What happens after pretty much your whole life gets squished like a bug? I don’t know about the rest of you but I drank! Like a fish. I would make it through the day till about 1:00. Then I would walk across to my handy convenience store and buy a case of beer. I would drink a 12 pack before Mike got home at night from work! Then we would share the rest, with me usually stealing a couple of his! I worked a couple of crappy jobs in that time, and just didn’t have the ambition to do very much of anything else!

In the meantime, I had family members move in for awhile. We rented a huge place for us all and I tried not to drink so much! I tried to act like life was OK and we would make it through it, that this was just a rough patch. Problem was that I had no direction. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. My self esteem was so low that I didn’t really think that I was good for anything.

 After 8 months of this, my family moved back to the mainland and left us kind of (Okay, totally) holding the bag with this huge house. Our landlady was really nice though. We did repairs for her on the house and took care of things she had wanted to do for some time. So, we parted on great terms and moved back into Waikiki. We found an apartment in the same building we had moved from, and life went back to what it had been. We were both drinking and partying pretty heavily. We would make it through the night and pretty much fall into bed to drunk to worry about anything else in life!

Then a couple of things changed for us. One was a job I took with a little old lady who lived in the building in front of ours. Her name was Ruth, and I credit her with probably saving my life! She needed someone to come in and help her with meals and light housework. It started out just 3 days a week. She was a very conservative christian woman who had moved to Hawaii from Pennsylvania. Just being around her, and listening to her world view, helped me to understand that I had to decide how I was going to live and for what purpose. She brought me back to my christian roots and made me want to be a better person than I was at that moment in time. She sensed that I was going through something but, never asked me. I never could really talk about how I felt losing those babies. To this day, I don’t say all that much about it when asked. Luckily, people don’t ask any more.

Anyway, I worked for Ruth about a year. In that time we became very close. Her health continued to decline, and when I asked her what she wanted to do she just said she wanted to go home. I was going over to her apartment everyday by this time. Boy, was it taking a toll on me. My back, hips, and shoulders were tore up all the time! Ruth was a pretty good sized girl! She couldn’t move very well either, and I had to lift her around. I had to charge her for my time as well. She understood that, and we continued on with me trying to find some help. Finally, I found some volunteers to come in on Sundays. That helped a lot! Then the  state came to her house to assess her. She was thinking of going into a nursing home by this time. Luckily, the daughter was in town for this assessment. Ruth told the nurse that she only wanted to go home. The daughter took her back home.

Mike and I, in the meantime, bought a condo just outside of Waikiki. I actually call it a compartment! 750 square feet including the lanai (balcony)! It is a nice little two bedroom, two bath, and two parking stalls! The extra parking stall clinched the deal! Finding parking on this side of the island is a drag! We settled in and enjoying our new home. This was the first place we have ever bought!

We fixed it up as a place that was definitely for adults. We had one bedroom, and the other bedroom was a tv room. The cats thought it was all theirs. I think that it is the happiest we had been in about 4 years. The following January (2002), we got a phone call asking us to take in Mike’s 14, (almost 15) year old nephew. It seemed meant to be because my job had ended. Also, I should point out that it has never been unusual for us to take in nieces and nephews for what ever reason. We have had a hand in raising a lot of kids.

So, we decided to embrace this and see what we could do to help this kid. We started changing the place around to include a teenager. We also decided to just quit drinking cold turkey. Went back to church and really got involved with it. By the time our nephew got here our lives had done a total 360! We were “normal” people.

When my nephew got here it was obvious that things with him were not quite right. At 14 his reading and writing were very childlike, and his reading skills were not to good. He was a freshman in high school special ed but, it was obvious he was being socially promoted!

We headed to the doctor and he was sent on to the psychologist after that to try and figure out what was wrong with him. In the end, a woman in the homeschool group we had joined, asked me some interesting questions. She also gave me a book to read. I read it and headed back to the doctors. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Something I had barely heard of before, but which was so obvious once you knew what to look for. The doctors agreed that it was probably that. I think they were reluctant to say it for sure because they only had my word on how much the mom drank while pregnant with him. The psychologist and I decided to take him off of the depacote he had been on. It just didn’t seem to be the right medication for him. 

He did take ritalin once a day to help with learning time. This was his decision as he just could not sit still if he didn’t take it. He would sit and try to look at his work and just could not focus on it! It would get to where he was so frustrated that he would throw everything away from himself and all but scream. Ritalin was good for 4 hours after he took it. That gave me just enough time to teach him in English and Math.

By the time that he went back to his home state, he could read, write, do fractions, and hold down a job. I feel like homeschooling him was the only way to go. He could do everything at his own pace and not feel like he was a “special ed” kid.

His sister came to live with us 4 months after he did. She brought the sunshine with her!  She is a very smart girl with a lot of ambition! She loves to sing, dance, act, and just play. She was with us till she was 17. Just a couple of years they each stayed with us. She brought a whole lot of laughter and fun to our house. She didn’t go home till about a year after her brother. 

We treated these two as if they were our very own! We enjoyed them both so much and still miss them! They just brought to our home exactly what we always wanted, children! It just seemed so natural. I had no desire to drink or do anything but be a great mom! Life was wonderful. Then our nephew decided he was ready to go back home.  He has always wanted to come back here though. We have told them all that once they become adults, they have to pay their own way back here! That will let you know if they are serious or not!

