Blast from the past

*Warning - spoilers!*

Things you don't even remember happening can come back and bite you on the bum.

I was reminded of this by a post by Jenn at Insert Bad Movie Title Here. I've blogged before about dramatic story lines and those that use pregnancy as dramatic device. I have of course become increasingly aware of adoption story lines but it's still the miscarriage/infant loss story lines that affect me most.

I've been participating in an online book group with a particularly unfortunate series of choices - January's was Sister, which involves prenatal diagnosis of serious illness and (we think) the murder of a pregnant woman. March was Behind the Scenes at the Museum in which several children die, including the protagonist's twin, and there is an additional plot line of "just don't tell the children, they'll forget". April had this plotline too, and a very traumatic birth plus an infertile/recurrent miscarrying bitter twisted stepmother (of course, only infertile women are bitter and twisted, and they all are bitter and twisted), in The Hand that First Held Mine.

Mr Spouse keeps asking me why I read or watch this stuff. I actually don't know why - perhaps once I've started I feel obligated to finish (though I used to read some of the child-abuse-lit e.g. A Child Called It, but I no longer read that nor would feel obligated to finish a book with that theme. People have been raving about Room but there's no way I'm touching that).

Perhaps I like a good cry. Perhaps I like a good rant - at the moment, that's what I get from a lot of the adoption story lines. The US ones are full of legal impossibilities or poor legal practice. The UK ones are full of people who decide one day to adopt and the next are going to approval panel and the following day have a gorgeous, well-behaved toddler ("but she's not my own flesh and blood!") in the house.

Anyway, before all this nastiness happened, there was Only Fools and Horses. Then the creator of the show did a bunch of other stuff, some more dodgy than others, (and some of it overlapped and was my teenage viewing) and then he died recently and there was a retrospective - and it slapped me in the face with the miscarriage of two of the characters. Clearly it meant absolutely nothing to me at the time so I had blanked it.

I even find this in some children's books I'm re-reading - there is a story line involving children being sent away, or children dying and no-one talking about it ever again (The Dark is Rising), and how did I not remember that?

I guess you just can never be the same again.

One of those odd thoughts that strikes you

We (as in, my imaginary friends inside the computer and I) have been discussing a very important point of the Royal Wedding* - how soon there will be a Royal Baby. Of course the mutterati are muttering that she'll be starting soon, perhaps she's already pregnant, and perhaps she got checked out already too? My point was that since 1/3 of infertility is male factor, that won't help, but perhaps Wills has already been to make a quick deposit to be checked? And of course with 1/3 unexplained, everything could come back fine and they could still have problems.

But my mind then runs on (of course) to what if Wills is shooting blanks - how does the Royal Succession deal with donor insemination? I'm assuming donor eggs are fine since who cares where the mother's side comes from (well, perhaps if the donor was Catholic??!) but would he have to turn to Harry for a donation? And if Harry obliged, what would happen if Harry already had a child? Or if Wills & Kate got lucky later on and had a child without help, what would that mean?

All important issues I'm sure you understand.

*Don't worry, I'm not watching it. I've got the day off but I'm about to go into town to buy some last minute items for Brownie Camp which starts this afternoon!

No news...

...in this case is definitely not good news. But it does save us from making a decision, and we have slightly clarified the boundaries (even though we don't really know where they are ourselves) with NLA, too.

Instead I'll show you the finished quilt I was talking about a while back:


(Isn't it nice how photos make things look so much more professional?!)

First reserve

So, after a nailbiting couple of days, our profile was shown, but we hadn't seen the additional information. We were not first choice but it has all been so rushed, the couple that were picked had also not had the full picture, so they are holding us second in case there is a dealbreaker for the other couple.

It is hard though - it's a really important decision, but not much time to decide - and there are some aspects Mr Spouse in particular is quite uncomfortable with. He's wondering if these are inevitable (I think we may have some prejudices about why parents place children for adoption - but I also think that we may just be seeing one particular cross-section at the moment).

Anyway I'm not quite sure what we'd do if the first couple say no, but we are talking it over. I feel if it doesn't work out either way, there are enough situations we shouldn't have to wait tooooo long.

Which brings me to my second point. Panic.

The baby in this situation is due in 6 weeks. It occurs to me that, for the next 18 months or longer, we need to be ready to fly - and be away for a month or longer - at this notice or considerably less. I can see work taking major advantage of me over this and trying to persuade me to keep in email touch/answer questions while I'm out on leave. And "work" is not just my colleagues in the building, but also multiple collaborators worldwide, many of whom have gone back to work a month after giving birth - so lots of emotional blackmail and likely some projects that will just collapse.

