03.29.07

The Quest for an “Ours” Baby: Time to go to Plan B or C

Posted in Dawn's Life at 9:58 am by Dawn Miller

We found out yesterday from the doctor’s office that while live troops were still found in the encampment - the troops aren’t making it through the pipeline for deployment. Ergo - why we’re not pregnant.

The doctor offered to meet with us, but my husband wanted to break the bad news to me first. I didn’t cry - just looked at him and said, ok, well, now we know, and at least we know. And even now, I don’t really feel like crying about it, which is surprising to me. I would think I would boo-hoo about it.

Doing the vasectomy reversal was still worth it for us, and I don’t regret it.

It’s time for plan B - and maybe even plan C. If we want to have a baby together - it will have to come out of a test tube. Or we will adopt a baby.

I hate the idea of becoming those desperate people - the ones you see on TV shows who try to adopt a baby and have the mother change her mind and take it away after they’ve loved that child and nurtured him/her for years - or the ones who go through fertility treatments over and over and go bankrupt. I hate the idea of being those stereotypical people - being a  desperate and obsessed person - becoming a caricature of myself.

We can’t conceive a child together - at least not in the usual way. So there is some desperation to our situation, to be sure. But there is also much love - between us - that shows who we are - and who we hope to be in our marriage. We’ve turned toward each other through this. And we’re stronger for it.

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03.28.07

Stepfamilies Pop Up in the Media

Posted in News at 10:24 am by Dawn Miller

Stepfamilies are turning up more often in the media, and here’s a few examples:

• “Ground Rules Make For Happy Play Dates,” Contra Costa Times, March 28, 2007 - get tips on planning good play dates. One of the interviews is with Michele Knehtel, mom of 3, and stepmom to 2 - what a handful - you bet she’s an expert on play dates! 
• “Alpha Moms Leap to Top of Trendsetters,” USA Today, March 26, 2007 - Alpha moms are now a highly coveted marketing group I think a lot of stepmoms can relate to the “Alpha Mom” persona - which is a hip mom who loves her kids and is involved in their lives, but has her own identity too. Lots of stepmoms are involved in the lives of their stepkids, but want to retain their own sense of who they are. The article includes a mention of Holly Peak, an Olympic bronze medalist and stepmom to two teens.
• “Carmichael Residents Win YouTube Award,” Sacramento Bee, March 26, 2007 - Teens Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox won an award for their original video on YouTube and appeared on the Today show, but according to Padilla’s stepmom, they’re still the same kids and she’s super-proud of their accomplishment!
• “Injured Soldier’s Stepmom Begs Congress to Stop War,” Des Moines Register, March 20, 2007 - Stepmom Brenda Harvey talked about her stepson solider’s injuries from a bombing during a rally in Iowa. She also called on Congress to stop the war in Iraq.  
• “Trying Marriage Again,” Cincinnati-Enquirer, March 19, 2007 - To demonstrate the pressures placed on marriage in a stepfamily to one of her workshops, Elizabeth Einstein literally ties a couple together on stage, and then loads them down with baggage representing the guilt, fears and other pressures common to a new marriage in a stepfamily. Throw in a few more audience members and blindfolds to represent denial (the surge of young love blinds us all!) and then ask the couple to reach out to each other and be close. Virtually impossible! The article goes on to offer ten tips for stepfamily success and talks to real stepfamilies. Bravo!
• “Make Jason Feel Like He’s Part of the Family,” Annie’s Mailbox (syndicated advice column), March 16, 2007 - A new stepparent writes in about her own frustrations around the impending visit of her stepson. And gets very little good advice, other than to contact the National Stepfamily Resource Center (a good idea, but it would be nice to see the “experts” say a little more).
• “A Family Feud That is Familiar,” New York Times, March 10, 2007 - this article (you have to pay, unfortunately, to actually read the whole thing now) explores the highly publicized rift between presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani and his children. His 21-year-old son, Andrew, stated that he would not campaign for his father and that he has a problem with his stepmother. Giuliani asked for the media to give his family some privacy and space to deal with these issues, but that hasn’t stopped speculation about how this could hurt his political career.

