Update

So, the only question I got in my request for suggestions (*sob*, nobody's missed me) was the very sensible "how the heck are you all" from Twangy.

We are well. We are doing very well in fact. Baby Spouse has not been back in hospital or even to the GP, though I went to say "get these bloomin' migraines sorted out STAT" and the GP suggested a stronger version of the drug that mostly works, and some stronger painkiller too ("nah, let's not bother with the lower dose, why would we" "well, I think you've got enough data points to suggest that chocolate isn't a trigger" - I do sometimes quite like my GP).  

Fingers crossed, anyway, Baby Spouse has not had a serious cold, hasn't needed his inhaler (though did I mention that when he last encountered his spacer - about a week after previously using it - he picked it up and put it over his mouth? Not sure if that's sweet, or if we're cruel, nasty parents and he's become so used to being tortured with his spacer that he got used to being tortured). And that's nearly 2 months now.  He does have a few spots on his bum. Can you have chicken pox just on your bum??

We think we've kind of sorted out childcare. We've signed up to three days a week for the next year at nursery, and we've found a childminder who will do one day regularly and we hope (though we haven't completely confirmed this) occasional extra days as we need them. However a local, well, situation means that we may ask another family if instead (just to keep things complicated!) they want to share a nanny.  I'm probably going to discuss this with Mr Spouse tonight and see if he thinks it would work for us.  

And I am still wondering about another childminder I know of, who wasn't sure if she had spaces - the advantage being that I already know her, and I have a minor cultural adoption-related niggle with the childminder that does have spaces (basically adoption is not that common in her home culture, and I heard of her through another mum I know from the same culture, whose same-culture friends have asked even odder than usual questions about adoption. But I think people who don't know much about adoption tend to ask odd questions, and I can always get it all out of the way at the start of working with her).

Nothing else to report apart from the fact that a large number of the mums of babies the same age I know are expecting another one in the same week later in the year, and the talk is getting a bit yawnworthy. I'd love to gross them out with tales of miscarriage/infertility/investigations/adoption/fostering approval/training/children's backgrounds, except really, I wouldn't love to do that at all. It's just that sometimes I feel like shocking them all when they think they have it bad.

I have not been writing

Though I bet you hadn't really noticed.

What do people want to know? What's happening now? What we're planning? What Baby Spouse is up to? Anything about the past that I haven't covered, or that's lost in the mists of time?

I have little time to blog (really, I'd rather just veg in front of the telly and knit) but I also have little motivation. Motivate me people!

Transitions

This is the theme for this week's Weekly Adoption Shout Out but, a bit like when I posted about Play, it's hard to isolate a transition in Baby Spouse's life.
Other friends - parents of adopted and birth children - talk about transitions meaning changes of school and carer, I'm guessing moving house, that sort of thing. Obviously moving to a foster carer or an adoptive family would be under this heading too.

But I see Baby Spouse transitioning multiple times a day. This afternoon he woke up from his nap and yelled something approximating to "I'M AWAKE AND THIS IS WRONG". Every day when we go to nursery he has to adjust. He had three weeks off over Easter (it would normally be two but he was in hospital before that) and he was pretty upset when he went back. I was very pleased to hear he'd been clinging to his carer for most of the day - it means he knows she's safe. He's also only just started to get excited when I get his coat out, because he's worked out it means he's going somewhere, potentially exciting (rather than being grumpy becaOther friends - parents of adopted and birth children - talk about transitions meaning changes of school and carer, I'm guessing moving house, that sort of thing. 
Sadly, although we know his nursery is great, we are looking for somewhere else. The combination of location (near my work, not near home or the station that Mr Spouse commutes from), and hours (very short) and flexibility (never able to switch days) means I've been having to turn down important work travel - even just short overnight trips or long days - as only I can practically drop him off in the mornings.
Baby Spouse would have to change keyworkers at the end of the year anyway, but the nursery is lovely otherwise, so I am a bit sad to be thinking of taking him out. However I have had a clever idea, to see if he'd cope with some days at nursery and some with a childminder. I think we'd prefer to use a childminder for after school care if we need it in the future, anyway. So I'm crossing my fingers and going to do some ringing round later today or tomorrow. I didn't think they'd appreciate a daytime call today on the last day of the school holidays.
But in my "are they completely mad" mode commenting on adoption practice, I gather from other adopters of fairly young babies that the standard approach is to have a fairly short period of introductions (where adopters meet children first in their foster carers' home and then transitioning to their own home). I also know that adopters have fought - usually unsuccessfully - to have informal meetings before introductions, even where they are already parents of a biological sibling of a new child. Answer this question with your sensible hat on: who is a newly adopted baby going to feel safe with? Someone they've known for a couple of months and have seen at least weekly, and who has been caring for them daily for weeks? Or someone they met last week and who more or less immediately leapt into the parent role?

