk, crawl, laugh, clap, assert, hug, kiss and sing in the most charming of ways, unfortunately leaving her brother red-faced and sweaty and slightly less adorable by comparison. In those moments when she is tucked away in her crib and he has our full attention, Shawn Joaquin is able to remember the sweet child that he once was those many days ago and will suddenly put his hand gently to my cheek and kiss me with the passion only a three-year old can muster for his mother. Today, he tilted his head and looked at me for a moment as if considering my future in his life and then proclaimed "I love you, mama" and tackled me with a hug. I thought that perhaps this was our moment, when the devil child would fall away and my sweet boy would step out of that red, sweaty body that he's inhabited for the last week. Ten minutes later he was smacking my legs with propeller-like arms and screaming something unintelligible that might have been "I want cheerios" or "fear the priest, fear the priest!"

Each night we spend hours talking about how to help Shawn Joaquin through this time, how to be the best parents we can be when sometimes we just want to lock him in his room and put some ear buds in and listen to our iPods to block out the screams. How to comfort and hold him when at any moment he may backhand one of us — most likely me — or burst into tears or give a loud smacking kiss. And at the end of every night, we are just glad that his rage is not directed at the smallest among us, and that he actually seems to enjoy her company and want to touch her and kiss her and make her laugh. And just like that Southern heroine of long ago, we promise ourselves that tomorrow...yes, tomorrow.... will be a better day.

Homecoming, Part 2

When you are a child, you later realize that there was much your mother never told you about being a girl and later a woman. She never told you that hair would mysteriously appear around your nipples in your 20s, that sleeping on your side would cause a deeper crease to appear on your face on that side, that during childbirth many women defecate, that you will undoubtedly get your heart deeply and painfully broken at least once and feel like there is no recovery but there always will be. There are so many facts my mother could have shared that may have helped me appear younger, stronger and more hair free.

I feel that other mothers have let me down as well. Not one of my dear friends — mothers just like me — told me about just how intense sibling rivalry can be and how the target of all the fury, the frustration and the unending rage is not the new sibling but YOU, MAMA, the person who brought the competitor into the nest. No, I heard stories about how the older sibling helped bring diapers, liked to hold the bottle and proudly proclaimed to anyone who would listen...I'M A BIG BROTHER NOW, AND THIS IS MY BABY. Like the pain of child birth and the accompanying defecation, perhaps you need to catch someone right after New Child Introduction before the memory-blocking hormones kick in and while they can still tell you about the pain, the rage and the unexpected violence that are part of becoming a larger family.

So far, I have had corn thrown at my head, hands and glasses pounded on tables, CD players knocked off bookshelves, seen SJ smack himself repeatedly on the leg hard enough to raise welts, been screamed at least a dozen times in one night about unrelated and nonsensical subjects (I WANT MY BLANKET NOW - I KNOW I HAVE IT! I STILL WANT IT NOW!) and had two children scream at me because the other was in my orbit and in need of affection. They are not sure how they feel about each other; each one tentatively touches the other one on the back of the hand or head, tries to kiss and then ducks and dodges at the last minute. Shawn Joaquin has passed on time alone with me and would prefer that Madelena join us, but has no qualms about then screaming, hitting or crying about an imagined slight during any trip or playtime that includes Madelena. He has lost the ability to walk multiple times in public places, on stairs and in our driveway, as well as his ability to speak and share his feelings through more than a primal scream and an accompanying smack to the back of the nearest head.

Don't get me wrong. I am so happy to have both of my children here and able to smack me or each other rather than having to imagine that scenario. It is a long-anticipated homecoming that I would never have delayed. But perhaps with a little more information from other moms and perhaps a nice fat suit to pad me from the blows, I might have been a bit more prepared.

To be continued...

Homecoming, Part 1

Shawn Joaquin's first reaction to Madelena was excitement, shyness and a general woohooiness. I was thrilled that on her first night home, his biggest reaction was when I picked her up and he was compelled to shout CARRY ME MY LEGS DON'T WORK I CAN'T WALK CARRY ME CARRY ME CARRY ME NOW NOW NOW NOW. I felt blessed to have such a kind and balanced child. The next day Gregg took him to school against all protestations of needing to stay home and make Madelena laugh, and we enjoyed an hour of baby gazing before Madelena's nap.