But you'll laugh if I say the most worry is taking place over how to hand over my Brownie unit. It's my project, I started it and I'm the public face and the one the girls are expecting to go on holiday with!

(Sorry for the slight case of leaving-you-hanging, we are still in this situation but I started writing on Thursday, only for the dog to eat my homework)

Possibly maybe

We got another call - this time a situation (a couple) we feel happy with. We are just waiting on some further information but our profile may be shown to them tomorrow.

I kind of thought that Nice Little Agency wouldn't call us every time they were thinking of showing our profile - but perhaps they are going to - I'm going to spend the next year or so on tenterhooks if we don't get picked quickly!

Another bite

We got another email asking if our profile could be shown to an expectant couple. We said no, again! Are we mad?
If you remember, we have to use Official Hague Person as well as Nice Little Agency - we've paid a deposit with both, and we've only been "officially waiting" for 6 weeks now. OHP asked us originally if we just wanted to use them, and network ourselves. They have contacts in a variety of agencies and it was a family who are going through one of these agencies.

We reckoned however that we have not given NLA enough of a chance to search for us. We assume (I think I said this already) that they are also showing our profile to expectant parents that they do not ask us about (and the reason OHP asked us was, we think, because it's another agency rather than a parent they have direct contact with).

We did in this case, as in the other, get to see the (anonymised - though not very efficiently, ahem) profile of the expectant parents. We won't share the details either here or with our social worker, but I think we might give her a small taster of the kind of situation, and also let her know that we are having this type of enquiry - I'm not sure she'll really like it from the point of view of the whole intercountry procedure, but the way I see it, we have to have official matches notified through OHP and through our UK agency, but this is not an official match.

The way I see it, if it's a toss up between showing us some of the information unofficially, so we can say yes, no, or more information please - and showing our profile to some scared and vulnerable expectant parents, having them say yes please we like Dr and Mr Spouse, and then having us say no thanks - take the first option every time. Don't put scared and vulnerable people through indecision. It feels weird though that we are not the most scared and vulnerable people in this situation.

Anyway there were also quite a few factors that are a bit difficult to decide about - in fact, individually they would probably be just fine, it's that there were so many of them - plus some other factors that we had further questions about - so, as with our previous nibble, it is good to clarify what we'd want more information on, and good to know we are marketable.

Stunned

We had a call last night asking if Nice Little Agency could show our profile to an expectant couple.

We said no. I'm going to start being a little more circumspect than I normally am, though if you are a regular reader/commenter I'm happy to share more by email. But basically there was a risk and a financial element and the risk was one we had not had a chance to consider, and the agency thought our reasons for saying no made sense.

I don't think they will now mark us down as hard to please and indecisive but sod's law of course dictates there will be no other matches in the next year.

Why do I bother?

As of today, we are officially "parents in waiting". Of course this does not mean the paperwork has stopped, as several things need renewing, but our ducks are enough in a row that NLA is going to start showing our profile.

My mother, on the other hand... I've been trying to keep her updated and in fact have just sent an email to say exactly that. She has a fairly big birthday coming up early next year and wants to do something exciting, so she was trying to make some suggestions and maybe even book something. I said that we could not really commit as we have about a 50% chance of a match in the next year. "What do you mean, a match?" was her reply. I have left her to think about why that was a silly answer.

Well that wasn't awkward...

I had a visitor at work yesterday and was taking her out to lunch, with another colleague, in my car. We had just been talking about my visitor's kids (she's a good friend, and she also works with kids). My colleague said "oh, your car is tidy, for someone with children"!!

Both I and my visitor experienced a slight disconnect - we first thought he was meaning the car was hers, but he knew she hadn't driven up. And his surprise when I replied "but I haven't got children" made it plain he didn't mean that. So we were left with no clue as to why he thought I did.

But is it legal?

NLA says that all they need from us now to start showing our profile is a) some money (of course) and b) the actual profile. Both should be with them by the end of the week. They are pretty good at communicating with us directly, not so good at remembering to cc in OHP. Since we know OHP is the one that really has to decide if our paperwork is in order, they are the ones who really need to give the go-ahead. But it's nice to know we're nearly there.