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03.22.07

Stepmom Sandra Bullock is Celebrated on People Magazine’s Cover

Posted in News, Stepmom Profiles at 6:55 pm by Dawn Miller

The March 26th issue of People Magazine sports a photo of Sandra Bullock, stepmom to three, and the article inside focuses more on her well-rounded life than her new movie Premonition. Happily married to James, a biker dude, Bullock has been known to impound Pokemon cards from her stepkids as a disciplinary measure and offers quotes that show her feelings for her stepchildren:

“My love and my want for their future and their happiness, for their homework to be done and for them to know how smart and beautiful they are is no less than if I’d had a child on my own.”

You can read a shortened version of the article online. Bravo to People for talking about her life, and a big thank you to Sandra for talking so candidly about her marriage and family. Positive images of stepmoms in the media don’t come along often enough - so we’re relishing this one!

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03.21.07

Not this month…sigh

Posted in Dawn's Life at 11:58 pm by Dawn Miller

I was just at that point where I was thinking - Saturday, I’m going to take a pregnancy test, because that’s the longest possible range of time on the window of when it could start. And was just starting to let myself get hopeful that perhaps this might be it. Then wham - it shows up.

We tried saturation deployment this past month. I can relate when StepmomLand writes about her struggles with infertility. My cycles can fluctuate within a ten-day range which makes predicting ovulation a guessing game.

Our doctor told us that it takes on average 18 months to achieve pregnancy after a vasectomy reversal, and we aren’t near that yet. We’ll keep trying.

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Families May Not Need Hyphens to Work - But Some Are Special

Posted in News, Perspectives at 9:56 pm by Dawn Miller

In an article in the March 21st Lakeland Ledger called Families Don’t Need Hyphens to Work, family psychologist John Rosemond talks about the nuts and bolts of raising children - and argues that blended families or families with adoptive children don’t need to obsess about special situations or rules.

On the surface - some of his advice makes sense. Yes - the boundaries of good discipline and the basic principles of raising children are the same. And stepparents will applaud his support for putting marriage first as the primary relationship in the home. I’ve written this as well and encouraged blended families to put the kids second.

He thinks that books for stepfamilies and adopted families are not needed and serve only the needs of book publishers. I would dispute that - there’s much advice and help offered in many books for blended families. Blended families are so rarely discussed in our culture today in positive terms - that these books provide a place for us to see ourselves in reflection and help us understand that what we are experiencing as a stepparent is yes, quite normal - and they offer some good advice too.

Rosemond advises a bio-mom seeking advice on how to discpline her daughter, to wait until the child’s stepfather comes home. On the surface, the advice is mildly sexist (forget letting a woman actually make a decision on the spot about her own child - why not emasculate her as a parent just for kicks). It also flies in the face of conventional wisdom about stepfamilies, which says that bio-parents should be the ones who discipline their own children, while stepparents run back up. Over time, I think stepparents can step into disciplinary roles - however, it depends on the family situation.

There is a critical need for blended families to have consistent rules - and both of the adults in the marriage must back up and enforce those rules regularly. Otherwise you end up with a situation where one adult can undercut the other (read a comment from a reader going thru this) - and the other adult feels like he/she is not backed up and all hell is breaking lose. For a general discipline question - marriage partners in blended families should talk ahead of time about what those rules will be and stick to them doggedly - not wait til someone gets home.

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03.20.07

New Column Out - Stepmoms, Finding Our Place at the Table

Posted in Dawn's Life, Perspectives at 11:26 am by Dawn Miller

My new column went out last night and talks about my encounter with a mob of moms at a scrapbook store a few weeks ago - and delves into finding your place as a stepmom within a culture of moms. Read the column here.

I have to admit - I was pretty excited about visiting the scrapbook store for my first “crop” as a new scrapbooker. I took up the hobby after Christmas in the name of adding more balance to my life - i needed a hobby that was not writing, public relations, consulting, career, or dissertation-related. Something that would help me relax. We received a boatload of photos of the kids in their younger years after my husband’s mother passed away - and I wanted to create new albums for them that celebrate their lives. And for my husband too - his ex refuses to share the older photos of the kids with him and is a highly dis-organized person - I think she has spent the last six years “looking for them.” We all know where that boat’s going.  

