2008年5月29日 下午1點15分34秒Disgusted with the world

Well, I think I have reached the end of my rope. Cruising CNN.com yesterday (getting my news fix as it were) and I came across "news" that wasn't really news to me. Guatemala has recently called a moritorium on foreign adoptions (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/28/international.adoptions/index.html ) while it reviews case by case the pending processes (some 2,000 of them as it stands at the moment). The reason? You could say that a large percentage of the children being put up for adoption weren't meant to be put up. The reaction from the States? No big surprise here...all the would be parents bawling their eyes out over how unfair the Guatemalan government is being about all this. Poor them. All that time, money, waiting, and anguish waiting for a child to adopt, and now they have to wait a little more. Well, you pissy moaning twerps...there is a REALLY good reason why this process has been halted for the time being, and since the vast majority of you can't be bothered to look beyond your own little selfish needs to find out why, I will illuminate you.
About one out of one hundred children born in this country is adopted out to parents in the United States (one fact CNN got right anyway). What they don't tell you is that nearly HALF of those children adopted out were put into the process by means other than correct. If any of you doubt the statements I am about to make, I invite you to do a little research on the subject to satisfy those doubts...reason being, most of the statements I am about to make are public knowledge here, having been reported in the broadcast as well as the printed news, as well as sworn testimony given in front of what passes for Congress here.
A woman has just given birth and been released from the hospital. Due to her constrained economic status, her husband isn't there with her when she is walking out (he is either busting his hump trying to make a living, or he is one of those super macho pricks who looks upon such things as affection for his wife as a weakness). As any of you women out there know, the first few days after giving birth are especially difficult moving around (nod...pain doesn't go away immedeately), and since this woman isn't exactly financially stable, she is pretty much out of the hospital the moment she can get up and moving. Waiting outside the hospital is a man and a woman. Seeing the new mommy walking out the door with the fruit of her labor in her arms, they rush up, snatch the baby, push the woman to the ground, while a third comes rushing up in a car to carry the snatchers to safety. Luckily for the young mother and her baby, the nurses inside saw what happened and managed to alert the police (worthless buggers that they are), who caught up to the snatchers at the municiple building trying to register the baby as their own. Their intention was to sell the baby to an adoption agency, as the story came out in their trial for abduction.
Picture another young mother, with her 2 week old daughter going to visit her in-laws. A car pulls alongside her as she is walking down the street, and a woman gets out holding a gun, demanding the baby. The young mother panics and runs into a small store to no avail. The woman follows her in, and when the young mother doesn't willingly relinquish the baby, she is pistol whipped and the baby taken from her, tucked into the car, which speeds off. The young mother, with her head basically split open, chases the car down the street, although she obviously cannot catch it. The Public Ministry, upon being informed, deduces that the child has been taken to a specific "casa cuna" (orphanage), and takes the panicked mother (her head STILL bleeding) to the business, where she manages to identify her baby. The orphanage had already paid about $5,000 to the "parents" who had just given the baby to them some half an hour before.
A young mother has a particularly difficult birth. After a while, she is sedated and the baby is taken Caeserian. When she wakes up, she is told the baby was born dead, and that the doctor (who by then was nowhere in the "hospital" ) had done everything he could, but that he couldn't save it. When asked where was the body, the nurses replied that the morgue had already come and taken it. When they couldn't provide the name of the morgue, the police were called. Witnesses later alleged that the baby had not been born dead, but was spirited out of the delivery room and deposited in the waiting arms of another snatcher, who was seen leaving the hospital with a baby just shortly after the the child was "pronounced dead".
A 16 year old mayan girl has her one month old baby waiting in the Social Security hospital. The child is ill with the flu (though the mother doesn't know it is only the flu), feverish, listless, with chills and sweats. As she is of practically no income, she cannot get the child seen (yes, even with a "free" medical institution, you need to bribe someone here). A "social worker" is making the rounds of the waiting room...sees the woman's distress and inquires as to the source. Upon hearing the story, this "good samaritan" offers to make sure the child gets treated, just let her have them...no trouble at all....here is my card...contact me in about 45 minutes. The mother hands the child over, weeping with gratitude, calling the woman a saint, etc... Before long, the dream becomes a nightmare. Calling the woman about an hour later, the mother is informed that she needs to sign a document giving the woman permission to get the child treated at a private institute...that it was urgent with NO time to lose as the child was gravely ill. The mother met up with the woman and signed the document without reading it (she couldn't read after all). After signing, she was told that she couldn't see the child at that time as it was in intensive care, and that "maybe" tomorrow she could. Nothing the next day....or the next....or the next. Finally, she demanded her child back, only to be informed by the woman that she could keep the baby as long as necessary to make sure it got well. The mother panicked, went to the Public Ministry who did basically nothing. The mother then spoke with a news station, who sent an investigative reporter. The reporter was told that the story didnt happen that way, that the mother had willing given the child up for adoption, and had signed the release form without coertion (this was the "permission" to get the child treated at a "private institution" which turns out is an orphanage run by the "social worker"). The reporter dug around at the hospital, found the mother's mark on the logs, with a note from the attending nurse that the purpose of the visit was for "an obviously ill, dehydrated, fevered infant". Upon returning and presenting the "social worker" with this evidence, the reporter was told that it didn't matter...the child had already been adopted, and wasn't even in the house anymore.