On the communicating to us but forgetting OHP, the way it works with overseas adoption in the UK is that we are only supposed to hear about a match through our agency (and they hear from OHP and the UK government department). This is supposed to make it all legal and mean all matches meet our criteria and everything is above board. But I just know NLA is going to forget this and tell us first. Well, it's not my job to tell them the law.

Of COURSE

the paperwork isn't complete. Why would it be complete?

Still do to: resend some profiles to NLA (they didn't arrive - plan is to get them printed locally rather than ship them) and a small pair of agreements for them (which we knew weren't there but hadn't got round to). Renew for OHP (head-desk-repeat) our criminal record checks and probably our medical reports. And (head-desk-multiple times because this one they could have told us without seeing the dates on the paperwork because they have seen UK home studies before, get our referees to write exactly the same thing they wrote on our referee forms only in a referee letter.

My head hurts now.

Finally...

Our UK paperwork is on its way across the Atlantic.
We sent some copies of our profile to Official Hague Person and Nice Little Agency. OHP confirmed receipt but I had to remind NLA today they hadn't let us know it had arrived.

We got an email asking to schedule our annual review, from our UK social worker. We are planning a short jaunt that week (taking advantage of being able to take holidays out of school term time, though I suppose that will go on for a few years yet), but although it is definitely a few months away, it just brings home that we've been waiting nearly a year and aren't even "live" yet. We also probably need to renew (or at least get another stamp on) medicals etc.

Sigh.

I have a proposal

Rather than ask for, or hope for, an apology every time someone makes a crass comment, I think I'll start charging. Say, £5 a time, should pay for a holiday in "you know you'll just get pregnant now you're adopting" and possibly even the whole adoption process in "ooh just take my kids, please, no, take them".

Making history

I surely must be the only person in the world who picked up their very first prescription of the contraceptive pill (progesterone only, to see if it suits me before trying the implant), and varifocals, on the same day.

I should hasten to add that I only need the close work section of the glasses when I am wearing the distance glasses, which were recently upgraded to enable me to actually see the leaves on the trees - I don't need them with my contact lenses in, which is what I wear most of the time, and I don't need them without my glasses on. I'm not that bad!

In other news, it turns out TMI friend has quite short cycles (I know you don't want to know that but I don't either, so you're just going to have to read this with your eyes closed) which slightly explains why we get the I that is TM every five minutes. I will stop posting about her. Until I get really annoyed again. I should hide her, but it's like a car crash - you can't stop looking.

And another woe is me

I feel I have lost my home in the foro/blogo/yahoo-sphere. I am it is true heavily reliant on this form of social networking to make me believe I still exist.

I am no longer trying to get pregnant, and no longer getting pregnant though infrequently, and no longer going through the monthly cycle of disappointment, or the annual cycle of short or slightly longer pregnancies followed by miscarriages.

I'm also no longer in the preparation or pre-approval, home study stage of adoption - which takes quite a while in the UK, and which is worth chatting about. And I can't get advice from other UK approved adopters since the matching process is so different. Perhaps if we had a match, I could ask about some of the issues other approved adopters ask about (drugs, genetic conditions, that kind of thing) but to be honest, I trust my own research more than anyone else's.

Yet we're not quite in the waiting stage, when I could be in more or less the same position as other waiting US domestic adopters, except, anywhere I don't have quite enough anonymity, I wouldn't want to reveal that we aren't quite in the same position. And still, such things as asking for advice or discussing agencies would require me to disclose more about our position than I'm comfortable with. In fact, since our paperwork still hasn't reached Official Hague Person, we aren't even in the same position as people we should be in the same position as. Also, we can't attend groups such as waiting adopters' support groups. So that feels a little lonely too.

We did print out our final version of our profile for Nice Little Agency and it is ready to mail; we think perhaps after Christmas to avoid getting trapped with all the cards and parcels in the snow. If you saw that post, you'll know our profile includes a lovely shot of us sitting in the park in the snow. A lovely fiction, I thought at the time, since we live in a fairly warm and rainy part of England, by the coast.

But lo! and it shall snow buckets, and more buckets, and not quite as many buckets here as in Scotland, which is a good thing, and it shall be veritably pretty for Christmas.

A conundrum

I started writing this for some practical advice but it's turning in to more of a "woe is me", but in any case, if you do have any practical advice, please do share.

We decided we'd have a small New Year's event, really just 6 or 8 people including us, our spacious abode has room for about 5 or 6 to stay over, and we invited some people from out of town plus about 8 or 10 couples locally including a few with kids - we can't put up all the families with kids but we're very happy for any of them to crash out on our numerous spare beds if they are happy to bring them.



