Lazy post and a request

Request first. Does anybody understand the information on this link? Obviously I can understand bits of it, but any further insight would be very gratefully received. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=58697

Second - I received the following on an email, and I know it does me good to do a bit of blessing counting - and this is quite interesting too. . .


If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:

There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all
6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.

The following is also something to ponder...

If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.

If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish
someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.



Hope you don't find this too 'preachy'. I just liked it - maybe it just hit the right spot for me today.

What do they know?

I think I must have known that at some point in this adoption process I would get frustrated that Social Services views might be at odds with my own, but this does feel rather personal.

We put in our application to begin our home study just before Christmas, in the expectation that we would be able to get started in January. When they received our application I had a call from E, our current social worker. She had already explained that she couldn't be the person to do our home study with us, because she had just taken on another couple and she only works part time anyway. When she phoned she said something rather convoluted about how she would like to have one last meeting with us before the homestudy was passed to a colleague, so that she could give an up-to-date handover. . .

Well, she came round on Tuesday and basically said that they would not start a home study until we had had some counselling. Or more specifically until I had, because she 'feels' there is 'something there' which I need some counselling for.

I made th mistake of trying to discuss it with her. Although my last miscarriage was only June, I have had the chance to come to terms with them, through repeated experience since November 03. I have never seen a heartbeat, never had a scan in which there was really, undeniably a baby (we saw a yolk sac once. That's about it). I don't want to be accused of being in denial here, but honestly I do not feel that I have been through anything like the traumas that Nicole or Jill or Manuela or so many, many others have. And actually, that experience with H was more likely to leave me needing counselling . . . I gave her a few instances of how I genuinely don't think I need counselling - I have good friends I can talk to, this blog and all your support, and so on. I have even turned around all the problems that the miscarriages, albeit indirectly, caused me at work. But she wasn't having it of course. I should have known - these SW's have filled out a box that says 'recommend for counselling before proceeding' and I cannot untick the box, no matter what. Well, only by getting some.

She had brought along an embarrassing couple of sheets of printout from a google search about counsellors in our area - mostly, if you looked closer, they would be of no use to me (I am not a disturbed adolescent, for starters). But R has contacted his GP who is referring us to someone at the hospital, and SW will be happy with that, apparently. She says I need only go once (to tick the box) and if I think that is enough . . . but not going at all is not an option, obviously.

Hoops hoops hoops.

I WANT TO GET ON WITH THIS! I want to move forward, to feel that there might actually be some hope on the horizon.

Oh - and moving out of the county may not help as although we could possibly adopt an "easier" child, we would be further from our 'support networks' which would not look so good for us from an agency's viewpoint.

We aren't progressing very quickly here.

Sorry - my frustation is showing through.

How far to go?

I drove down to a village just over the border into Wales to pick up the turkey for Christmas dinner.

I came across a beautiful village in Wales, but really not so far from where we currently live.

I thought - "if we lived HERE we would be outside of the little county we currently live in - and we would be eligible to adopt FROM that county."

My social worker called and confirmed this would be the case, but said - "don't get too carried away - we really don't have many babies".

And I don't really want to leave our current house. Plus the other stuff we would have to consider - our house is not high value, and we would end up with a much higher mortgage, and if I had to stop working too .... and and and.

So I have been looking at property web sites in the area, but most of the houses in our price range are just hideous and I couldn't bear it.

And so it goes on. I am not even expecting all this to be successful.

In other news -

H (see previous posts) gave birth on 12/12 to a baby girl, Amelie, at 24, nearly 25 weeks. Her little heart gave out very soon after the birth. She never breathed, though they filled her lungs with oxygen. By a weird fluke I was there at the hospital, though not in the delivery room as it happened. It was the saddest, saddest thing I have ever witnessed. Amelie was tiny but so perfect. I was under instructions not to cry, and I spent over an hour with H and her partner, N (R's only cousin) and I didn't cry. I don't know how. But when I got home that night, and talked to R and his sister (who was visiting) I realised that H and N would have to leave Amelie behind when they left the hospital. The thought broke something and I just broke. That kind of sobbing that makes your whole body heave.

Then A, my neice, gave birth to an 8lb 6oz baby girl, on 18th December. Name, Holly Rose. I am just jealous and can't work out why she has this baby and I don't have one.

I know there is no justice, life is not fair. I still wish it could be though. For all our sakes.

May 2007 hold for you everything you wish it would hold.