Waiting but not ready.....

This week has given me pause for thought.    We have now been engaged in this 'adoption' process for 3 years.  You might think, that after all that time, we would be the ready potential parents on the planet.

Actually, I think the opposite is true.

I have noticed, this week, that there has been a sort of split personalilty thing going on.

Part of me has been working through the process stuff reasonably efficiently.  In order to cope with the uncertainty of the whole thing, however, I have completely shut my mind and emotions off from the prospect of becoming a parent.  There is a certain amount of warped, emotional logic which thinks (wrongly) that by not thinking about it, I will be more able to cope with the disappointment if we are turned down.

Naively, I thought that we would have no choice but to prepare ourselves, because of the assessment process.  I thought the assessment visits would really help us to think and prepare.  Actually, they've done nothing of the sort.  It has just been about furnishing social services with a whole heap of information.  Useful for them, obviously, but not for us.

So here we are.  Three years after starting this process, and I feel less ready to become a parent now than I did when we started.

This is where pregnancy has the edge over adoption.  When you get pregnant, there is a definite timescale.  Barring miscarriages etc, you will be a parent 9 months later.  There is no getting away from it.  At some point in that 9 months you have to get ready.  With adoption, you just don't know.  We might be parents in 4 months time.  We might never be parents.  We might begin introductions in 10 months time.  Or two years.  Or six months.  It really is anybody's guess.

And that is a lot lot harder to deal with than I ever could have guessed it would be.

Fence related news

We have at last heard back from the social worker about the shared garden.  The good news is that they seem to have dropped the requirement for us to erect a fence between us and the neighbours.  Hooray!!!!

However, we have the following requests from the manager, passed on to us by the social worker:

I would advise that we undertake the following:-

• Ask Mr & Mrs C to consider installing a higher fence and more secure gate on the canal side (we would need to establish who owns this boundary)
• Interview the neighbours who share the garden to ascertain their views. I note from the references Pat shared they are not included so this will be an extra check for us.
• I would like to know the type of play children engage in within the garden as Mr & Mrs C are confident it hasn’t presented any difficulties in the past
• To compensate for the weaknesses in the garden are there any parks or leisure amenities close by.

We are requested to write something addressing these points, which will go with the Prospective Adopters Report.  

Honestly.  Whilst I am pleased that we seem to be moving in the direction of common sense, I am somewhat frustrated that we have to produce a document to address a pile of non-issues.   The philosophy is evidently that they shouldn't remove one hoop without replacing it with some others.  

The fence on the canal side is 6 foot 2 inches.  Not sure how much higher they would like it.  Have a feeling this isn't the fence he means really - but still.  

I am also slightly confused by the request to categorise the 'type' of play that goes on in the garden and somewhat affronted by the suggestion that our garden has 'weaknesses' that need compensating.  

I have been battling with a virus for the last 3 weeks and feeling washed out and weary.  The thought of producing another document fills me with an overwhelming sense of apathy.  Ever been on one of those walks where you're trudging up a hill and the view is not great, because what you can mainly see is the hill, but you can see the top just a few yards in front of you.  Except that when you get to the top, it's not actually the top at all.  It just looked as if it might be.  There is a hill like that on the first leg of the West Highland Way where the whole 'false summit' thing happens about six times.  This feels a bit like that really.

But.  I shall take a deep breath and write something suitable about local play parks and the types of play engaged in by children in our garden.  Types of play???  Any ideas?  Does 'running about in a having-fun-sort-of-way' count as a 'type of play' do you think??

What do you do while you're waiting?

I don't mean "How do you keep occupied?" There's plenty to do! We're going to Africa for 3 months, for starters. I mean, what do you do with all that mix of emotion? Do you try and stay interested in the adoption thing, or do you push it to one side?

We're in another of those adoption process waiting periods. After our brief flurry of activity with Birmingham adoption agency, we're waiting again. This time for Staffordshire to complete medical stuff. It's really difficult to know how to handle this period of time constructively.

Last year, we were in a waiting phase almost all year. That time, waiting for Andy's tests to be completed so that we could proceed with the adoption medical. We'd been through the initial excitement of deciding we wanted to adopt, and then it all got put on hold. I just shoved it all to the back of my mind, on the grounds that it was easier than trying to stay keen and focussed, after all, there was nothing we could do. But then I got really emotionally confused. Did I want to adopt? Really? Could it really be possible that I actually wanted to, if I could so easily not think about it for so long?

Then, when we were at Greenbelt in August, I went to a seminar about adoption and fostering and spent the next 3 hours sobbing my heart out. Completely baffling explosion of emotion. Not terribly easy, but actually, in a bizarre way rather comforting to know that I did still care about it.

So this year, we're kind of back in the same situation again. Still waiting for medical clearance, with no idea how long it will take. This time, I'm staying interested and passionate. But careful not to let myself get too obsessive. Making sure I don't look at the "Be My Parent" website too often (sometimes it's hard to resist).

If / when we become parents, all this waiting will be a distant memory. And, I have a feeling, the traumas of the adoption process will be nothing compared with the challenges of actually being parents. Ha! Bring it on!