Categories: uncategorized
Date: 01 February 2007 13:21:19
we can't tell you how much all of your comments, e-mails and phone calls have meant to us!!
it was the strangest thing to realise, as we were driving home the other night, that the only thing i felt really was tired. i had expected to feel "different". we were (are) now officially "expecting", so surely i'll feel something. exuberant or nervous or triumphant?
no, i felt hungry. and tired.
i guess when you find out that you're expecting a baby through pregnancy, you're body starts to tell you that yes, it's true. when you find out that your expecting a child through adoption, nothing really happens.
but when all of your messages and comments started coming in, it helped me to feel a bit more like it was real. but i'm realising now what they meant about waiting and uncertainty. we -just -don't - know! we just can't plan anything.
we said absolutely definately that we weren't going to put our lives on hold while we wait, but when someone starts talking about planning for later in the year, i find that i just don't know what to say. i know that if i commit now, then there's a real possibility that i'll be letting people down later.
my business is in a complete fluff!
I keep hearing mr. dots on the phone telling people "oh, panel wasn't that bad." to which i have to respond: YES - IT - WAS! do you have any idea what it's like to sit in front of a room of 10-15 people who have the right to decide whether you are allowed to be a parent or not?! (ok, yes, smudgie, i know you do, but...)
to start with they argued discussed with our social worker for about an hour and a half while we waited with another nice social worker who bought us tea at a local hotel. (normally it would be at the agency's centre, but after the trauma of last panel, they wanted to minimise our nerves, and it's a bit horrible sitting in the room next to the panel, because even though you can't hear words, as such, you can hear the voices.) so we met her in nicer surroundings.
then the call came to bring us back to go face them.
they asked us why we wanted to parent, and why we wanted to adopt. they asked us what we thought that our biggest parrenting challenge would be and how we would deal with it. they asked us what our parenting style would be and what influenced it. they asked me how my job would affect my ability to parent, or something like that. (they probably wanted to be sure i wasn't going to feed our child to a snake or gorrilla or something!)
they asked us if there was anything we wanted to ask them, and to my horror mr. dots starts down the political route of "so what is going to happen to the catholic agencies (we're with a catholic agency) when the new 'adoption by homosexual couples' laws are enforced?" but i think i managed to derail him in time, plus the head of the panel said "no, please don't ask that."
[aside: neither of us are opposed to homosexual couples adopting, but the catholic church is, and we're not going to start discussing that here, and people will have their own convictions on that issue and that's fine.
what we are concerned about, as we are with a catholic agency, although we're not catholic, is that when the new adoption laws come in, the catholic agencies may be forced to close because they receive funding from the catholic church in order to run, and the catholic church will not allow the catholic adoption agencies to assess homosexual couples as adoptive parents. the new laws will not allow them not to. this effects us because if our agency closes before we have a child, we will be left without an agency or a social worker and were concerned that we would simply have to start the entire process again with another agency or local authority! i think they've managed to assure us that we won't be cut adrift. but nevermind.]
when we answered the 'why we want to parent' question and implied that we were quite excited about it, we got tut tutted and told that "but remember, it's a very difficult job you know." and i wanted to say, do you really think we would have got this far if we didn't know that??
then we were sent into the room next door while they argued discussed about us a bit more for about 20 minutes. i started looking through the children's toys in the corner for a toy stethescope to put to the wall.
then our social worker's manager came into the room and said "there's no easy way of saying this [...pause] but congratulations, you're going to be parents!" she didn't worry us too much with the pause (though i do admit i wondered if they had deferred decision because they weren't unanimous) because she looked calm and we knew well enough after all that she's been through to get us past panel that she would be fit to kill if they had decided otherwise.
then our own social worker came in, tears running down her face and hugged us. i was really touched. i realised right then just how much she had done for us and how much the agency was standing behind us, and was really, very, touched. (i know that technically the panel is part of the agency, but they're just volunteers, so i don't count them into it when i say that. i don't think that really they were ever behind us, i think they just couldn't find a reason not to approve us. mr dots, the eternal optimist that he is, would probably say something kinder.)
so then we drove home and went out for a curry.
so now what? waiting. i'll write about waiting next time.