Last day

When I went back to work I started at 2 days a week and had some Wednesdays off to make up for some work days while I was on adoption leave. I had a few more before Easter and thought that was it, but then the last one ended up with Baby Spouse in hospital which happily comes under a different heading to actual holiday.
So I have a final day off tomorrow. It feels odd - like I'm really, properly going back to work, even though I'm still part time, and I started back in November. No more mummy and baby skiving off.

File under "mildly sceptical" - part 1

This isn't normally the kind of post I put here, it's not massively relevant to our family, and actually, I should be working, but for some reason I'm feeling a little fidgety and also mildly irritated by some things. I am debating whether to move this to my other blog (where I don't talk much about our family, but what the hey, everyone I know in real life knows we are adopters, so it's not a big secret).

So.

I've been having some Twitter conversations with psychologists who don't have anything to do with adoption, but who are getting increasingly irritated with scientists and clinicians publishing papers saying "this therapy is brilliant!" when it isn't. And I also follow a lot of quack-watch type people (Ben Goldacre etc.), and frankly, the state of "therapeutic" offerings for children who have had dreadful early life experiences is way, way below the standard offered by the slightly self-promoting scientists and clinicians. It seems in some cases to be nearer the homeopathy, cranial osteopathy, and pseudo-qualified nutritionists of this world that are the subject of quack watch types.


Let me say at this point that I know I am going to get comments by people saying "but but but we've tried A B or C and it was FABULOUS and our lives have been TURNED AROUND and this person is a God!".

Fine. You can believe that. But if something, on average, has no effect - then that means half the group gets better, half gets worse.  What if you ended up in the group that got worse? Would you be happy you spent your money on it?

And if on average children on a treatment get better (but only compared to themselves at the beginning, or only compared to children who weren't getting any treatment) then it could easily be because they are growing older (children learn things and become better behaved, mainly, as they get older) or because they've had some special attention.  This is usually cheaper than therapy.


So... I thought I'd see what evidence there was for a couple of the really popular training and therapy centres that are talked about a lot by adoptive parents: the Child Mental Health Centre (Margot Sunderland's place) and Family Futures (which is a voluntary adoption agency,and I believe in that capacity has great inspection reports, I'm not sure that its training side gets inspected).

The Child Mental Health Centre says one of its aims is:

Dissemination of Research

To promote positive social change through disseminating the latest research in child, parent and family mental health

To make available to parents, teachers, child-care professionals, providers and custodians of services, politicians and the lay-public at large, a comprehensive up-to-date knowledge base in child and family well-being

To fund an effective dissemination of psychologically and neurobiologically based research. Organisational isolation can be costly: ...wasting time slowly re-discovering what is already known (Baron Peter Slade, 2000)

Family Futures says:

Our therapeutic interventions draw upon and are informed by the work of Dan Hughes, Theraplay, Bruce Perry, Bessel Van der kolk, Babette Rothchild and Dr A. Jean Ayres and many others.

I'm still looking for a list of research that the Child Mental Health Centre is disseminating, So I'll start with Family Futures. Let's take those in turn and see what evidence there is that these theories and therapies work.

Dan Hughes: I found this paper by him about his therapy and its basis. It doesn't present any evidence for its evaluation, and I am not completely sure (because it's not my area of specialisation) that his therapy described there is the same as Dynamic Developmental Psychotherapy, but DDP is compared in a few studies to treatment-as-usual, and it seems to come out well. The studies aren't large, but then fully diagnosed Reactive Attachment Disorder isn't common.  The studies don't tell us anything about DDP in children who haven't got RAD. This review suggests that the statistics in this study are pretty rubbish, and worries about some of the ethics of it.