At lunch time, we went to Rockridge to pick up Shawn Joaquin; Madelena and I hung out at a cafe and made gorilla faces at passersby and shoved sweet potatoes up our noses and only spit up once. When Shawn Joaquin arrived with Gregg, it was all smiles and kisses hugs. I was in mama-bliss, coffee in hand, sun in the sky, two happy children within arms reach.

G: Hey, guess what Shawn Joaquin did at school today.
Me: Tell me, baby. Did you play music? Did you have fun with your friends?
G: No. He hit his friends. Then he threw blocks at their heads. Oh, and he choked them.

Clearly, we had a ways to go. Later that night as he discovered that I was feeding Madelena, he felt compelled to throw a newly shucked ear of corn at my head with the accuracy and speed of Zito. As I picked bits of corn silk out of my hair, I realized it we had even further to go than I had initially thought.

To be continued....

Behind door number one is....

I am fascinated by the doors in Antigua. As you can see from this street scene, behind them anything could exist — a beautiful courtyard with French dining, a potter hard at work and ready to sell his wares, a goat and dog duking it out for scraps, a family who owns a beautiful, colonial door but nothing else, and whose "house" walls are made of tin and plastic sheeting.

Today I took pictures of various doors, with a whimsical idea of a coffee table book some day to compete with Kramer's coffee table book about coffee tables. But as I learned when I returned home, taking photos with an inexpensive digital camera will not get me there - the top and bottom edges of every photo were lost. But I still managed to capture a few images worth sharing, though one person has already pointed out that some of the doors appear to have bullet holes...so nice photos, but please come home NOW.

Las puertas de Antigua:









I have no other news to report or scintillating stories, witticisms, navel gazing or even snarkiness. We spent today close to home and trying to encourage napping to no avail but with much whining on both sides. Tomorrow is our last full day in Antigua, when we plan to visit our favorite spots and drink some Antiguan coffee with a side of palmeras, walk through the Bodegona to gape at the deals on odd objects, and say goodbye to the beautiful little city that helped make us a family.

Navel gazing

A few observations from our day:

When asking to buy a comb, pronunciation is key or you appear to be saying "I'd like to buy a penis, please." And this is apparently not so funny to the middle-aged woman behind the register, and in fact causes some alarm.

When your child leaps into the arms of a beautiful brown stranger and refuses to come back to you, you feel queasy and anxious inside as if it is proof that you have stolen this child as is often the suspicion and rumor in Guatemala. You vow to never return to this store again.

When one meets someone actually named Don Juan, it is inevitably a disappointment.

Guatemalans and their children are generally not fat, unless they spend too much time in the United States. Those who reside here are fit, and those kids who you see returning from the States on your overnight flight often have large bags of McDonald's "food" grasped in their greasy, plump little hands. It makes you hate that dark side of capitalism even more.

An afternoon spent in bed watching Cinderella Man and then That 70s Show dubbed into Spanish is actually an excusable experience when one is helpless and pinned down by 21lbs of sleeping love and drool.

Annie's Mac and Cheese, microwable version, does not a meal make. It's even less filling than the soup at Mindy's.

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Apologies to those who don't get the literary, language or pop cultural references above. But hey, that's what navel gazing is all about - only those things interesting to the gazer.

Stranger in a strange land

You think that there is nothing worse than a sick child for whom you don't know what to do. Until you have a sick child for whom you don't know what to do and you find yourself in a foreign, third-world country and suddenly lose your grasp of that land's language as panic permeates your brain.

Today Madelena and I had the über bonding experience of a medical emergency — a serious case of adenovirus and its powerful effects on a 14-month old body. My baby girl was miserable, and the stories about liquid poo suddenly lost their romance and became more like a way by which to tell time - liquid poo every 10 minutes, accompanied by screams and tears and a sudden dearth of clean towels in our little apartment. I finally found an emergency doctor who spoke English not as well as I would like or he thinks, but it was enough to bridge the gap. We journeyed to the most dangerous part of Antigua (for Americans or "whitey" as I came to think of myself) where the doctor's office was located, behind a gate with a rifle-armed guard. Among the handful of beautiful 4 foot Guatemalans, I stood out like a black man at a Tom Metzger dinner party/rabble rousing.

