Still Waiting...

Today I am having a wobble!
I am having a "should we bother with it all" day.
We are still waiting to hear about the 2 little northern lads and I am feeling a little nervous and frankly in a state of limbo.
We were asked to wait a couple of weeks before we received any more information but what actually constitutes a "couple of weeks"? It doesn't actually mean 2 weeks, does it? It is an arbitrary term that actually means "at some point in the future".

I'm nervous because the longer it goes on the less I can see this becoming a reality. It doesn't help that P has been made redundant, which incidentally we are hailing as a great opportunity. P has been contemplating starting her own marketing consultancy for some time and her enthusiasm for the subject will undoubtedly bring rich rewards. But the timing of it regarding these 2 boys might put a spanner in the works! We are completely unsure how it will impact on our application.

I don't like the lack of control. I'm really not a control freak by nature but I hate the fact that there is nothing we can do to influence the situation.
I can remember waiting to hear if we had been chosen to be our son's parents. The day that we were expecting the call came and went, as did the rearranged date after that and the one after that! I was so frantic that I was phoning friends to ask if they would send a letter of recommendation to social services, extolling our virtues! What was I thinking? They didn't of course and nor should they have. Instead they rallied around, bolstered us up and sympathetically listened whilst we howled about how unbearable it was and how social services were looking for an excuse not to give us our child.

Our friends were also there a few days later drinking champagne and bringing gifts of baby clothing when we found out that we were going to be parents to a little 6 month old boy. What a night that was!! I sat for most of the evening with a small pair of dungarees up against my shoulder with a tiny photo of him sticking out of the top. I stroked and patted the dungarees throughout the night as if they were already inhabited by my beautiful baby. Needless to say my friends looked a little bemused!!


It is National Adoption Week this week and P has been invited to partake in a short PR radio interview regarding adoption. The first question she was asked by the presenter was how had we been treated as a gay couple during the adoption process? P was very diplomatic and said that she thought it was as level a playing field as it could be!

It is fair to say that we have in the past had a tendency to jump quickly to a conclusion, when the playing field looked to have more than a slight camber.
We have long suspected that things didn't go our way because of our sexuality or more to the point because of the attitudes of others regarding same sex relationships. I maintain that we have most definitely been treated differently on occasions but I can also see now how the adoption process and the professionals within it can play on your insecurities, whether realising it or not.
For example, we have a number of friends who have adopted children, most of who are in same sex relationships, although one couple are straight and have adopted 3 lovely children. Whilst our gay friends, very much like us, have felt victimised because of their sexuality, our straight friends have felt victimised because of their age.
We are the same age as these friends but it has never occurred to us that we may be too old to adopt, probably because that’s not our demon!
I also heard an interview where a couple never thought they would be accepted because the woman was overweight and disabled and yet they have gone on to adopt 3 boys.

So why do we, as potential adopters, feel so vulnerable and insecure about what we have to offer. Why do we take every rejection as a personal slight?
We are told right from the outset that the decisions that are made are in the adoptive child’s best interest and nobody else’s. But many of us are cynics and faced with news reports and documentaries about over-stretched social services and failing child protection teams, doubt begins to creep in about the sincerity or the possibility of achieving the espoused adage.

That is why National Adoption Week is so important because it highlights some facts that on our adoption journey’s we may be in danger of forgetting.
Facts like, there were 69,000 children in the care system in England alone during the year ending March 2009. Some will be reunited with their birth families but the majority will go on to require full-time care in some guise be it adoption, long-term foster care or residential care. Of those 69,000 only 5% of the children were under 1 year of age and just 16% were between 1 and 4. In my calculation that leaves 79% of children in care aged 5 and over and I can tell you from my experience of looking for children, a large majority of those will have at least one disability and all but the tiniest percentage will come with uncertainties for their future development. Add to that that there are many sibling groups who need to be placed together and it becomes clear that rarely do you get a fit and healthy single baby who needs to be adopted. And yet that is exactly what many of us hanker after.

It’s not that there are not enough children to go around; it’s just that competition is tight for those few small children who appeal to the majority.