Family Futures now offer a training course that includes DDP, which they call "Neuro-Physiological Psychotherapy". I'm not sure what makes it neurophysiological, as neurophysiologists are generally medical doctors who have a speciality in a branch of neurology, or lab scientists who work with lab animals. I'm also not quite sure whether the hyphen makes a difference.
The "Recommend to a Friend test": I might recommend this to a friend whose child had a diagnosis of RAD. But probably not. I'm not sure if enough is known about it to know if it would be harmful or helpful, or neither, to a child who didn't have such a diagnosis.

Theraplay: Chapter 5 in this book talks about the evaluation of Theraplay. The studies randomised children to either treatment or waiting list controls (which aren't necessarily the best control - partly because just giving children attention rather than no treatment can improve outcomes). A lot of the children in this study had some developmental disability, which is typical of children who also have the kind of behaviour problems Theraplay is often recommended for. The chapter says that the children who had therapy improved more than the children who were on the waiting list, though I can't seem to find (perhaps I'm not looking hard enough) any graphs or figures that directly compare these two groups, only graphs showing children's behavioural problems before and after Theraplay. A review I found here says there aren't any other studies showing Theraplay is effective, and makes a good point about its theoretical basis in attachment theory but the fact that it kind of ignores attachment theory in how it is supposed to work.
The RtaF test: I'm not convinced I would.  The Wettig book chapter is rather grandiose in how many different disorders it claims Theraplay can treat or influence, too, which puts me off considerably.

Bruce Perry: I can find a lot of articles by Bruce Perry on the theory behind what happens to children if they are neglected or abused.  Certainly (if they are validated) it can be helpful to understand what's going on when you have a child that's difficult to parent. He does talk a little about therapy, but doesn't recommend or describe any particular type, saying instead 

the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) allows identification of the key systems and areas in the brain which have been impacted by adverse developmental experiences and helps target the selection and sequence of therapeutic, enrichment, and educational activities.

It's beyond the scope of this post (read: I should be doing something else) to evaluate ALL of his ideas about what affects what when development is disrupted. He does have a tendency to say "brain" when he means "behaviour" or "cognitive development". For example he talks about "

NMT Functional Status and Brain ‘‘Mapping’ [...] An interdisciplinary staffing is typically the method for this functional review. This process helps in the development of a working functional brain map for the individual [see Figure 2, which is a rather odd pyramid showing the names of brain areas shaded in dark or light]. This visual representation gives a quick impression of developmental status in various domains of functioning: A 10-year-old child, for example, may have the speech and language capability of an 8-year-old, the social skills of a 5-year-old, and the self-regulation skills of a 2-year old. 

(In other words, they will do some behavioural and cognitive testing, make assumptions about which brain area is responsible in children, and tell parents they are making a brain map. My quack detectors are twitching. We know very little about how normal brain-behaviour links are mapped,and even less about how they develop in children who have difficulties. Many very clever and famous people have said this, lots of times). He is careful not to recommend any specific types of therapy but he also says:

the sequence in which these are addressed is important. The more the therapeutic process can replicate the normal sequential process of development, the more effective the are (see Perry, 2006). Simply stated, the idea is to start with the lowest (in the brain) undeveloped=abnormally functioning set of problems and move sequentially up the brain as improvements are seen.

Erm... well, I'm a developmental neuropsychologist, and I've never, ever heard of this principle. As he's quoting himself, do you think possibly he might be the only person who thinks this? 
OK, it's possible that he's right, and everyone else is wrong - 64 other articles have cited this article. The fact that I can't find any neuropsychologists who have cited it might tell you something.
The RtaF test: Go and do a university developmental psychology course, preferably also a university neuropsychology course, if you want to know how the brain develops.  The Open University is very good. 

If you have a child who's suffered trauma, there is an evaluated treatment for this - which is again mentioned by the Allen review article - Trauma-Directed CBT. I can't see either of the centres I'm looking at recommending this or training people on it.

Right - I'm supposed to be doing something else (oops). I will be back another time...

Play

At Baby Spouse's age, everything he does is play, apart from eating, sleeping, and filling his nappy, and I'm not too sure about those either. Play is how we can tell what he can do, how he fills his days (well, apart from the sleeping bit, which he's still very good at, and which we are very grateful for, but even then he wakes up and chats to himself), how he interacts with us, and in a well-used cliche, how he learns about the world too.

Most of this post will have nothing to do with adoption, and the parts that do, I hope don't sound too patronising.

