Tears...

No, not mine, for a change, though there were some earlier in the week...

I walked into a colleague's office (to be fair, she did say "Come in") and found her weeping into a tissue. My first thought was "she's just found out she isn't pregnant". Obsessed? Moi?

To be fair, I had had lunch with my other colleague, S, who told me she's been trying on and off for five years. They are now looking into overseas adoption, although she is still trying to work out if there are some non-IVF treatments she can have, despite Stupid Consultant putting them on the year-long waiting list, when they don't want to do that. So I guess it was on my mind. But she also says she has a good feeling about us, and it made me happy when she said "well, we should just get pregnant together, and go off and leave the department in the lurch. That would show them."

It was quite helpful actually talking to her as she and her husband have a similar age gap to us - both he, and Mr Spouse, have clearly spent years thinking they would never have children, and now with advent of Young Things the idea has been placed in front of them, but it is much easier for the two husbands to go back to thinking "actually, it probably won't happen for me" than it has been for S and me, who have spent most of our young adult life thinking that this would be in our future. It made it easier for me to see how Mr Spouse must be feeling.

I have an obsession with wanting to know what is next, and what after that, whereas Mr Spouse does not; hence the tears on Sunday. He doesn't really want to discuss what-if and what-then, whereas I want to know exactly what will happen a week on Tuesday in 2011. But he knows this more now, and we did discuss some of the options in more general terms, and he doesn't seem entirely negative about the idea of adopting younger children (if we can, which seems possible - at least, it doesn't seem to depend on our age quite as much as I thought), and even possibly adopting two together (which seems like the best way of adopting under-5s in the UK). So, although this may not be what is in store for us, it feels like there is another door we might be able to choose if door A is closed. Perhaps that is door A, the first one being door P...