Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 June 2008 23:19:53
finally, our entire application to adopt, and all of the bits that go with it and support it, has /have gone into the courts! We were told on friday, by a very nice social worker, who came to assess us, but who we have never met before. (we kind of wish she had been there as the one to do those visits from the start.) EVEN all the medical faff has come back and been submitted to court (and i was assessed ok to parent, even though i've just been struggling in my first real relapse in five years over the last month). now we're just waiting for three court dates.
the first hearing we don't attend, just the social workers. the first hearing is just for the judge to say 'we need this and this and that, so you and you and you do it and get back to me on such and such a date' (hopefully s/he'll be a little more precise in the actual hearing itself!) the second hearing mr. dots and i must attend, but not Little One. (anybody free to babysit for that one?) the second is so the judge can say 'ok, so did you and you and you get this and this and that? ok, in that case we will look at this and this and that on such and such a date.'
the third hearing date is the BIG one. that one all three of us need to attend. even the birth parents are invited to attend (but we've been assured that 1. they have no intention to coming and 2. if they did, we'd be ferried in through a back door and kept seperate so our identities would never be known. how? i dunno, but i'm not thinking of that possibility. anyway, the third one is the one where the judge makes his/her final rulling on what is best for LO, either stay with us as her parents, legally and forever, or be returned back to her birth parents, who she has never lived with and really only has known through regular scheduled and supervised visits at a community centre.
it's a no brainer. She has lived with and known us as her parents for six months of her short 2 year life, she has completely settled and come to know our life as her life, our home as her home, our pets as her pets, and her toys/bed/room/neighbourhood as her toys/bed/room/neighbourhood. she has friends and community and this and that and the other thing, or she could be sent to live with people who she barely knows (and probably doesn't remember) and who have been legally assessed as unable to care for her. i don't want to diminish her birth parents' trauma, but her home and world is with us now. i can't believe that any judge would say otherwise. we have no worries about the final ruling. we just want it to be over and done with.
then no one has jurisdiction over us anymore. then our name is legally her name, so that we can stop trying to explain to doctors and officials and etc. etc. why we're with a child with a different surname to ours. then we can stop having official people phone us up and tell us where we have to be and when and how we have to act and do.
then. . . it's over! we don't know when yet. pray it comes quickly.