We do have a few minor developmental concerns about Baby Spouse but to be honest, most of them are not genuine - he's meeting all his milestones, in the well worn phrase, and is doing just as well as many other children we know, though of course we'd like him to be doing better. There are a few children who are younger and doing things he can't, but with my professional hat on, I know that's OK.  

We know from the way he plays that he doesn't have several major developmental concerns. He can tell what we are thinking - and he tries to manipulate that - he will offer you a toy, hold on to it when you try to take it, and laugh. He can tease you, in other words. He will anticipate what you are going to do by lifting his arms to be picked up, by smiling before one of us comes into the room. He does not have autistic tendencies to any major degree.

He's appropriately active for his age, and we knew almost from birth that he didn't have major developmental delay, he wasn't floppy, he tried to move, he learned to smile on schedule; he responds to us talking, and has done all along (though he was quite placid in the face of loud noises, which we think we know a reason for, but we weren't worried as he'd passed his newborn hearing test).

I've noticed a couple of tendencies in other parents which I find a little interesting. One is that, as I mainly know parents of first (and at this stage only!) children, a lot of them are really eager to play with their children in ways that I (and they, really) know they aren't ready for.  

Most babies aren't that interested in cuddly toys till around a year old (maybe a bit younger), and then it seems to click - that's been true of Baby Spouse - but a lot of parents of newborns seem very keen to introduce a lovey very early which, actually, could be unsafe if it's a large toy they could get their face stuck in.  A lot of my friends took their babies to the park at a point when they found the swings and slides a bit scary (so did we - bit of a mistake!).  We all read books to them from very young, which is not wrong, but we have tended to buy books that are advertised for babies - flaps, touchy feely, animal pictures etc. - which they don't really appreciate until again nearer 5-6 months when they can handle/feel things, or a bit older when they can appreciate pictures. This is a very natural tendency as you see parents of older toddlers doing all these things and you want it for yourself and your baby. Especially if you have only a few months' maternity leave, you want to make the most of it and do lots of fun stuff.

The other tendency I've noticed, which is related to play but to new adoptive parents can seem more like care, or behaviour, or battles, is that a lot of new adoptive parents of toddlers have had very little training or experience of what babies and toddlers can and should do.  Some of what might be better seen as exploration or trying things out (which I'd include under play) can be seen as poor behaviour, a result of neglect, or of being slightly ignored and/or indulged by foster carers. 

A lot of this seems to be around eating - such as putting too much in the mouth, or being incredibly messy, flinging food.  Children can obviously revert to slightly younger behaviour, so if they'd fed themselves or grown out of playing with food quite so obviously in foster care, they may revert to this on placement.  But it's a stage all children go through and I feel that adopters should learn more about how most children behave and play and should be able to work out what's something they should worry about, and what is perhaps a bit immature but not worrying.  

For example, a poster was worried that her 19 month old threw bowls of food on the floor. Another poster said perhaps the child was seeking her attention by doing this. Now, we don't have a 19 month old yet, and I'm crossing my fingers ours will have stopped doing that by then - but we do have a nearly 15 month old and there's no way I let him have the whole bowl of food, ever. He can have a spoon or fork, and some days he uses them appropriately, some days he plays with them. That's how he learns. And yes, he looks at you to see if you noticed, but he does that with everything else he flings on the floor, and more or less every game he plays too. For his age, this is appropriate - food is a game - and it's not inappropriate for a slightly older child who's been unsettled, either.

The same is true of things like asking strange/inappropriate questions, how much children actually understand and remember (and what they are very unlikely to remember so are probably reconstructing). These are all things that come up when children are playing, and that the large number of people adopting under-3s get absolutely no training whatsoever on. It's completely mad. 

Mildly disappointing

So... 600 pages of paperwork is a lot. Very heavy.

Some interesting things emerged. For example, how much social workers plagiarise from the paperwork they ask you for. Well, plagiarised isn't exactly the right word. Some of it they tell you will be included. Some of it they paraphrase.

Some we had forgotten - particularly around the thorny subject of birth dad.  We had discussed getting OHP to try and contact him on his last known number/address and find out if he was willing to try and complete the medical information again, and see if he's open to contact.  Mr Spouse is not keen on that and has not been made more keen by any new information. 

Looking back at the old notes from our old social worker has, I think, changed my mind on the contact.  Although the social worker did mention photos and letters to him, we now know that he has, all along, had a very good way to get in touch with the agency and, indeed, us should we have wished. And he hasn't used it. I guess we were thinking he only had expired cell phone numbers for a social worker who doesn't do that job any more, and for Nella, but he doesn't. He could have asked for contact, and he hasn't.