Armed with tiny treasure trove of photos I trotted off to the scrapbook store for a little R&R at a weekly crop - it’s basically where scrapbookers work on their projects in a “studio” and socialize. Then I met the moms - who weren’t sure how to handle a stepmom - and my little bubble of enthusiasm burst a teeny bit, because I didn’t feel like I was entirely welcome, and I’m not sure they knew what to do with me, either. It was a bit like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Yet I can’t say that my experience is all that unique - lots of stepmoms have shared similar stories with me - where they enter events designed for and by parents that don’t feel open to their inclusion as part of a community that cares about youth. I think there are a lot of reasons this happens - some of it is that parent-centric groups aren’t used to stepfamilies, some of it is our own discomfort or lack of confidence. But I do think it is absolutely critical for us to be at those meetings and part of those conversations.

My husband nagged me for probably two weeks to write about this. He knows me so well. He knows I would let something like that fester for a long time - and writing will get it out of my system.

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03.12.07

Trying to Have a Baby: The Old-Fashioned Way

Posted in Dawn's Life, Dawn's Writing at 5:20 pm by Dawn Miller

I’ve got a new column out today offering advice we gleaned from navigating the puzzling world of infertility treatment options and our decision to schedule a vasectomy reversal last year for my husband.

One thing I didn’t mention in this column is our age difference. My husband is 13 years older than I am. Assuming I get pregnant sometime this year - by the time our child is graduating from high school, my husband will be in his late 60s. We like to joke that he’ll be hobbling in on his cane at the graduation. But truth be told - he doesn’t look his age and has a lot of energy. I’m already envisioning a mega-birthday bash for his 50th later this year. After all - the half century mark in one’s life should be noted in grand style. I’m thinking balloons, music, all the relatives, no ex-wife, and hopefully a pregnant me waddling around.

My stepkids are excited about the idea of us having a child together - and ask about it from time to time - they seem to be worried that we might have given up or forgotten the whole notion. Nope - we haven’t forgotten - it just takes time and yes, we are working on it - but we just leave it at that for now. Discussing the intricacies of basil temperature readings, ovulation charts, and peak fertilization times with them would be oh-so uncomfortably weird. Nope, no thanks, we’ll keep our cycle-tracking and deployment schedule to ourselves. It’s way more fun that way.

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03.09.07

My Columns Are Back!

Posted in Dawn's Life, Dawn's Writing at 6:23 pm by Dawn Miller

I have a new column out about our decision to have an “ours” baby. I’m glad that this was my first column after a long hiatus from writing. For three years I wrote bi-weekly columns on TheStepfamilyLife.com about my life as a stepmom.

But then my life got so crazy last year. I was working a very demanding job with a lot of stress and a horrible commute, writing other stuff on deadline (but not stepfamily stuff), and managing our business on the side. Not to mention juggling the needs of our family. When things got crazy column-writing was jettisoned. A few of my readers wondered if I got run over by a bus.

Each time I skipped another week, I obsessively re-arranged the publishing schedule in my palm pilot. I kept promising myself I would get back to it and pick it up again. But time went by - and my silence lasted a long time - more than six months actually. And all that time I felt like something was really missing from my life.

And then something changed. I decided I needed more balance in my life. Our business is doing well - really well. So I quit my high-stress job three blocks from the White House. Bye bye - stress, managing personnel, pantyhose, and office politics. My goodbye lunch at the office was last week, and I was definitely the happiest person in attendance, save my husband, who was overjoyed to see me chuck the rat race.

Now every morning I wake up - open the window in my little office to let the sun shine in - make some coffee and start my day. And it feels fantastic.

I’m back - and on a regular writing schedule. A new column will be out this coming Monday.

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03.01.07

Fairy Tales: Turned Inside Out

Posted in News, Perspectives at 7:51 pm by Dawn Miller

Many a stepmom has lamented the Cinderella stereotype of the wicked stepmother. The Post-Bulletin in Minnesota recently highlighted students who took classic fairy tales and re-wrote them with different points of view. One student re-wrote Rapunzel from the vantage point of the stepmother. Imagine how your ideas about these classic tales could change if you imagined the plot line from the perspective of non-traditional character.

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