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!