My worry if OHP try to contact him is that the details will be out of date and it will be pointless. But Mr Spouse's worry is rather the opposite - that he will behave aggressively to us or Nella, as he did when contacted by the social worker before.  I'm not sure that is a huge risk if he was only contacted by a third party to ask to fill in a form that he had already said he would do. But now it seems he didn't say he'd do it, and he could easily have been in touch with the agency, but wasn't.

I haven't totally changed my mind about hoping we'll get medical information, but the notes also seem to say that he did not even say he would fill this form in, but then lost it. And reading between the lines, it has jogged my memory that the social worker was not completely convinced this was the only possible birth father. So, if we did get the information, it could be worse than useless.

So, and apologies for rambling, but where this leaves us is, I suppose, in kind of the same position as a parent whose child's other biological parent has walked out. I could, if I was feeling unhelpful, ask one of OHP's social workers to pursue the medical information unilaterally. But I think it's better that we are on the same page.

Gosh

You may remember from last year that Nice Little Agency had some serious problems last year. Some fairly important pieces of paper got lost.

We got a very random phone call tonight (from Official Hague Person's office) to say that some lost adoption paperwork has been found. They are sending it to us.

All 600 pages of it.

There are definitely some things we want, and apparently there IS some birth father information.

We also suspect there may be some things we probably shouldn't see. We won't tell if you won't.

Moving forward

Thankfully Baby Spouse was allowed home from hospital yesterday - he was checked off as fine about midday but Mr Spouse had to hang around for hours waiting for his medication.  He's having another epic nap at the moment, though he's intermittently been trying to crawl at sprint speed, and being very wimpy and tired, today.

We adore his nursery, which is at my workplace, but we are slightly wondering if we shouldn't investigate other childcare options. At his current nursery he moves rooms - and hence carers - once a year at the moment, so he can't have the same carer indefinitely anyway.  One of the immediate reasons we are thinking about this is the illness issue.  Everyone says babies in nurseries get sicker, and if he has a propensity to being seriously ill when other babies would just get snotty, we are wondering if a smaller setting (childminders here would have maybe 3-5 children, and if they had a higher number most would be older) wouldn't help with this.

The other issue is the location of the nursery - there is another one very near our house and hence near the station Mr Spouse commutes from - currently he can't do a full day's work and pick up Baby Spouse but a different arrangement would mean he could pick up sometimes. I know he misses doing this, too.

As always there's an added adoption layer to this. It's not a huge layer, I have to say, as we did tell his existing nursery that he was adopted but they have not asked any questions (certainly not the concentrated level of questioning we got in the hospital!). We know that in any of these places he'd be with children who would be in his class at primary school, so it's something that will be permanently out there. And although the nursery staff seem to be very sensitive we can't guarantee that everyone will be like that.  Again, the hospital staff seem to be rather surprised to the point of nosiness!

It's hard to get the balance right.  We have a few minor concerns about his development, which, especially with my professional hat on, I know are OK, but it's hard to get some people to take them seriously without disclosing probably more than we want to unless we have to. To them he is a normal, happy boy with a past that can be forgotten. But others see the situation as so unusual and shocking that they want to know all about it. And we don't want that either.

Intermission

Briefly - I've been in hospital with Baby Spouse since Monday (it's now Wednesday night) - I am very grateful that we live 15 minutes walk from the hospital.  Mr Spouse came in Monday night to relieve me while I got stuff, and yesterday while I napped because I hadn't slept on Monday night because Baby Spouse's oxygen levels tanked and the nurses were trying everything to get them back up.

He has a chest infection and either the antibiotics, or the steroids, or the inhaler/nebuliser, or all of those, have helped. He had to have more oxygen last night but I slept, and so did he, and tonight Mr Spouse gets to sleep on the hospital bed. He should be home tomorrow.

We are anxious, but he is doing a lot better, and I think we're more shocked that we weren't even going to take him in, and the hospital thought he would be OK at home but kept him in to be on the safe side.

