Linked!

Hello,

I'm not sure whether I should be writing this or not as I don't want to jinx things, but then that's not really in the spirit of blogging, is it?!

So, after my whingey old moan bag of a post last time what happens...? Our social worker calls and tells us they have made a link with a sibling pair! I'm not going to give any details just in case but they are both under three so...wow!  Amazing. The reason she wasn't available to talk to me was because they hadn't had their official linking meeting and she was worried she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret if she spoke to me!  So there we are.

We have a meeting with our social worker and the children's social worker on Monday and then we will decide if we agree to the match.

We will have to ask loads and loads of questions.  I think I'm going to type up answers on the laptop as we go as this is undoubtedly going to be the biggest decision of our whole lives.  And it's so hard!
Because you just don't know how their life experiences will manifest as they grow, and you have to try to decide what sort of trauma you can manage and where you would be best placed to therapeutically parent them.  So we are excited and scared and nervous and hopeful and a million other emotions.  We have even been given names, which is lovely as we can think about them as real people, but we have avoided talking about them too much until after Monday when we will know more definitely whether we think they are a good match for us.  We have only really told people who came with us on our adoption journey, so far. I'm not going to worry my workplace until we know for sure so I will call them after Monday I think.

As a distraction technique on Sunday I made a treasure map for the wall on one of the bedrooms.  It is decorated with hot air balloons with children riding in them, clearly on an adventure and I just wanted it to have a real sense of adventure on there!  But instead of just making a fictional one, all the places are relevant to our friends and family, like there's a Rose Cottage named after one of our friends, and Lake Louise where we got engaged!  The whole family is on it! I think it's pretty cool...I even did the teabag staining and burned round the edges!  Unfortunately I can't share it on here because it would be a bit too identity revealing!  It's a bit like the map we had to do for our PAR of our support network only kid friendly. Luckily our family seem to have names that fit well with places!

So we have been busy putting up more storage and trying to get ready but not in a specific to these children kind of way.

Something about it feels very right now that we have settled down, but we still have to be sensible and measured and not get carried away with our emotions.  Much easier said than done.

It's just unbelievable that I've been blogging for just over a year now and we have been linked.  It's not taken nearly as long as we thought. I'm glad we timed it right so our extension etc were finished off and we don't have anything to worry about.  I've decided that I'm going to take photographs of all the breakable things we had as wedding presents so that if anything gets broken and the children can see on my face that I'm sad I can say "well, it was an accident so I'm not cross, but I am a bit sad because it was a wedding present from...but don't worry because I have a picture of it so I can remember it that way and still be happy".  I'm hoping that will work!

And that's all for now!

I will be in touch when we know more :)

No news is good news?

No news is supposed to be good news but it really doesn't feel like it!  Sorry I haven't blogged for ages. We had a meeting with our placing social worker a week after panel and since then we haven't heard anything at all. I'm on school holidays now and it's just driving me mad. I'm now preparing for when I go back in September but when we broke up I was so excited about the impending babies and now I'm just sad. Either the two children they told us about don't really exist, they have been linked with someone else or they are just lurking in foster care. None of which are great. We were so ready for a big wait until they said things like: "we probably won't really need your matching profile" and "there is a one year old and a two year old which seem like a really good match" and "looks like you might want to get those rooms ready!".  If we hadn't been told things like this we would certainly feel a lot less horrible. It felt like it was going to be really quick and here we are...over a month later and we've heard nothing. Some friends of ours have been approved for over 1.5 years so I don't know what I'm moaning about! Shuddup woman and pull yourself together! I honestly wouldn't be moaning if we hadn't been dropped these tantalising nuggets of information and then.....silence! Eurgh. So infuriating! What was that about not moaning, you say...?! Sorry! I spend my whole life telling people to make the best of things and enjoy what you have. I'm partially sighted which means I'm not doing the career I set out to but I love being a teacher so everything worked out!  I know that we should be enjoying the time we have left as a couple, but it's just so hard now. My emotions are all over the place!  We just had a lovely relaxing holiday in a couples only hotel so there were no children, no curious parenting techniques to discuss, no cuteness...brilliant! It made us feel much better. I'm not really sure what to do with myself at the moment. My brain is full of migraines and emotions and there's not much room left for actual functioning! Ho hum...there are worse things...I'm just not managing this well because I like to either do things *right now*  or pick a date and start planning.  That's a brief summary of where I am now. I don't really know to be honest! The social worker is supposed to call me tomorrow so hopefully she will. Hope you are all well and enjoying the sunshine! X

Tired!