The doctor was kind and efficient and, in retrospect, humorous in his command of the language.

"When the diarrhea come no more, you throw yourself on the medicine." For a brief moment, I imagined the medicine as a bomb upon which I needed to throw my body to save my child, but was able to recover enough to discern what he meant. "For the test, you irritate her anus and expire the feces." I didn't even want to translate that to Spanish and back, so instead asked if I could use a soiled diaper. Thankfully, there was no need to irritate her little anus, and a diaper would do.

We waited then for over an hour for taxis that said they'd come and never did, as the rain began to pound the dirt street outside of the doctor's office. I realized that I knew no one here, had no phone number to call as darkness fell and we were miles from our home and unable to find our way — though to walk into the street with my little brown baby would have put us immediate danger because of the anti-adoption sentiment and recent raid, and was in no way feasible. I began to sweat in a horrible, acrid way that made me feel even more panicky, unpleasant and obvious among the few other women around me. Finally, as the sun set and I began to hatch a plan to coerce the doctor into taking us to our home, our taxi arrived.

The cab driver was my savior. He brought us home and waited 20 minutes after I asked our guard to call the maid to come back and care for Madelena so I could spare her the next hour or more of errands in the dark streets of Antigua. Then it was off to the laboratory to have her diapers analyzed, waiting in dimly lit reception room where I had the surreal experience of watching Backyardigans in Spanish while a Mayan woman next to me laughed every time Pablo spoke. The TV was in a cage, high on the wall, as if someone might otherwise walk out with its early 80s self. Then it was off to the first of four pharmacies to get our prescriptions filled, finally finding one that was still open though in one of the more dangerous parts of town, so all personnel and goods — even toothpaste — were kept behind a barred counter where money and goods were slid underneath the 6" opening at the bottom. Por fin, it was time to get home to my baby.

When I walked in the door, I found Madelena playing with Doris on the sofa, throwing blocks on the floor in her inimitable way, applauding for herself. She looked up at me, quizzically as if to place my face...someone she knew.... but from where...and then broke into an ear-to-ear grin and threw up her arms to be lifted into mine. And I knew that as awful, truly awful the last four hours had been, I would go to more than hell and back to have that greeting and know that my child would be well.

We're moms. It's what we do.

Mi gorilita

Madelena and I decided to take Antigua by storm...or by large tourist group. To learn more about the city and alleviate the loneliness, we joined large group of turisticas following behind Elizabeth Bell like the little American puppies that we are. A local expert on Antigua who has lived here for 38 years, Elizabeth has the unmistakable gloss of a junior high gym teacher who takes no guff and will not be questioned. Indeed, we learned that she WAS a junior high teacher and truly WOULD take no guff from anyone.

From city hall (the view from which can be seen above, gazing down on the Little People in Plaza Mayor) to various ruins, cathedrals and a pit stop to hawk her own books at her office, we learned about life in Antigua as it was in the 1500s through now, and how telephoning outside of Antigua was only available on two lines until 1999. We learned about the Mayan view of the cosmos, why Mayan religion was outlawed and punishable by death, how jade mining carried the same penalty, and why an indigenous people with a rich culture and religion have been misunderstood, maligned, and reduced in numbers so much that they could end up on the endangered list just like bald eagles and straight men who like to dance.

Joining us on this tour were two other mothers with their daughters, also adopting. One was my Baptist friend from the day before, the other a new recruit from Champagne, Illinois with whom I hit it off. All was well and right with the world, except that my child was clearly so beautiful and charming and engaging that their probably equally beautiful and charming daughters were all but ignored.

She was the toast of the museum, where adults vied to extend the finger to which she would grasp as she tottered through exhibits. She was the one who flirted with her gorilla face (as seen below) which apparently not only a mother could love. She laughed, she waved, and she tilted her head coyly to one side while smiling her secret Mona Lisa smile.


Ah, if only those who loved her all day could have seen her in the evening, her pants and socks dripping with liquid poo as she wrapped herself monkey-like around me. Only to immediately spit up on our sofa and me only minutes after stripping down, scrubbing up and being swaddled in new soft, clean clothes. I wonder if their love would have continued to extend to this little factory of bodily functions or if THAT — unlike the gorilla face — truly is something that only a mother could, if not love, accept with a modicum of grace and a big dash of nausea. Vale la pena.