We never imagined when we started our journey that we would be placed with a baby who, as it is turning out, is fit and bright. We were told there were no babies to be had and we believed it. Ironically though our fate my have been sealed by having the very thing that most adopters, us included, want. Trying to find the right child/ children to extend our family is proving difficult. Social services are rightly cautious about placing a physically or emotionally demanding child with us because of the impact that they may have on our son. So here we are again looking for, along with many others, children who are very young and healthy.

For the sake of all those children who are considered “hard to place” I hope that bigger people than ourselves come forward with an offer of love, stability and importantly permanency.


So, blog done, now just a phone call to our social worker to see how the land lies and if indeed a “couple of weeks” has now eventually elapsed!! Wish me luck!

Cornwall, Glorious Cornwall

We are becoming creatures of immense habit! We have just returned from a short break and yet again it was in Cornwall, and yet again we loved it and the sea views were fabulous, the coastal walks were breath-taking, the pasties and cream teas scrumptious! And to top it all P fished a beautiful, large starfish out of a rock pool in Crackington Haven, close to where we were staying. Marvellous!!

We have been holidaying in Cornwall for years now. Each year we vow to try somewhere different but never quite get our act together. It should be so easy to try somewhere new, what with the vast availability on the internet and the ability to book quickly and easily on-line but for me there is too much choice!!  I start off with all good intentions and then get scared off when it comes to making a decision from a short list of 72 properties in 25 different locations. So Cornwall it is again then!

Early in 2005, P and I were enjoying a short break in a lovely cottage in Cornwall when we received a phone call from our social worker asking if we would be prepared to look after 3 little "poppet's" on a short term fostering arrangement.
Now as part of our initial adoption approval it was suggested that we should foster to build up our child care experience prior to adopting a child of our own (NB to cynical self- question why first-time birth parents aren't asked to do the same!).
In truth I was hesitant to offer foster care. My parents had fostered for many years and in particular had looked after 2 small children for almost 3 years before they left us to be adopted. The day they left should have been a happy day; they were being reunited with their youngest sister and were going to a permanent family who were desperate to shower them with love, but for us it was really difficult to see them go. We have never seen or heard from them since. So I had some understanding of what it is like to invest a lot of time and emotion into building relationships with small children only for them to move on and I was just not sure that that was what I wanted to buy in to.
Despite my reservations we cut our holiday short and returned to our 2 bed house to decorate and furnish the spare bedroom ready for the imminent arrival of 3 small foster children.

The only words I have to describe our experience of caring for these small children is shockingly traumatic!! Which probably sounds a little over the top but even as I recall the event, nearly 5 years later, I still feel shell-shocked by it!!

The children were all under 4 years of age and it became clear very early on that social services didn't know at the time the full extent of the trauma these children had suffered. It's true to say that we had little child care experience but it was obvious to us at the outset that these children had emotional and physical injuries too great for us to deal with.
The middle child, an endearing little lad, had burns and scars on his hands and body which looked so sore. If he spilled his drink or accidentally wet or soiled himself, he would hide from us or turn his face to the wall.  We would coax him out only to be faced with a raging tantrum which would then distress the other children. I found 2 minutes time out and then talking to him through a particular soft toy was the only way of bringing him round. He couldn't talk to me or look at me but he could talk to the teddy and then we all got a cuddle at the end of it.
He could talk quite well and could be understood the majority of the time unless he began recalling an incident involving his parents. He would start off quite comprehensibly but would quickly dissolve into a babble.
He also had distressing nightmares and would wake in a terrible state several times throughout the night.
All the children, not just the youngest had toileting issues, understandably I guess. The 2 oldest were allegedly toilet trained but after 2 days of wet furniture and soiled clothing, despite frequent trips to the loo, we put them all back in nappies for everyones relief.
All 3 children were so clingy and desperate for attention that the smallest of tasks were almost impossible. I could only see from one meal time to the next. Meal times were the times the children loved best and would sing whilst they ate but they would also hoard their food. They would pick up as much as they could in both hands and store it on their laps as if they didn't know when they would see food again.
It was distressing to watch! And pure evil to create such fear in such small, gorgeous children.