So now I am finally going mad. Everyone said it would happen but we are not really sleeping well and everything sets us off.  We just bought the Mommy, Mama an me book and that was such a bad idea. It's lovely and sent my emotions all over the plan.  I can't remember if I said but we have decided to call ourselves Mummy and Mama. I'm Mummy and my other half is Mama.   Last week we started trying to make our intro video a little bit. With the windows movie making package we can put music in the background.  It's pretty cool.  We chose "all about you" by McFly essentially because I have the musical interests of a teenage girl and also because it's quite jolly and seemed to be sending the right message!  So we just played with that really and it was quite fun but we can't make it  properly until we know names and ages.  I think a video is quite a good idea in case the foster carer isn't great and won't read their intro book very much.  We think we are going to make board books from this site: http://www.chloesmummy.co.uk/ for our intro book as then they will be very toddler friendly.  It's nice because we can put the photos in the book into stills in our video so it links nicely together. We joined adoption uk this week as we thought we probably need as much support as possible!  We are looking to start a local group of new family social as all of our nearest ones are actually very far away and just not realistic with two tiny people. Only a week and a bit left of school.  It's such a relief as I'm so tired I feel very fuzzy headed at the moment.  Luckily it's just a few serious lessons of A level and then mostly jolly fun stuff which isn't too arduous. I just wish I knew whether I was going back in September.  It's so strange this not knowing.  Or maybe I will just go back for a few weeks. Who knows?! I can't decide if we were being hopelessly optimistic thinking it would happen for us this summer or if it still will.  We haven't heard from our new social worker yet. Hopefully we will next week. It's been a week of hopefully and nervously checking my phone but not finding anything.  And everyone at school is so sweet and always asking how things are going.  I told school it was likely it could be the summer, so they could be prepared but now I'm less sure, so I feel a bit silly.  Eurgh! Sigh, it's all just so emotionally draining! Anyway, take care and I will keep you all posted! X

Approved!

