Meanwhile, in amongst the toys...

I just looked back at my last post, and our little one had only been with us a week. Now it has almost been two months and I wish I had a blogful of experience to pass on about tips and tricks for attachment, issues and how we dealt with them, and all that. Really, though, taking from our experience with our birth child, it has been no different than dealing with normal toddler stuff. Perhaps that is us being extraordinarily lucky, and we do realise that we have had a child placed with us that has no major underlying issues (although there are still some), but we haven't seen any spectacularly strange behaviour, or bonding problems. We have just had fun being a family, laughing a lot, pulling faces at spectacular nappies and having cuddles. I could go on a bit about the system of professionals that have orbited this little one and how they have missed, or misinterpreted, several things, but we are here now, we can see and we can help. We have our little one and he has us. That is all we wanted and we have been the happiest family this Christmas.

National Adoption Week - what a difference a year makes!

Last week we were in the midst of introductions, thoroughly enjoying it but mentally exhausted and, if I am honest, the fact that National Adoption Week 2011 would begin on the very day that we brought our new little one home almost completely passed me by.

When I did realise (and joked about it a bit with friends), it made me think of the 2010 national adoption week when we were only at the very start of the assessment process and had no clear idea of how long it would take. If you had told me then that I would be grabbing what time I could to write a blog page, leaving other half to deal with a messy lunchtime toddler, then I would have been astounded. Even had we been approved by now, I was expecting to sit for months and months waiting for a match.

I keep going back in my head to last week and the introductions. I was told that the transfer of attachment process (such a serious phrase!) was an almost magical process and it kind of was. Within two short (two hour) meetings, we had little arms reaching up to be picked up and a kind of resigned 'ok then' face when we changed nappies.  Within three days we were going out on solo trips, and four days had us home alone all day. Before the end of the week we all knew we were ready to be home and, frankly, we were all fed up with the driving, including the little one.  I can't tell you that we did anything special, because we didn't. We just hung out together and played.

And here we are, almost a week into placement and it is like we have always had this small person here. We haven't been inundated with check up visits by Social Workers, but they are on the end of the phone.  Thankfully our 8 year old loves his little sibling and is adored in return...

Again, I have shortened what could have been several blog posts into one but, you know, I would rather be playing with the little person in the other room...!

Two months later...

Imagine that title in a Jacques Cousteau voice...

Anyway, where were we?  Ah... that's right. Suddenly plunging headlong into a joint approval/matching panel. I've felt ever so guilty about not blogging. I could have, but suddenly got so superstitious about putting anything out there when I felt it could all go horribly wrong. So that's my excuse and here we are.

After the flurry of emotions on being told about littley, I think we went entirely the other way. Friends would get excited, and tearful, at our news and we were there, almost impassive. Everything we said, we qualified ("well, you know, if we get approved, if it all goes well, still subject to panel, obviously...") and I don't know if we even came across cold. The truth was, though, that we wanted this so much that we didn't want to open ourselves up to the rejection that might, still possibly, be there.

It got harder and harder, though, as we had to sign more bits of paper, see more people, see more details about our little one. We met the carer, sat in the home that littley was living in, and saw photos that made our hearts leap. Before we knew it, in our minds that small person belonged to us and no-one else.

So, when panel came, in the back of my mind I knew it was just a formality, but I still had my heart in my mouth as we entered that room with all those people. I don't know if they genuinely looked stern, but I had already decided they did so that was that. The questions were almost perfunctory, nothing we felt we had any problems with, and before we knew it the chair was offering us her congratulations and I was a bawling wreck. And that was before we had to do it again 5 minutes later for matching. It wasn't a day for mascara.

So there we were, panel had said yes. This big build up, the big barrier between us and our child was down, they were ours. Well no, hang on, they were ours when some supreme being had agreed and signed a bit of paper. In about two weeks...   Wha...?

I did know this, I knew I knew this, but that was still the worst two weeks of the whole process. We had comments such as 'well they almost never disagree with the panel' which obviously made me think that sometimes they DO, and what if they did with us...?  I still refused to tell friends that didn't already know until we had that bit of paper, so it gained almost more importance than panel.  When it finally came, I have never felt such relief.