Strange bedfellows

Being in Antigua, a lovely vacation spot, is no vacation. While I am thrilled to have Madelena, it is difficult not to have any other adult to share the experience with, to walk her endlessly around the courtyard or apartment, or to talk to about little things like what we need from the store and the 40 minutes on foot each trip takes, or why egg can not be removed from Madelena's curls. To remedy this solo situation, I had a blind date yesterday.

Just as I once did on an online dating site, I posted my particulars on our local list serve for adoptive families...mother with 14 month old seeks companionship for dining, walking and easy conversation. I ended up making a date with Mandie and Isabella, 10 months, for lunch at Café Condessa. I was nervous — what if they didn't like me, what if I was having a bad hair day, what if in the restaurant Madelena decided to finally trot out the poop she had been withholding for two days and include her now signature grunting as part of the performance? My palms were sweaty and my diaper bag full as I made my way to the Plaza Mayor to meet them.

Mandie, who told me I'd recognize her by her kicky little white capri pants and red top, was very young, very sweet, very southern, and very Baptist — complete with a cross necklace with pieces that represent the leather by which Christ's hands were bound to the cross, the nails that were driven through them, wire to represent the crown of thorns and other things that she pointed out as part of her testimony when I asked her about the necklace.

Mandie and her husband, Brandon, were caught in the maelstrom of confusion and bureaucracy that is Guatemalan adoption and had found that their 1-2 week trip to pick up their child was turning into 1-2 months, and they had 3 children at home who wanted their parents back. I found this out after making a comment about how hard first time parenting is, making the assumption that they were newbies by looking at their fresh, unlined faces and hearing about their struggle to get their daughter to nap or eat. After I extricated my foot from my mouth, we walked around Antigua while I pointed out some of my favorite spots, only to learn time and time again that they already knew that place or this place, even though they'd only been here three days. Like a cat who never learns that no, no, that ledge is too high and you should just stop trying to jump up there, I was unable to stop myself from talking about pointing out different things throughout our stroll. I was like a skinny, pimply guy on a blind date with a hotty, trying to impress even though he has no chance of scoring and actually has learned that the hotty has all the personality of a milk pail and an echoing brain to match.

When it was all said and done, I had met a very nice family with whom I shared one goal that overcame our differences: to bring our respective children home and to provide them with knowledge about and a pride in their origins, and to love them completely and unconditionally for the rest of their lives. While we will probably not have a second date, I am buoyed up by the experience and realize that while I may not meet my new best friend in Antigua, I am not so alone after all.

Baby bird is in the nest

Madelena Sofia arrived this morning with her entourage: an attorney, a facilitator (I think that's code for "handler" and the person that negotiates the riders in her performance contract), her foster mother Lisseth and sister Margot. Somehow it seemed unfair that in exchange for this beautiful child and 14 months of raising her to be a confident, spirited and independent being Lisseth received a pound of See's candy, a gold bracelet etched with "Gracias mi madre", some photos and $280 in cash. But what could I give that would equal all that they have given her? There are no gifts, no cash amounts and no words adequate enough to express our gratitude. So it's bordeaux with chocolate sprinkles and 24k gold all around.

Madelena was her usual easy-going self — she gave me her "oh, it's you" look and we were back to where we were 6 weeks ago; best friends who can easily pick up the conversation after weeks or months of silence. She still finds my conversation scintillating, my dancing hilarious and also enjoys long walks in the park, holding hands and sunsets. We enjoyed all of those things today, wandering through Antigua and picking up the necessities as we moved through our day: a panda, hair bows, avocados, orejitas to enjoy with morning coffee, dish soap and the obligatory vanilla espresso shake that negates the need for a nap or even lunch.

Late this afternoon, as Madelena dozed in the front pack while I made my way through La Bodegoña, several people smiled at her and said (in either language) "Oh, is she sleeping?” No, she's dead. SERIOUSLY, what is up with that question? But since I am all happy and birds HAVE come down to tie ribbons in my hair today as I walked under the jellybean rainbow, I simply smiled and said "yes." As I left the store, I was approached by a woman who said she was there on a mission...or maybe she's there on A Mission...however the Christians may spell it. I braced myself for yet another "god will provide, you're stealing children" speech and prepared to use my sack of unripe avocados as a pummeling device like the oranges in The Grifters as she began to speak.