I was very lucky at the time that P took a week off of work to help the children settle in but even with both of us at home looking after them, taking them for medical check-ups, dealing with access visits and social services reviews it was chaotic.  We spent the days in such shock that we cried- all the time- we cried with the children when they cried, with each other and on occasions on our own.
And on top of all this, the tumble dryer packed up and we had a mountain of small wet clothing hanging from every radiator!

A week later and each half a stone lighter, we called a meeting with social services. As much as I wanted to be a good carer for these children, as much as I wanted to be their hero and put everything right for them, as much as I thought I would be seen as a failure, I couldn't go on. I wanted my life back and felt terribly guilty for saying so!

When they eventually left, I neurotically cleaned the house from top to bottom and couldn't rest until everything was back to exactly how it was- toys away, beds folded and put in the loft- exactly how it was when we had left to holiday in Cornwall.

I was almost, but not quite, put off of parenting for life!!

We spoke recently of this experience and wondered if we would cope better now, having parented our own child for 4 years. We think it would be very different now. The thing about having children is that your life changes in so many different ways. We are less tidy, less prone to panic, less selfish, more rounded, more settled, more content and on occasions more chaotic but now we don't mind. I think parenting is agreeing with us.

As for foster care, we had 2 more respite placements with different small children. The last time was with a 2 year old who pulled his own hair out, hid under our stairs and cried for his Mummy for the entire stay. After that I told our social worker in no uncertain terms that we would not be fostering again. Enough was enough- this didn't feel like it was preparing us to parent and in hindsight I can say that I was absolutely right.
When Sun came to live with us it felt different, it felt right. Thats not to say that it wasn't hard work but we knew that we had the time to invest in him, that it was our responsibility to invest in him and that we were tentatively stepping out on a road together that would last for life.

I have nothing but admiration for foster carers-they really are the unsung hero's in all of this. I have no qualms in saying though that it wasn't for us; we just don't have the capacity to deal with it.

Now for a quick update on the 2 boys that I spoke of in "Jumping Through Hoops"- they have now been allocated a social worker...hooray, but as we feared we are no longer being viewed exclusively as potential parents. Apparently they are still interested in us though and want to keep us informed of all that is going on regarding medicals, updated child protection reports etc and we should hear something more in a couple of weeks when the new social worker has got to grips with the case.

On a lovely note, this week we will be celebrating the 4th anniversary of Sun joining our family. The time has flown and they quite simply have been the best years of our lives.
Seems like a good reason to visit Pizza Hut or another trip to Cornwall!!

Jumping Through Hoops

I want to bring you bang up to date with our situation as it stands.

We have been approved to adopt for a second time now having gone through the latest adoption process when Sun was just 2 years. Our recommendation from the adoption panel, with agreement from ourselves is that we are approved to adopt one child who is at least 2 years younger than Sun.

Now having recently done my figures (and you will recall that it is P who is good at maths and not me!) I have realised that if we want to have the 3 children that we had initially set our hearts on, we need to adopt a small sibling group. Think about it, I am, as we have already ascertained, 40-something, and each child we get has to be at least 2 years younger than the last (social work rules, not ours), and it takes this long (2 years plus) if not longer to be placed with another child (at this point P could give you a maths formula for this), it will make me even more 40-something than I am now and quite frankly way too old to be thinking about taking on more small children. So it does feel a bit like this year is the year of the last chance saloon!

Now briefly what you need to know is that the adoption process is a long and rightly so, rigorous one with joint and individual interviews with your allocated social worker over a number of months. All aspects of your life are covered in depth, from your own childhood experiences, how you were parented, how much money you have and can earn, how much you owe, where you live, who will support you when you have children, how well you know your partner.....if you have any secrets from your partner, what you think of corporal punishment, how will your life look with children in it, where they will sleep, is your house fit for purpose, what's your child care experience to date- (I did at this point, tell our social worker that we had adopted a traumatised cat and through thoughtful parenting had helped her re-adjust! She smiled reassuringly! WHAT WAS I THINKING!!), have you ever been in trouble with the police? No. We don't believe you so we will do a CRB check as well and so on it goes.