So...we did it! It was a nerve wracking panel with some quite tricky questions. Not wishing to blow my own trumpet but our social worker said that one of the panel said that he wished he lived with us, and that we were one of the best sets of adopters they had had through in ages! Hurrah! We are excited but totally pooped now! So for those of you who are interested here is a summary of the questions and our answers: You said in your report that you have not really faced prejudice in the past, how will you deal with prejudice when you face it in the future, especially with a child? I said that I would do what I do at school when the children make unfounded and bizarre comments and question why they thought that.  That usually works quite well.  We also said that we are just normal people who happen to be lesbians and this wouldn't change...and that's why we haven't faced prejudice in the past.  Because when people meet us they realise that we are not evil demons but just normal, nice people, and one of our friends said that we turned her homophobic father into a gay loving open minded person! Hurrah! How will you deal with it if your child is bullied for having two mums? We said we would try and bring them up to be resilient so that they would know that if they were bullied then the bullies were at fault and not them.  We also said that we would contact the school if we needed to. We would encourage our children to talk to us and we might rehearse what they would say to someone who asked them a question about having two mummies.  We said that it is normal for children to ask questions and be curious and that's ok and we gave the example of someone we has met through NfS whose son said "my birth mum wasn't very good at being a mum so now I have two brilliant dads." You are very calm people so how would you cope with an aggressive or violent child.  You have said that this is not something you will consider but it could develop. I said that we would not be afraid to seek expert help if we needed it, that sometimes that is the way forward.  I said that it would be very hard but we would have to persevere.  L said that we would try and find out why the child was so angry and sort out the cause of the behaviour. You said that you would be unable to support a child with an existing faith. We said that we were open minded about religion and will support our child in exploring religion.  We have lots of religious friends. But we could not support a child who was expecting us to go to church with them every Sunday as we felt this was hypocritical of us.  But that we are open minded about religion and want to teach our child about different faiths and religious celebrations. J, I was pleased to see that you didn't rebel as a teenager.  How would you cope if you had a teenager who came home with a shaved head and a tattoo? I said that I worked with teenagers every day and I felt that treating them like adults, calmly but with clear consequences, worked very well indeed.  I said that I thought there were worse things they could do than shave their head, although it might be quite embarrassing when we go shopping!  We said that they need to express themselves and if that's the way they choose to do it, that's OK.  We wouldn't scream and shout but would let them know that they are safe and loved and that it would be hard but we would do our best. Sometimes teenagers behave very differently at home and at school. I said that yes, in my experience they do, but that in my experience in the boarding house I had learned to deal with both sides.  I also said that we had talked a lot about our children being teenagers because of the adoption process.  Much more than most parents. We felt overwhelmingly that we want our children to feel safe and like they can talk to us and would try to keep calm and not engage in power struggles with them. You seem like very calm and nurturing people, how will you cope if you are rejected by your child? I said that it would clearly be really hard and we would find it difficult and from talking to other adopters it seems to be quite common.  We would do our best and keep trying but not smother them, make sure we were meeting their needs and keeping them safe, and then let them come to us. We said that we would support each other and do our best but that it would be a very difficult time. Our social worker then said that she thought we would be very good at finding creative ways to engage, nurture and build attachment. How would you cope if they used food as a power struggle, for example refusing to eat. I said we were going to get them to engage with cooking and preparing food from an early age but if they are using food as a power struggle the best thing to do is not to engage in it and make it an issue.  So that's it. Done! Now we just have to wait for a call and then we will know more! What an experience. We gave our social worker a little hamper of homemade cakes and biscuits and she gave us a big hug. We were so lucky with our social worker and will miss her loads! We are going to keep her posted and send her photos etc. And I will keep you lot posted too! We did it! X

5 days to go...

It's only 5 days until our approval panel now and we are excited and nervous. Because we have been to a panel before to become approved foster carers, I think we are not too nervous about the actual panel itself, I am more nervous about what comes next!  I think I'm more nervous about the panel than I think I am as I'm not really sleeping too well at the moment.  With the jubilee, half term has gone by in a flash and now it's only 3 1/2 weeks until the summer holidays.  We have sort of been told loosely that things are likely to happen over the summer but we're trying to remain sensible and guarded but it's kind of unrealistic for us.  We painted the second bedroom over the jubilee weekend so it's ready now, it just needs cheerful soft furnishings and a bed/ cot and I have some hot air balloon wall stickers that I'm ready to buy when we know more.  I just hope we are allocated our new social worker soon after panel and we start to find out what's going on as it's the not knowing I find the most difficult.  I have been doing some shopping and things lately in a slightly mad way as I know that when I'm not working I will probably feel guilty about buying things for myself.  So I've had a mini splurge on nice classic things that hopefully will last for a bit.  Some of my friends think I'm a bit mad because they will obviously get covered in food/paint/poop but it's helped me a bit and I sort of think that's what matters! We are looking into getting a bigger car too.  Our car is only just big enough to fit a double buggy in the back so we are thinking we should upgrade to a more sensible and mumsy number!  Everything we do at the moment makes me feel a bit mad and excited.  We have well and truly fallen off the edge now.  Hopefully once we are linked and matched it will get better as we will have more of a focus rather than blindly trying to prepare for...we don't quite know what! So in five days time we will know whether we are approved adopters and, from what we have been told, things could start to happen any minute after that.  The manager of the adoption agency seems to be very proactive and switched on so let's hope things move quickly for us as it would be so wonderful to be able to do all this stuff in the summer holidays rather than panicking in the autumn term, which is always a bit of a busy old nightmare anyway. So there we are.  I'm not sleeping terribly well so sorry if that doesn't all make sense.  Some of the lovely people from our adoption training course are coming for tea tomorrow so that will be nice.  It's been really good because I've spent the whole day baking!  We're making a hamper of homemade things as a thank you to our social worker as we will be moving to a different one after Wednesday so I have spent the day making vanilla fudge, malteaser cake and shortbread! Very fun.  The malteaser cake is delicious. http://mirandagorebrowne.typepad.com/beautiful-baking/2012/02/mirandas-malteser-cake-a-perfect-cake-to-make-with-the-children-or-to-enjoy-when-you-need-a-taste-of-home-for.html If anyone is interested. Right...definitely time for bed. Take care, everyone.