"Your baby is beautiful — I'm interested in adopting and just want to talk to someone about it and there you were." Well, maybe god DOES provide. And so we had a warm conversation for many blocks, ending with an email exchange and a promise to keep in touch. I realized in those blocks that just like those on A Mission, I too could be an evangelist. But one that doesn't require a cross or Bluesmobile or the hating of any person who doesn't believe what I do. My evangelism is adoption and the families it creates, and I will spread my word throughout the land and hearts of anyone who is open to it, holding up my beautiful children as my testimony. Amen, my friends. Amen.

The eagle has landed

After a few tense moments at SFO and about 12 hours of total travel, I have arrived in Guatemala and in the sweet and colorful town of Antigua. During my travels, I learned that Madelena will not be coming to me today but tomorrow....and that we finally have a homecoming date. We will have two weeks of Antiguan sun, homemade tortillas, Kaffe Fernando breakfasts and walks through El Arco, and then we will return to Oakland to bust open wide Shawn Joaquin's center-of-the-universe theory and show him that while he remains there, he will be sharing that space with Madelena Sofia.

A brief look at our quarters, then I'm off to get the sleep I was unable to get last night in seat 10F between 11:30pm and 5am. More later..

My living room/kitchen/dining room:




Our lovely courtyard:

Sling Blade. Rite Aid. You say potato, I say...

As a parent you often find yourself not having a regular bar/restaurant/cafe hangout, but a drugstore hangout. It's the neighborhood drugstore where you end up multiple times every week to pick up children's cold medication, slip'n'slides, cheesy tiki lamps because they make your son bray with laughter, lunch boxes, discount flip flops and a whole host of other dollar items and actual necessities that the grocery store never has or offers for double price. So you go to your local drugstore because your kid likes to wander down the aisles and touch each and every thing in his special Monk-like way and you think you can save some bucks. But you still pay. Oh, you pay.

This morning we went to Rite Aid to pick up some bug spray, and after picking up six other things we did not need, we got in line. The checker was clearly annoyed to have left her trailer far too early in the morning and itching to git out fer a smoke to further damage her 60-something skin and add additional weight to the bags under her eyes. Looking balefully at the line she called for back up. "Second checkerrrr," she drawled into the microphone.

Minutes passed as she examined each and every item in the basket of the person checking out. The man in front of me left in a huff after 4 minutes of "well, would you look at that" exclamations from the checker. The manager came up twice for price checks and averted his eyes from the line of increasingly antsy shoppers. Finally, after no second checker appeared and multiple people in line bailed, it was our turn.

The first item in our basket was a child's electronic piano. She stared at the shiny buttons, hyp-mo-tized. Then hit the first button, setting off a tune from the piano. She laughed like an infant who had just discovered her own feet. "I like that," she mumbled like Billy Bob Thornton in Sling Blade, approximating his voice and oddly, as I just then noticed, his clothing style as well.

This commentary and amazement at each dollar item continued for several minutes, executed with an underlying score of Mac the Knife that she sang under her breath. Shawn Joaquin gaped at her from just below countertop level as she checked each item, before she turned her squinty eyes on him. "You sure are a cutey," she said and began to sing Lemondrop while swinging her hips, snapping her fingers and looking up at the stained ceiling. He was terrified and mute at her sudden attention, frozen in time and space like a small animal that is trying to evade the continued attention of a predator. Another minute passed before she regained her focus on the task at hand. "Did you need something?" she asks kindly, not noticing the pile of unbagged and unpaid for goods before her.

It’s like when Shawn Joaquin begins a conversation mid-sentence, leading me to believe I have perhaps blacked out or lost time. It takes me a few seconds to realize that NO, I am not the crazy one, she is. And that even though I have given up my past hangouts, I can get the same level of incoherence, entertainment and insanity I experienced at The Alley and other dive bars…along with similar juke box tunes…just by going down to the local Rite Aid. Suddenly trips to Rite Aid were no longer about the trip but about the journey I have while there, and the camaraderie with the other patrons that's not unlike that morning-after kinship one feels after a night of witnessing bad bar behavior.

