Trying to Prepare

Andy and I have been trying to do some things to get ready for when the boys come home.  We don't have a date for that yet.  It's not actually officially confirmed.  We have to go to matching panel for them to decide if we're a good match for the boys and then their recommendation goes to the official decision maker.  Then we start introductions.

The thing is, the period of time between us officially knowing that we are approved to be parents to these boys and starting introductions is generally really really short.  Like 10 days or so.  So it makes sense to get ready now.  If we wait we'll be running round like headless chickens.

This is easier said than done, however.  We know we'll need car seats.  So we went to Mothercare to investigate this whole new world of car safety.  "How much do they weigh?  How tall are they?  We can't recommend a car seat until you can tell us that."  I asked the social worker.  Who has told me their height and weight in October last year and suggested we 'add a bit to that'.

Social workers suggested we investigate schools.  Rang our local school.  They tell us this would be an in-year transfer so they wouldn't tell us anything and said we needed to get in touch with the Local Education Authority.
The LEA said they wouldn't talk to us until we'd filled in their forms.
We got the forms.
The forms want to know what school the oldest currently attends.
I asked the social worker.
He won't tell us until the boys have been matched with us.

Ho hum.

I actually don't mind if sorting the school thing out takes a bit of time.  The oldest doesn't legally have to start school until September anyway.  Though he is at school now.  I don't think a bit of time together as a family, getting to know one another and bonding will do any harm at all.

Meanwhile, we're buying beds....

Meeting the foster carers....

We met the foster carers.  Perfectly pleasant people but it was a bizarre experience.  Meeting the current carers of your children is slightly surreal.

We needed to know that the boys are right for us.  And that includes, for us, knowing that they don't appear to have massive behavioural or learning issues.  Of course, nothing is certain and there are no guarantees, but we needed to know that we're not walking naively into a situation we wouldn't be able to handle.  Though on reflection that sounds like a pretty good description of becoming a parent!!

I found the meeting really difficult.  Not for any particular reason.  It just felt odd.  And I'd spent several weeks feeling all maternal and broody in a nice kind of way.  Meeting the foster carers and being told about some of the problems they've needed to deal with brought me down to earth with a bit of a bump.  I found it very hard and wanted 5 minutes out but couldn't quite work out how to ask for it.   Andy was fine with the whole thing.

The boys sound great.  And we are going ahead.

Waiting to hear...about the fence

We are still waiting to hear the verdict of Mr Chief Manager regarding our garden. And whether the dangers of sharing it with the neighbours must be eliminated before we could be entrusted with children. He was going to get back to us a week ago.

In the meantime, a friend put an enquiry about shared gardens on an adoption association discussion board. Someone replied and said that they share a garden and it was never even raised as an issue when they were being assessed. I have copied and pasted this information into an email for the manager today, which also served to remind him that we haven't heard anything.

In the meantime, Bohemian Rhapsody - as it always should have been...

Waiting well

Anybody who has been anywhere near adoption, or anyone engaged in the process of adoption, will know that the process consists mainly of waiting. If you've had infertility treatment (which I didn't), you have to before you can apply. When you first ring an agency, you have to wait for a social worker to be able to come and see you. If you've been approved to be a parent, you have to wait to be matched. If you've been assessed, you have to wait for a panel meeting to be approved. And so on and so on....

Andy and I have been waiting since November 2007. We're now part way through the adoption preparation course, after which, we will be allowed to make a formal application to adopt. And then we will get assessed. And if we are thought to be fit to be parents, we will probably be waiting to be matched. And I find myself saying again, "We might have children by next Christmas!"

Although there have been excruciating moments, when the whole thing has felt really difficult, it has been OK. If someone had said to me in November 2007, that we would still be waiting to be assessed in 2010, I would have been horrified, and we might not have gone ahead at all. Interestingly though, here we are in 2010 and I am no less enthusiastic about adopting than I was back then. I'm excited about the assessment process and looking forward to all the planning and adjusting to possibly having kids that we are going to need to do.

So what's helped? Quite a few things actually. Here are some:

• Focussing on the other things in our lives and not being obsessive about becoming parents.
• Trusting God that He is ultimately in control of whether and when we become parents.
• Going with the ebb and flow of my emotions around adoption. In the first year or so, I spent a lot of time trying to work out how I felt about it and whether I really wanted to do it. Nothing was happening, and as a defence mechanism, I pushed the whole thing to the back of my mind. Then when I realised I hadn't thought about it for a while, I felt guilty and wondered if that meant I didn't really want kids after all. That was completely pointless and quite painful at times. So I think about it when I think about it. We talk about it when we talk about it. If I haven't thought about it for weeks, I don't worry. If I'm thinking about it every day I don't worry.
• Enjoying the moment! Taking things one step at a time and not thinking too far ahead.
• Enjoying the occasional maternal moments when I feel emotional about seeing children and feel that pang of longing as being part of who I am. Sometimes I feel sad and that's OK. I don't have to live in that place but it's OK if I need to visit it sometimes.
• Making the most of not having kids yet! We went to Africa for three months in the summer and it was fab. It would have been a great deal more complicated with kids in tow and we probably wouldn't have done it. Tomorrow night we're going out for curry and we don't need a babysitter! On Thursday, we fancied popping along to the pub and we did.

Today I'm excited and pleased that we are on this journey.

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!

Ho Hum....

It's just becoming evening here, and the birds are singing their hearts out. The weather has been really British today. We've had rain of various types, from really heavy get totally drenched rain, to light summer rain where you can get away with just a cardigan for protection. There has also been patches of sun, general greyness and then, rather beautifully, when I needed to go to the post office round the corner, we had light rain and sunshine all at once! Now it's cloudy but quite bright. I love British weather. Completely unpredictable and almost completely devoid of anything seriously dangerous.

We're still waiting for Birmingham to decide if Stoke on Trent is close enough for them to accept us as potential adopters. I have been promised a phone call today before 8pm. Which means I've been really rather jumpy every time the phone has rung. The last couple of days I've been a bit low, to be honest. Struggling to work effectively. Feeling like I'm trudging through treacle.

While I'm saying in my mind, that whether we adopt or not, God has a good plan for us, that Birmingham Adoption Agency doesn't have the last word on our destiny etc etc... my heart hasn't quite caught up. The truth is, I really care about what happens. Whilst they've been beavering away at their paperwork without bothering us, I've been able to focus on other things. Not so this week. Ho hum...