It was the end of 2004 and Mike came home one night from work just like everynight! Only one difference though. He looked at me and said, I am ready to adopt! I just looked at him and for once in my life was totally speechless!

Aloha and welcome to you. I am Kim, the hot flash part in babies and hot flashes! I have to pretty much start at the beginning of our story to let you know who we are and who the babies are! So, this first post is going to be a little long! I promise they won’t all be this way though. Not with two screaming kids around.

Mike and I always wanted to have kids. I should say that I have wanted to have a whole bunch of kids since I was about 8 years old. I had names picked out for at least 20 kids. I was always babysitting and grabbing people’s babies right out of their arms. I could have walked around holding a baby forever! It never seemed to change either. All the way through high school my only real dream was to get married and have kids. This was the only career I could see myself in. I know, not much of a woman’s libber was I!

I went to work right after high school and didn’t marry till I was 25. Mike is a wonderful man who is so patient! Good thing! I told him that I had never been on the pill, yet had never gotten pregnant and thought there might be a problem. I was very up front with him about this. He, of course, said it didn’t matter if we had kids or not! During the next 10 years we tried to have our own kids. First we just kept trying on our own. When I hit 32 or 33 we got insurance! A must if you are having problems conceiving! I found a really good OB/GYN and the real trying started. She found that one of my tubes was severely damaged. There is no known reason for it. Could have been an infection or, who knew what. So, first surgery was to try and clear the tube. The other tube was called a hydrosalphinx, say that 5 times fast! All it meant was that the tube was closed off at the top and the bottom of it. The tube was filled with fluid that my wonderful doctor refered to as “gutter water”.

After that first surgery, I had to do a fertility drug. I think that was to take my mind off the tubes till I healed up. Of course, the surgery didn’t help anything. They ran really crazy tests on us, and had us do things I won’t go into! Oh so romantic!!! After that and other weirdness, at the age of 36, Mike and I headed into the really crazy world of invitro fertilization! It is a roller coaster ride through hell! We did everything that they asked of us. At my age, They managed to get 9 eggs. 5 were fertilized and they decided to put all of them back into me. They told us we had more of a chance of never becomming pregnant than having a multiple birth. So, of course I got pregnant with 3!

We were so excited and happy. Mike walked around beaming like he had done something fantastic! We won’t tell him any different will we! I was just scared that something would go wrong, and it did! I started getting really bad pains within 2 weeks. The clinic we were going through just kept doing blood tests. They put me on complete bed rest and said everything was OK. The doctor that was assigned to me was old enough to scare the heck out of me. I had no confidence in him whatsoever. I would call and tell them that something was wrong, he would have me come in and do a vaginal ultra sound, blood work, and send me right back home telling me nothing was wrong. At 12 weeks I wanted to die. I was swollen and looked like I was 8 months pregnant. I was in agony. It felt like my body was ripping apart. I begged God to take me! I called the clinic one more time and told them that I was dying! I had to go up there and do the routine once more. Mike took me this time. I wanted him to hear this doctor tell me one more time there was nothing wrong with me. Not only did he say nothing was wrong, he said I wasn’t even pregnant. I told my husband to get this man away from me!

I screamed at anyone who could hear me that I was going to my doctor and they were all crazy! The nurse tried to calm me down and the girl who took my blood said she thought I should get to my own doctor. I got home in time to answer the phone. A different doctor from the clinic said they had contacted my regular doctor and they were expecting me. I hung up on him!

Then Kaiser, my HMO, called my house. They were like a wonderful, warm, family coming at me and surrounding me. They told me to head to the emergency room right away. They were waiting for me at the door of the hospital. They did something that the quack doctor had never once did. They did an abdominal ultra sound that clearly showed my little baby. Unforturnately it hadn’t survived. The other two had gone up that useless tube that was supposedly clogged up. They took the placenta with them. My doctor would later tell me that who knew they needed to make me infertile in order for me to have my own kids! Had she removed the tubes to begin with, the gutter water wouldn’t have leaked out of my tube and poisoned the babies, causing them to try to flee the water up my other tube! Story of my life! So, I lost my babies, my tubes, and my will to do much of anything! I had gone so long with the ectopic pregnancy, 12 weeks, that I had ruptured the tube and was full of blood!

I was 36 going on 37 by this time, and I felt like time had run out on me. Mike was wonderful through all of this. He supported me, got me home, got me healed up, and told me we could try it again. I joined all kinds of invitro groups online and met a lot of wonderful people. We started trying to save up the money for another attempt! We would have no insurance this time. The procedure was around $15,000 and we put down $1,000 on it. Then Mike’s dad died. We had to spend our money on helping to bury him!

It looked like it just wasn’t going to happen for us. We just weren’t meant to be parents. I heard it all from everyone. All things happen for a reason. Maybe this is for the best. Blah, blah, blah…..   Didn’t they know this was my dream. This was the only thing I ever wanted to do in my life? It was all taken from me in the blink of an eye. Okay, depression sunk in at this point. To make it worse, Mike was really depressed over his dad. They were so close, and he missed him so badly! Life at our house just stunk! I will close this one on that wonderful note!