So give me some Dramamine, those dollar flip flops and a water back, lady. And keep my tab open. I’m sure to be back.

Love is....

Saturday evening Gregg and I went out for a romantic early dinner at Cesar's, which I had been dying to go to since it opened. We drank wine, ate fine cheese, birds came down and tied ribbons in our hair as a jellybean rainbow magically appeared above us. It was all meant to be a celebration of Madelena and a precursor to a Grown Up Night Alone with No Children In The County. The sheets were clean, the bed was made, and the candles were at the ready.

Three hours later I was not in the throes of passion but throwing down my dinner, lunch and possibly parts of my small intestine. I was hit with the most vicious case of food poisoning I have ever experienced, and little did I know that while we DID have plans for something that would last alllll niiiight loooooong, fate would intervene with a little something else that would last even longer. And while it would tone my abs and slim me down, it was not exactly how I planned to spend my last 36 hours alone with my husband before departing for Guatemala.

G, he of queasy stomach and gagging at the sight of wet toast in the sink, was a trooper. He fetched crackers and ginger ale at dawn, barely flinched when they were rejected in all ways, talked to answering services and doctors and triage nurses and barely intelligible pharmacists. He drove 90 miles to pick up Demando, and kept him from my bed when all SJ really wanted to do was bounce on my stomach. He slept on the dog couch to avoid shaking the bed and increasing my nausea, and pretended not to notice when the clean sheets became less than spotless and vanilla-scented. He put the trash can by my bed, and as I attempted to change venues, carried it up to the sofa and back down again as I realized that my only safe haven was to be our bed. He brought me ice chips on demand, popsicles that were red-not-orange-oh-please-not-the-orange-make-it-blue-but-not-orange-even-if-you-have-to-open-every-white-wrapper and made chicken noodle soup merely to be rejected over and over again.

After three days of hell, I realized that sometimes love is not all candlelight and roses and jellybean rainbows. Sometimes, just sometimes, love is a trash can beside the bed and a man on your dog sofa.

Game on

The US State Department, in all its wisdom or perhaps just its inability to find its ass with its own hands, has pushed out the new DNA requirement by one week, allowing us to sneak in under the wire, take the baby and RUN.

Once again, it's time for chocolate old-fashioneds and extra Pilates. But this time I will be smiling and showered when I walk into Colonial Donuts, and will even willingly stop by our local department store to pick up the pink ribbons, bows and bands that I was so sure that I would never, ever put on any child of mine.

Watch out, Madelena Sofia. Mama is coming to get you.

The three faces of Shawn Joaquin

Public face.


You-will-do-as-I-say face.


Innocent-I-love-this-child-so-much face.

Bureaucracy, rhymes with "rat bastards"

Days before my departure for Guatemala to bring our daughter home, we have just found out about a new DNA requirement — effective today — that was made public yesterday through the passing out of fliers in front of the Embassy in Guatemala. A potentially devastating new requirement that could add months to our homecoming, the news distributed like a half-off coupon for shoes or a 2-for-1 hot dog sale.

I am angry.

I am confused and unsteady.

I am ready to kidnap my own child.

I am nauseated and on the verge of losing yet another breakfast because of the mercurial and capriciously erected barricades set up by the US government and keeping me from my daughter.

I am ready to move to Canada or some other country that is less swayed by political pressure and more driven by social services, beer and a love of ice wine and maple syrup.

I am forced to wait until Friday to find out how this will affect us, and to find out if it means another week, another month, or another season. Until then, I will eat chocolate old fashioned donuts, offset by extra hours of Pilates and hill walking and strenuous hugging of the child that I DO have at home. And I will both pray for and curse the US government in hopes that one or the other will bring my child home sooner, or at least give me a direction to focus my energy and avoid breaking anything in my home.

If you have a child, go hug him or her or them. And take a moment to ponder the wisdom of D-lister Jaime Pressly who said in a recent interview that people who adopt are vain or lazy. What I would not give to trade this endless wait for 5 minutes of procreation, nine months of minor discomfort and a pregnancy glow, followed by 24 hours of labor and the pronouncement: it's a girl.