Then on top of that your friends and family are interviewed about you, which is confidential and you don't have a clue what they have said unless they personally tell you. Your doctor gets to fill in a long medical form about you ( no I wasn't mad it was just my malfunctioning hormones-thank the Lord for patches!!), your employer gets to verify your existence and to top it all your ex-partner gets their two-penneths worth!!

I am glad to say that we were not required at any stage to give a stool sample....so thats something!

When the form filling is complete you then get to sit in a room with about 12 people who you have never met before, who ask you some more questions and then decide whether or not you will make fit parents- and if the answer is yes, you are approved!!

Now you would think that once you had been through all that you would be approved for life, but no. Social services have so much disposable income and time on their hands, that when you decide to adopt for a second time, you have to go through it all again plus a little bit more concerning the child you already have.

Believe it or not that's the easy part. The waiting- searching for children, showing interest in children to be told time and again that you aren't the right match or that the birth parent, who has given up their child, doesn't want it living with same sex parents, that you lack child care experience, you haven't been together long enough, that there are no male role models- all of this can take years and an emotional toll on yourself and your family life.

Adoption is not for the faint hearted!

My advice to anyone starting on the process is make sure you have a social worker who you can have an open and trusting relationship with- you will need it, to get through it all. Luckily our social worker has been fantastic through all the ups and downs and we don't mind for one bit that she is "straight"!! Bizarrely or sweetly she "came out" to us on our very first meeting and looked quite awkward doing so!!! We told her it was nothing to be ashamed of and that we respected her honesty!!  Our relationship with our social worker was cemented from that point on and we get regular visits from her to discuss children, strategies, how we are doing etc. She has over the years become our friend whilst maintaining a suitably professional distance, so much so that she insisted that our offer of lunch be extended to the entire Council to keep in line with organisational policy! Needless to say she had to make do with a cup of tea and a biscuit!!

Now adopting again is not something that P and I can do in isolation. We have to now take into account Sun's thoughts and feelings on the matter and as such have tentatively started conversations with him about the possibility of a sibling. I am pleased to say that he is really excited about the possibility and has stated that he wants a brother and a sister- but they both have to be boys!!!! (We still need to work on gender names with him!!)

So with all that in mind, we have expressed interest in 2 little boys from "up north" and are in an almost unbearable waiting game to see if we are going to be interviewed by their social worker. Unfortunately for us, they look absolutely gorgeous and we have got ourselves into the dangerous situation of seeing them in our lives. We were told by their social worker that she really likes the look of us as a family, that we have a lot to offer and that we are front runners to be parents to these boys. We have been given the foster carers details and have spoken at length with her, who gushed her way through the conversation telling us about how lovely and cuddly they both were, and at one point it seemed as if the boys were ours in all but the paperwork. That was until the social worker left her job 2 weeks ago.

The children as I write still have not been allocated a new social worker and we are left wondering whether we will be as positively viewed by whoever will take over their case. Our worse fears, based on past experience is that we will be thrown back into the melting pot and that will be the last we hear of it.

And then we shall go through a short period of mourning, as we generally do, for children who were never ours.

We have a very wise friend called Annafried (not her real name but she will  know who she is!) who summed up our experiences as being similar to miscarrying. I have never been in that unenviable state so I can't say one way or another but what I do know is that every time we are rejected, the extreme disappointment that I feel makes me nauseous, my stomach tightens, I feel battered and bruised, I cry generally, as does P and we scream about how unfair the whole thing is. We vow to stop searching and to let things be.

And then, after a few months, we tentatively take up our search again thinking that this time it might just happen.

So thats where we are. Bang up to date.....waiting, with everything crossed.
Be assured that whatever the outcome you will be one of the first to know.