Once we started to tell our wider friends group, I suddenly found a whole host of people who were either adopted themselves (three of them, who knew?) or had family who had adopted, or even people who had family who had children removed. Apart from this there were the friends who were clearly in awe of the situation and who are genuinely interested in the mechanics and real details of the process. I fear I have become quite the 'expert'. I also fear I have found another soapbox topic...

Which brings me to this week. This week we met our little one for the very first time. That moment when we arrived and a little face peered around the door frame will stay with me forever and every difficult moment of this last year or so vanished.

May I point out at this point that I do appreciate that having done this in a year or so might not make it sound very difficult to some people...

I now feel bad that I have condensed what probably should have been at least two or three or more blog entries into one - maybe I should have given more detail about the panel or about the introduction planning. But, a bit like the birth of our older child, we spent all those classes in the lead up to the birth worrying about the birth and not what came after. When you finally realise that what comes after is more marvellous than anyone could describe, then the pain of the process before suddenly pales into insignificance.

Thats a bit grandiose. Sorry.

Anyway, I will write more about the introductions because this process genuinely fascinates me. But that's for another blog. For the moment we are very, very close to our happy ever after ending!

And... whoosh.. it happens.

Last time I posted, we were in homestudy. We are still in homestudy. We thought we were in homestudy for a little while longer, then were prepared to reach panel some time later this year. We anticipated a little wait to be matched, but not too long, we keep being told how many children are waiting. Realistically, then, we were looking at introductions in the new year/spring.

At times, in the back of my mind, I even thought this was probably optimistic, as we are only now a little over a year since starting on this process. I thought we probably still had a lot more homestudy to do - exercises to work through, etc.

So, we are slightly surprised/taken aback/gobsmacked/amazed/thrilled that we are, apparently, now only weeks away from panel date. Even more jaw-dropping to us is that we had the extraordinary news that there is a real little person out there with an imaginary label on them saying 'Ours'. They want this little one to be with us as soon as possible (dammit, I want them with us as soon as possible) but we obviously have to go through the appropriate steps.

So here I am, one part of me waiting for it all to go horribly wrong and for something to get in the way, or for someone to say, 'Actually we decided you weren't quite the right family after all...'. The other part of me (after having some serious words with that other part and telling her not to be so defeatist) has already started to mentally catalogue all the toddler equipment and clothes we still have in storage. In fact, that part of me is already watching a pushchair on ebay, for shame...

Being slightly superstitious though, I'm not going to blog about this little one in detail just yet. I don't want to jinx anything.

On reflection, all these feelings aren't too different from the fears and worries and highs and excitement of being pregnant, as much as I can recall that. I remember wondering what I was going to think of our baby when I met him, what he was going to look like - and he wasn't anything like my expectations in the end! I should learn my lesson there.

Here we go, then. Off to panel. I will report... at some point...!

Oh, how we talked... and talked... and talked.

Finally. We started homestudy.

I'm not sure I can post in great detail about what the first session was like because we hit the 'massively personal' stuff square on. Oddly, though, far from feeling invaded, we relished the chance to talk and analyse, to reflect and project.

I don't know if ever two people seemed happier, talking about life the world and everything, it was totally self indulgent and very enjoyable.  I wasn't really expecting this! I was expecting angst and constant checking of how a traumatised child would be a world away from any of our experiences. In actual fact, we started to see that our experiences could actually help.

We were expecting more structure, perhaps, more of a checklist. What we got was a very, very, long chat over cups of tea. But, do you know?, I think that probably provided our SW with a far better picture of us, our personalities, our limitations, our experience.

I imagine the tough stuff is still to come, probably accompanied by tears! At least 10 more sessions, we think, probably more. But at least we are under way. I did a little happy dance about that.