I've explained to what seems like 25 million people about his adoption, what age he was when placed, to about half of them where he came from, and to one doctor (who did ask "do you mind") why we chose to adopt from the US not the UK. I explained that the same kinds of children need adopting in both countries, but the system allows for birth parents to choose not to allow their child to go into foster care, but can have a say in who adopts their child, in the US. I did not say (as I was not asked, but I did say this to a friend) that they do it that way "because it's sensible to do it that way". I am very aware that there are ethical issues around this, and that the US foster care system is probably at least as broken as the UK system, but something needs to change for babies in the UK.

This whole serious illness is a big thing to get your head round, though, and it's left me at least thinking about other parts of his/our lives (especially childcare).  I'll try and keep you posted.

Update: here. 

Grownups

So, like Christmas, my birthday came and went, and was mainly slightly nicer than I thought it was going to be, and generally less scary.

Mr Spouse and I had a little chat about where we might go for adoption no 2.  He is not keen at all to adopt from the US again, I said it wasn't my first choice but I wouldn't rule it out.  He however sounds like he'd be able to cope with the idea of concurrent adoption, which they are introducing in quite a few councils across the country, including our county council.  His main concern actually seems to be that he had a lovely time being a mainly work-from-home student while I was on adoption leave with Baby Spouse, and he wouldn't get that again.  I have to say I can see his point.

If it was up to me, I'd be on the phone to them tomorrow about applying, but it is really too soon, my head says it is too soon, and I generally hear on the grapevine that about a year after an Adoption Order (the equivalent to finalization) is when they might consider you to apply again. So that would be some time in the summer.

In concurrent adoption at placement of a baby you are foster carers and then if (which is always more likely than not, based on the children chosen for this scheme) the child cannot go home the carers adopt the baby.  I know how besotted Mr Spouse was with Baby Spouse from day 1 and I was worrying he wouldn't want to think about this because of the risk that the baby might go home.  But given that he's always said he'd be interested in foster care, we applied initially for foster care (though we weren't going to foster babies), I shouldn't have been too surprised that his reaction was positive - his philosophy, he says, is that we must see ourselves as foster carers. And that's exactly the right attitude, which I will try very hard to emulate.

I will keep you all posted, but this sounds like it might be plan A.

Birthday

It's my birthday tomorrow and I feel about 10 years older than I did this time last year. Now I'm sure some of this is down to being the mother of a one year old and some of it to a gruelling day of teaching, including some material on nasty things that can happen to babies.
But in a way I think I felt younger last year than I had done for a while. We'd made it to a baby - a very lovely baby - and I was (just) under 45.
Now in a way I'm back to that ticking clock that many hear who struggle to have a family - will I be too old to get pregnant? Is it because of my age that I keep miscarrying? Will we be too old to adopt?
Oh, and I have also had a chest infection, and so has Mr Spouse, so we could probably both do with some sleep. I remember sleep...

What might have been

nh at Getting There posted about the baby she lost and how hard February is for her.
I was reminded that it is nearly Ash Wednesday, which was the day we found out we'd lost Nigelanddelia. I could work out how old he or she would be but the main thing is that it would be an age at which we'd have long ago been thinking about baby siblings.
Along the way of trying to have a family I've sometimes thought, if we had had this baby, what about that one. It's never been that real, but now we have a real baby. And thinking about not having him seems impossible, completely unthinkable.
So I suppose what I'd really like is to have both of them. But I feel guilty for thinking about not having ever had either of them.

Open Adoption Roundtable #42

This is in response to Open Adoption Roundtable no 42.

This prompt asks:
Think about a time when your child has been injured or sick (or for adoptees, when you have been injured or sick). Did adoption change or complicate that experience at all? Did you share it with others in your adoption constellation? You might write about an actual experience you have had or think about what you ideally would want to have happen.

A couple of things spring to mind here. One of them is the risk factors we know of that Baby Spouse was subject to because of Nella's choices. We will have to tell him about these eventually, but for the moment we don't share them with family and friends - and they'll be his to share in the future - if he wants to. But medical professionals need to know, especially if he's ill, and on the occasion we went to the paediatric ward with him, it was actually a relief to tell someone, and not just hint about "lifestyle and choices". I've written about that here.

The other issue we have is the complete lack of information on his birth father. We have reasonable genetic information on his maternal birth grandparents, who are of an age when they are starting to have some medical issues (though nothing too worrying), and we know they'll keep us updated, and if Nella has an issue they know about, they'll tell us too. But we know nothing about the father's side, including things we'd like to know now, such as allergies, and that's frustrating and we've even found some less clued up medical professionals who don't understand why we don't know.