Meet The Cast

I am writing this blog for a number of reasons:

1. The adoption process is leaving me feeling emotionally battered a lot of the time and I am hoping this writing process will be cathartic
2. I am a frustrated writer (aren't we all??) who doesn't quite know where to start a writing career
3. I need to get my life back into some perspective and not become all consumed with something that may never happen
4. I am hoping that this blog my be helpful to others going through a similar situation

I need to be honest and willing to expose my personal life to a considerable degree in order to achieve this and I am finding the possibility of someone other than my friends and family reading this, a bit scary. (Probably because I don't mind supportive comments but negative ones are likely to make me cry!!!!! )

So here goes- some things you should know before the blogging goes any further:

STATUS REPORT:

Me:

40-something, white female, gardener and writer (actually a stay at home Mum trying to fill her time but gardener/writer sounds somehow more compelling !!) Currently known as Julie, Jules, Ju-well, Mummy. Aliases: Has been known to call herself Black Marigold and Juicy Fruits during her time with the CB radio fraternity

Partner:

Another 40-something (but not as 40-something as Jules!) white female, currently known only as "P". Aliases: Mama, Corporate Bird, Captain of Industry. P is the brains behind the family (well- she can count but can't work the Ipod!!) and the main bread winner.

Son:

4 year old white male. Early years student. Known only as Sun. Aliases: Floyd, Flo, Clive James as in "I lurve you Clibe James"- Magarita Prakatan!! Sun is the cutey of the organisation. Being educated at the School of Charm.

Fertility status:

At the commencement of adoption process, both would-be parents were firing just under par on a combined 3 ovaries. This has been further reduced to just 2 ovaries but luckily still in one person. Jules is now womb-less and free of troublesome ovaries/ filipino tubes etc following a radical hysterectomy (this blog was nearly entitled "No Womb at the Inn").

There is an assumption that P could still get pregnant through sperm donation/IVF should they so desire but unfortunately has a very low pain threshold!!

Adoption therefore for this couple has been a first choice route to parenting.

Pets:

Cat- Saffy

Chickens- Brenda, Daisy, Bluebell

Other people will no doubt be making guest appearances over time and I shall introduce them as and when they appear.

Supporting evidence:

2 articles have been previously written regarding the personal adoption process to date and can be found on the Be My Parent website-

http://www.bemyparent.org.uk/features/come-on-social-services,282,AR.html

http://www.bemyparent.org.uk/features/a-positive-choice,316,AR.html

Status report complete. Now the blogging starts.......

Apple Cake and Mustard- And So It Continues

If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that I am not at the beginning of my adoption journey.

My journey started in the cold back end of 2002 some 3 years before the birth of my first adopted son. Filling in the would-be adopters application form at the time, I naively thought that my family would be complete by the end of 2003 but as I now write I realise that I have no idea where on the journey I am, how much further there is to go or when it is all likely to end.

Time is ticking by and I am not getting any younger and to that end the urgency to parent again, especially now that my son is at school, seems more consuming than it has previously done; so much so that I find myself trying to analyse the emotion behind it. After all I have been blessed with such a beautiful, intelligent, fun-loving child- why can't I just be satisfied with that?

But that's just it, I am more than satisfied with him. Not a day passes without my thoughts turning to how lucky I have been. It is not about dissatisfaction, it's about having room in our lives for more.

I have concluded, for now anyway, that wanting to parent is something so primeval that there is no need to justify the desire, in fact it is ridiculous to even try.

So I am giving up trying to explain to myself and others why I want more children.

I am also giving up trying to convince others that I understand the impact of more children on our lives, because essentially I'm not sure I fully do and actually how can you ever really know what it will be like until they arrive.

Birth children, adopted children and step children all come with different personalities and different needs and another thing I do know for sure, is that it is the job of the parent to meet those needs whilst of course tickling, kissing, hugging, clothing, bathing, reading bed-time stories, reprimanding, eating strawberries and burning fish fingers!

This diary will be about our adoption journey. It will tell of the trials and tribulations of a potential adoptive family and will in places be somewhat retrospective- we have after all been on the adoption road for some time now and there are some stories to be told.

I don't know what the outcome will be. I don't know if we will ever have more children.We have very little control over the process, but you are welcome to dip in and out and maybe share some of our experiences with us.

So that's my short intro. If you were wondering where the title of this blog came from, it was from my son! Apple cake and mustard- apparently that's what he had for dessert during his first week of school dinners.

And I thought skool dinners had improved!!!