A post about nothing

Because, nothing is what is happening! Still waiting for our homestudy dates although I hear tell that some of our peers from prep groups may have theirs... (pulls out 'hopeful face number 46')

In the meantime I have been reading, tweeting and reading some more. We have been getting the books out of the library as we didn't want to spend too much money on unecessary books and I had the intention of reviewing some of them on here. Trouble is, they go back to the library, we read more books, then I get muddled as to what was in which!  Lets say I will never make a satisfactory book reviewer...

We have also been telling a few people as we go along the way and they have all been very lovely so far!  We are also seeing friends who we told a while ago and the all start the conversation the same way 'So... how's the adoption thing going?' to which we inevitably answer 'slowly...'

Anyway, two months after prep groups here we sit. Fortunately we have plenty to be doing with a boisterous 8 year old in the house so we are not left to stew. Thankfully we are still very positive!

So, thats all about nothing from me. Here is hoping I get to blog about something more concrete soon.

Prep groups or 'how I learned to think different'

First of all, in a slightly ‘scientific paper’ kind of way, I’m going to start with a conclusion: Prep groups rearrange your head.

This is telling, even in the way I have approached this blog post. I haven’t dashed it out straight onto the blogger straight after the groups finished. I’ve cogitated, processed, sketched out my thoughts, typed them out away from the browser...

...and still I was really unsure what to write and it is probably why it has taken me a while to write it. And this is the nub of taking part in the group. All the information we went through is, to all intents and purposes, available to us elsewhere. We could have read it online, bought the books (we have actually read pages and pages online and, ok, borrowed the books from the library) we could have had the discussions on Twitter.

But the shared experience with other couples face to face, the exercises that tapped deep into the soul, the worst-case scenario bluntness of some of the questions slowly started to evolve the way we thought about this process. I’m not going to go through the exercises and the discussions we took part in one by one, because I really don’t believe that is the essence of what we have taken away.  In the interests of not seeming so airy-fairy about this though, some things we think we learned:

During part of an exercise looking at uncertainties with adopted children, we discussed how difficult it can be to, for example, diagnose autism in a young child if they are on the lower end of the spectrum. As all the traits were read out, they could have been describing our birth son. In fact, not long after, we took part in a teacher consultation for our son where the words ‘special educational needs’ were mentioned for the first time. Although an issue, we are doing something about it, we have practical steps forward. It occurred to me that we are already quite used to dealing with uncertainties and, although they will probably be more extreme in an adopted child, it is just a matter of doing your best by your child and planning a route forward. Suddenly a whole world of scary stuff was demystified a little and, yes, perhaps we will be willing to consider some children that we weren’t before the prep group.

We were lucky to speak to a few adopters and foster carers and, would you believe it, they aren’t saints with degrees in child psychology. Who knew?  I know, I know, it’s easy to put these people on a pedestal (and also wonder if the people running the course are just showing you their ‘superstars’) but they came with warts and all and it was brilliant. We all started to believe, just a little bit, that we could do it too.

Finally, one of the most contentious discussions was that of birth family contact. If I’m honest, myself and my other half never really had a massive problem with contact. We both come from fairly ‘scattered’ origins. Since it was introduced by the social worker as something we would have to look into, we have got ourselves as comfortable as we could be with the idea. That’s not to say we were totally sold, we had just considered it as something we ‘had’ to do. What was fascinating was to see everyone go through the discussions, go through the exercises, question the adopters that came and come out realising how contact could be a positive thing, where appropriate. There were many ‘I had no idea!’ discussions in the coffee break after that one. ‘What, you mean the birth parents aren’t all monsters...’ etc.

Of course I have to mention the other people who are now sharing their own journey with us. A more fascinating, lovely, friendly bunch of people you couldn’t hope to meet. Taking them away as friends is one of the most important results of this group. A ready-made local support network.

Finally, while we wait for homestudy, we need to read, to talk, to discuss, to read some more, to google, to discuss a bit more...  We were shocked to learn that potential adopters could be halted in the process during homestudy for not being prepared enough. I must admit I was slightly self satisfied, however, to have already read some of the suggested list. My one and only bit of smugness, in my defence!

Well, then, are we prepared? Not completely. Our heads are in the right place, though, and we are prepared to be unprepared. We’ll be OK.