We've received our PAR

Hello again, I said I would post about the PAR, so here are my thoughts. Our social worker did not disappoint us.  She always asked questions and seemed like she just "got" us really well and was also a very switched on and intuitive person and this certainly comes across on the PAR. I shed quite a few tears when I read it.  It's a great way to make you realise how lucky you are, how much support you have and evidence for why your relationship is strong and has lasted.  We changed a few minor details, or a couple of bits where we weren't sure it sounded quite as it was meant to on paper, but mostly all 43 pages were accurate and perceptive.   For those of you who haven't seen one before it starts with each of your childhood experiences: parenting, education etc. and then moves on to specific sections like religion, how we will cope with a change of routine etc etc.  She used lots of quotes from our meetings and also quotes that we had sent ourselves anyway so it felt like a very personal and appropriate document. Our new sofa arrived this week.  Amazing how a thing like a sofa can make you emotional but it's a big family sofa which we will all be able to cuddle up on and it's making us feel funny! Our social worker is coming today for us to sign off all the paperwork and then it's panel in just over 3 weeks.  Wow.  Can you believe it?  Really, this bit has been very fast... I have no complaints about the time scale so far! I can't remember what I said in my last post about two children, but it seems like they are hoping we will have two.  This is stressful as we have to sort out the second bedroom, but we can't properly do it until we know.  I have sated the crazily organised part of my personality by making a list of things to panic buy when we are definitely matched!  There's not too much to do but I was "ready" (as I'll ever be!) for one and two seems like it will be wonderful but challenging! I spent last weekend with my lovely friend and her two gorgeous twins.  I had a wonderful time playing with them and cuddling them.  They are slightly stranger aware and treated me with appropriate suspicion (they are 7 months old) but they sort of got over it and let me have lots of cuddles! My friend is doing so well.  I can see that she is pretty pooped but she applies a very organised approach with lots of routine and I think that helps preserve her sanity as well as the babies.  At least our two won't be in the same room waking each other up constantly! So all in all it's been a good week.  We are both rather emotional but managing! This weekend we haven't done too much.  We have just been enjoying the new house which is something we needed to do really.  We also went to the cinema...we're trying to do things like that that we won't be able to do in not too long.   Or it might be too long!  It's still horrible not knowing!  I don't know if I'll go back to school in September and that's just so weird!  Just have to try not to think about it! Take care, everyone!

Getting a bit carried away

Somehow our assessment process is complete; I thought it would sort of go on indefinitely and had got used to being “prospective adopters” but now it sounds like we’re not going to be “prospective adopters” for very long at all.  We had our final social worker visit on Friday and the house safety check...nothing too exciting:

• ·         Are your chemicals in a locked cupboard?
• ·         Are your blind cords tied up?
• ·         Do you have socket protectors?
• ·         Do you have a pond?

And our lovely social worker is going to email us our PAR next week for us to read through and check.  Our friends who are approved adopters came round for dinner on Saturday and were really emphatic about how important the PAR is in the matching process as if you go out of county it’s the only way the other social workers get to find out about you so we are going to scrutinise it very carefully and make sure it sounds like us.  Our social worker has been so lovely and seems to know us well so I’m not expecting any huge errors or bizarre assumptions but it will be nice to have the document.  In a way it’s quite nice to have external approval from our friends, family and a social worker that we will make good parents.  I just really hope we can be.

