Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 October 2007 11:08:23
well, we had never anticipated needing to buy certain things in preparation for our little one. and we never really anticipated not having much time to do the said 'no buying' in. in other words, and without giving too much away, we have taken our first foray into the aisles of mothercare. we wouldn't have dared venture into such a shop before, but now the fact that we need to replace the single bed in our 'spare room' for a cot ('crib' for you americans) in our 'nursery' is starting to hit home, and fast. (by the way, yes we've had lots of offers of cots from friends, but we have something specific in mind, so thanks, but we'll probably buy one)
"when is the baby due?" asked the shop assistant as we hovered by one cot/bed. (a cot/bed is a cot (crib) that can convert into a bed and be suitable til 5 years of age)
"well . . . possibly january. maybe before christmas. we're not sure. we're adopting," qualifies a very noticably un-pregnant me.
and to be honest, Little One is on the cusp of leaving the cot for a bed, but we don't want to put them through more changes than they need to handle all at once. Little One is using a crib now, so we won't both take them out of the home that they know and put them straight into a brand new furniture experience quite yet. thus, a cot/bed.
in the uk, when you decide to adopt and enter into the whole adoption thing, you are told, taught, and prepared to accept that "you won't have a baby, there are no babies." and for the most part this is true. the reality of the system is such that even for newborns who go straight into foster care and even for the very few babies who are relinquished by their birth mothers, it takes time.
if you've seen the last series of Friends, you will be aware of at least a simplistic caricature of a process of linking up an adopting family with a pregnant birth mother before the birth so that the baby goes straight to the adoptive home from the hospital. that doesn't happen here in britain. it just doesn't. and whereas that particular storyline had quite a bit of hollywood thrown into it, essentially, it does happen in america. so, just so you know, no, we will not have a very little baby, cause we're here in britain. we have said that from the start and we still stick to that. but the difference between a child who can sleep in a bed and a todler who is still using a cot is very big for us. . . and what we had pictured for our future.
we can't blog about many things, but we can blog about the emotions of what it feels like to wander into the nappy aisle in the supermarket with intent for the first time. one word. overwhelming. you just don't get 9 months to adjust to the idea that this is going to be real in your life and for these things to become normalised. in fact every bit of advice you recieve tells you (and we believe rightly so, from what we have experienced so far) not to move forward too fast. not to set up your nursary and make some kind of shrine or altar to your imaginary baby that will remain ready and waiting possibly for years. . . and then you find out that your child is 4! so as everything has been unknown, we didn't do that. you don't go out and buy your wedding dress before you've met the bloke. (well, ok, some people do, but) and the first time you go shopping for something like a wedding dress after you're with the bloke and you're pretty sure things are going to work out for a long time, that first time you go looking for 'rights of passage' things like a wedding dress is scary and emotional and unreal, but if you go window shopping a bit before you buy, it becomes less so. so that's kind of what we're doing cot-wise. the first bouts of window shopping and normalisation.
but the stage we are at now is much closer than we have ever been before. we have agreement from both sides, and so far everyone is happy, in principle. . . it's NOT official yet, but we ARE in a position to plan now, which we have never been before. planning doesn't happen until the last minute. planning doesn't happen until you've met with the social workers from the little one's side of things and they say that they want you.
i suppose it's a bit like surfing or using rollerblades for first time. at first, you don't try lots of stunts and ask lots of friends along to watch you cause youknow you're going to fall down, and even if you don't there was a pretty good chance you were going to, so you don't want to set up an audience for it. by the time you have been surfing or rollerblading for awhile longer and you know you can do it, and you know you can do the stunts and you're confident, then you can enter competitions and have an audience to watch you do the cool stunts. you can still fall down, but you can be a bit more confident that you won't.
i mean the analogy doesn't completely follow, becuase in surfing and rollerblading, it's all about practice and preparation and work, and in adoption theres a lot more chances and outside influences that you can't control involved. in fact, perhaps surfing is a better analogy, cause no matter how much work you put in, there can always be that killer tidal wave that will knock you down no matter what you do! but the other truth of surfing, is that if you doubt too much that you're going to stay upright, then it's pretty certain you wont. you won't be prepared for a big wave when it comes, because you never prepared, becuase you never thought you'd stay up in the first place.
so we're just preparing and approaching the waves with confidence. not naivety, but knowledgable confidence.