One couple who are really close friends said yes initially and because of that we invited most of the rest (including some that know the original couple quite well) and one other friend who's on her own said yes. Then the original couple changed their plans.



Now I've had to remind absolutely everyone about twice to actually respond and they are all saying no except this original single friend.


And I'm feeling really down about this because I just hate it when people know they are busy and it's a big-ish event but they don't bother telling you. So now I'm feeling really awful, as if these people think "oh, how can they possibly think we'd want to go to them for New Year's Eve? they must be joking, we'd never go to them in a million years, they must realise that, so there's no point in replying because it must be obvious we have better plans already."

The alternatives are of course that they got the invitation and thought "well, maybe, if nothing better comes up, let's hold on and see." Or that they thought "let's ask around mutual friends, oh, they aren't going, no, we won't bother either."

And I'm particularly irritated with the late response from one family who I am pretty sure we invited in November, who are quite numerous so have prevented us from asking other out-of-town guests until they refused.

One couple still say they are thinking about it (the husband hasn't been well I think) and two further couples haven't replied. If all of those came, it would be a good mix, and if just one of the couples came, I think it would be worth holding the party. I can think of a couple of work colleagues who would mix well in a crowd but I wouldn't ask them if it was a small party. And the colleagues in question have ignored or refused previous invitations from me, so are either very busy or also hate me.

If just one of the couples who haven't replied did end up coming, it would be fine (there would be five of us, enough for dinner and a few low-key games). I am not quite sure about one of the pairs, who are a bit of an unknown quantity, but either of the other two would mix well with our single guest. But I really don't know what to do if no-one replies or everyone else refuses. I now feel I'm letting down the single friend as well. She's not a huge party person and I know she wouldn't expect a giant event, she is aware it will be a select few, but is it worth bothering if it's just her and us??

Oh and in other news - the TMI F*eB*k friend now has taken to posting every two weeks, this time to say "not much chance of my longed-for Christmas present". Do we assume she's just experienced a chill in the bedroom department or is this code for "there's something more seriously wrong but for once I don't want to tell you all about it"?

There are a couple of mutual friends who I know have been through much longer struggles to have a family who are trying to encourage her (and very restrained too, I'd bop her on the head) but one at least has some very weird spiritual ideas so I'm sitting on my hands not emailing her to say "get a grip, no you are not going to get pregnant within 6 months and likewise saying this airy fairy prayer is not going to get you pregnant either, come back to me and I'll hold your hand when you have some idea of reality".

Just had to share...

The first is probably NSFW, but is a hilarious offshoot of those Awkward Family Photos:

Awkward Pregnancy Photos

The second is just perfect, thoughtful as well as funny. Though it could do with more paperwork in the pictures:

Metaphorical Pregnancy Photos

Don't faint...

Another post.

I am undergoing one of my periodic "I hate my job" moments. I like the subject matter, but hate the medium. It wouldn't be much better elsewhere (and anywhere better in quality terms wouldn't have me, and would be more stressful). I have always thought that I might do something different for the last 10 years of my working life - coincidentally this is what Mr Spouse is doing now, retraining with about 10 years of work left to go.

Originally, probably when I thought I would not get married or have children of my own, I considered moving into school teaching, probably with cute primary school children. I am pretty sure that would drive me bananas, now (not least because of the administration involved). I have no idea what else I would do, but it is an appealing prospect. I am pretty sure I wouldn't go into journalism full time, but you never know. Mr Spouse pointed out that anything I did that which involved leaving work, at work, would also involve getting to work on time, every day. That knocks that one out of the window, then.

I never thought I'd say this

but I have been to the doctor to talk about c*ontrac*ptive choices. Unlike various other doctors, she thought we were being very sensible to avoid a pregnancy at the moment, and didn't say anything fluffy bunny like "well, getting pregnant would just be a happy accident, wouldn't it?" (genuine quote from doctor).

It looks like the implant. Good for the 6-18 months or so minimum before placement and then feeling like it's time to try again, less hassle than taking a pill (she'd give me the combined pill or the mini pill but like I say, less hassle), less painful than a coil. I'm to call one of the other GPs for an appointment when I've read the leaflet.

It's like a car crash...

The F**eb**k friend, that is. She's posted that she's "excited" which, hot on the heels of the last update, let's see, which of these friends' comments is more likely to be accurate:

a) "because you can open your advent calendar tomorrow????

b) Did Aunt Flo finally go missing?

I can't stop looking!