So apart from panel in a month’s time, we’re all set...which is a bit mad really!  I’m not complaining though!  I have been very impressed with the time scale especially given what people told us and all the newspaper reports about the adoption system.

So that’s the kind of “nuts and bolts” news.  But in other (more crazy) news, our social worker told us that two sibling pair groups with both siblings under the age of 3 are coming through the system at the moment and they have already decided that we would be a good match with them and they don’t get many adopters who are approved for two.  I’ve kicked into some sort of crazy, excited, panicky, stress-filled overdrive now.  I know I shouldn’t because nothing is certain and we haven’t been approved yet etc. etc. but our social worker told me to get lots of practise dressing/bathing kids etc. etc. so I can be really speedy when we have two.  I should clarify that we’re not being pushed into this...we have always said we don’t mind one or two...but because we had an extra room built in our house, that was always going to be the nursery so we have decorated it a bit and we’re pretty much ready for one.  If we have two then we have to re-organise and decorate our current spare bedroom which doesn’t sound too stressful now I’m actually typing it, but I’m a stress-minimiser.  I manage my stress by being ultra prepared for things so I have no need to be stressed.  To be honest it’s probably not the bedroom decorating as such that’s worrying me, it’s more the fact that in potentially three months time, our household could expand from 2 to 4.  Which is wonderful, and exciting and brilliant.  But three months isn’t very long and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to relax ever again!  Even though I should be spending lots of time relaxing because I won’t have time in three months time.

Sorry if this post is a little disordered.  It’s accurately reflecting what’s going on in my brain.  I’m unbelievably excited, but then I worry that I shouldn’t be because it could still take a long time and could not happen like she said.  But then I think it’s unlikely our social worker would have said this if she didn’t believe it as she is very kind and nice and intuitive and I don’t think she would deliberately mislead us.

So we have finally given up trying to be pragmatic and sensible and have tipped over into fully embracing this adoption and really getting ready, both physically and emotionally, for the little people (person?) who are about to enter our lives.  I was feeling pretty unsettled when I started writing this entry and it has definitely helped so thanks everyone!

My Mum and Dad are being great too...they have said that they will come down and help decorate/whatever we need.  But my Mum said to me “I think you just need to keep calm about it all until you know more” which is sound advice and easy to say, but just not happening for me!  The weirdest part is that I don’t know whether I will be going back to school in September.  I don’t know what my life will be like in a few months time.  It could be just like it is now, or there might be two children in the house and everything will be totally and irreversibly different.  It could be years before I’m a full time teacher again.  It’s just all a bit crazy.  I am just so looking forward to being a Mummy now, and it seems like everything we do, we’re having to think about the imaginary children which aren’t ours yet.  Even buying a sofa you think...is that pattern good for sticky fingers?  Will we all fit for family cuddles?!  But then they’re not imaginary really...they’re real...they’re born and probably already in foster care, but we just don’t know who they are yet.  But I really shouldn’t go there because it will drive me even more mad.

At least with a pregnancy you get nine months notice.  With adoption it’s like you’re trying to conceive for months and months (or years) and then suddenly the gestation is 2 months!  It’s totally mad.  It seems that either you are massively self-disciplined and try not to think about it at all, and then buy everything in a great big rush, or you let them in, open your heart and prepare yourself for your new arrivals, but also guard yourself against disappointment and pain and a big long wait.

So...that’s where I am...I’m somewhere that I don’t really know where it is.  I’m excited but I’m trying not to be excited; I’m stressed, but I’m trying to keep calm and reasonable and I’ve got no idea whatsoever what the next few months hold.  But I’m in my house, I’ve got my wonderful partner, our house is ready and big enough to be a family home and yesterday we picked up our new chickens.  I think emotionally and physically we are ready, it’s just the uncertainty and lack of time scale which is the hardest bit but we’ll muddle through the next few months somehow.

I’ll try and blog again when we’ve received our PAR and let you know what we thought.

Take care everyone.