The new method of procuring these babies is even worse. Now, late term women are being kidnapped and held until they deliver, and then are dumped unceremoniously on the side of the road...providing they survive the ordeal.
Now, to all those anguished, bawling pricks in the States gnashing your teeth over the the "delay" in you getting the necessarys to set up and play house. THIS is what happens when you get "matched" with a baby/child in this country. You tell the agencies what you are looking for, and they set out cruising the streets to see what they can find to fill that shopping list. A lot of these agencies have no morals at all...why on earth would an altruistic adoption agency CHARGE you money to take a child off of their hands? Ever stop to wonder that? NONE of the legit ones do...the only fees you should pay would be to the lawyers, and a fee like that ISNT in the thousands of dollars...hell...it may not even be in the thousands of Quetzales (the local currency...exchanged at Q7.5 to the dollar). Also in the article, one dense-as-granite woman started bitching about how the Guatemalan government was "holding these babies hostage" and was violating these kids' human rights...and what about the rights of the mothers who have had their children stolen from them? Who have been beaten down and watched the baby they carried around for nine months in their womb shoved into the arms of someone waiting in a getaway car? Do the rights of them matter? Not to you...THEIR rights will stop you from playing house with the little brown baby you just HAD to adopt to fulfill your mommy needs.
I have been to the hotel where perspective adoptive parents come to meet there soon-to-be babies. I have seen the women standing outside on the street...KNOWING that the child they have been robbed of is inside...KNOWING that the con artists, thieves and snatchers have paid hotel security to keep them out. I have seen the goofy looks on the faces of the gringos as they strut around with their new babies in their arms...already fantisizing about schools and sports and proms for their newly acquired dependents. And I have also seen the blank looks on their faces as they stroll past the anguished mothers on the streets outside...never once wondering why the poor woman was shrieking in grief.
This moritorium is a good thing. For those of you who have legitimately gone through channels looking to adopt, I feel bad for the time you have to wait, but consider this. You may have been waiting a year or so to adopt, and now may have to wait a couple more months...but what about the young mother who carried this life for nine months...spent hours of hell pushing it out of an orifice that is WAY too small for the job...only to have the apple of their eye snatched away without their consent. Do you REALLY want to do that to another human being?
My wife is going into her seventh month carrying our third child. We will have a little girl (Katherine Rosemary) around the middle of August. Now, I am not normally a paranoid type person, but my wife takes no trips downtown anymore without me. At the end of this month (June), I will come in to work later to drop the kids off at school, and take off earlier to pick them up so she wont have to (one of the benefits of being the boss at work)...anything to keep her safe and the baby safe. This will go on until the baby is a couple of months old...by then, Katherine will be safe from snatchers...because mommy is a house on fire if you threaten her children...and after a couple of months of R and R, not even I would cross her.
So, for all of you out there complaining about how unfair Guatemala is being about this, take the time to find out why. It isnt any kind of attack against you...it is a matter of making sure the baby you adopt isnt in the system by nefarious means...and if that REALLY means something to you, then shut the fuck up and deal with it, but then again, it doesnt mean anything to a lot of you...else you wouldnt be on CNN.com talking about how "unjust" it is to make you wait.

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2008年5月26日 下午12點44分35秒Well...it is official

We went to the doctor this saturday to get the six month ultrasound (yeah...I may have forgotten to mention to some of you we were expecting again). Excitement was high this time for some reason, as not only did my son and daughter insist on coming, my mother and father-in-law decided to roll up with us as well (the real surprise was my father-in-law...after three kids of his own and 8 grandchildren, this was his first time seeing an ultrasound).

Well...the good news is that we are having another daughter. Katherine Rosemary will come into this world ...

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2007年2月15日 下午7點40分40秒10 Simple rules for dating my Daughter

Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk, you'd
better be delivering a package, because you're sure not
picking anything up. Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You
may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything
below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off ...

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