Plans abound

I've noticed a few of my bloggy friends with good, new plans and this makes me happy.
Nuts in May has a new treatment plan following a fourth opinion.
nh has plans for a second adoption.
And so does missohkay!
If you don't know these fine people - change that now!

Visit redux

So, yesterday was our big visit day. We are staying about 20-30 minutes drive from where the grandparents live but we decided to split up the visits and allow Baby Spouse a nap in the afternoon, which we were very glad about.

Nella and Grandpa came in the morning - while we were on the way (late because we hadn't printed out her photos yet - oops - and because there was traffic - not really our fault) she called to check we knew where we were going but when we got there she was off getting food. Grandpa had suggested we met at his church where there are a few rooms to chat in and that was a good suggestion - it was quiet and Baby Spouse got to move around on the floor a bit, plus there was a piano and his favourite activity is banging on the piano. So he did that with Nella, and she asked us before giving him fries (we said no), and she took off he somewhat smoky coat before hugging him. 

He was happy to go to her for a hug (he is OK most of the time with strange women if we are there, but sometimes a little fussy, more often with strange men - there are a couple of male carers at nursery but he hasn't had either of them caring for him yet) but not very happy with Grandpa (who is physically rather unlike anyone he has met yet, too).  Nella said "oh I heard babies sometimes..." and I was going to chip in with "are OK with women they don't know" but she finished with "know who their natural mothers are". Mr Spouse was out of the room at that point or I would have heard a snort from him I think.  But he asked me later and I realised that he sees Nella's photo probably every couple of days so he may well have recognised her.

She also started to give us a rundown of all the drama in her life over the last while and said "oh, I hope you don't mind me telling you this" - her dad was there at this point - and I did say "that's OK but when Baby Spouse is a bit older maybe not".  She seemed distracted, kept answering her phone and saying she had to go, but she stayed till we had to leave. Grandpa also told us some information about her childhood that was interesting, but I think not information you'd share with a verbal child present, and I think he knows that, so will act as a brake on her to some extent.

Later in the afternoon we met both of them plus Grandma and Montana at an Applebees.  Nella was late, and again kept checking her phone, calling people, and saying she had to go, but she was waiting for a ride and as it turned out the ride arrived just after we got in our car, having eaten our meal and chatted and said goodbye to the others in a more relaxed way. Montana was just really sweet with him, and Grandma and Grandpa besotted, but in a nice way - last year they seemed nervous of us - we have not been in touch that much but enough that I think they now feel OK about us.

We also found out information about Big Brother that we hadn't known - Grandma says that he has had some developmental problems, and had some severe breathing problems at birth, and that they were happy to see Baby Spouse is doing a lot better. I may have to see if Big Brother's mother will share something of this. Likewise, when no-one else was there, Grandpa told us a bit more about the problems Montana has been having, which he puts down to Nella's care for her when she was small.

We have decided that the jail business will not be public knowledge to our UK friends and family (and I know a few people I know IRL read this, but I also know they are discreet).  The story will be that Nella does have a complicated and dramatic life but she managed to show up for a short visit.  We will need to warn Baby Spouse when he is older that she may not show up. I am thinking he will get the message she is pleasant, but unreliable and does not concentrate on him, from her behaviour during visits, fairly quickly unfortunately.

And why not

Well, 2012 was quite a year, so why not jump on the bandwagon and publish a Best Of monthly list of posts?

In January, of course, we got the call that Baby Spouse had been born early.

In February we got his visa, and finally I got to go home with him. I can't remember if I said later but the friend with the very premature baby went on to be my best mummy pal but has now moved to the other side of the world. Boo!

In March we had a very minimalist Mothering Sunday. In April, very sadly, my mother in law became very ill and later that month she died.

In May, I found myself telling a little girl I know to ask her parents about the facts of life. Incidentally, my niece of about the same age recently told us both "oh, of course, he can't drink milk from you because you weren't pregnant" (I did point out to her that she didn't drink milk from her mother at that age either) and also "OH LOOK Baby Spouse is doing something in his nappy". Erm yes we know.

I didn't blog much in June but I did write about contact/visits/whatever you call them.

In July (as pretty much ever month) Baby Spouse decided to temporarily allay my fears about him being slightly delayed (he'll need to do it again some time I suspect).

In August he met a lot of new people at a very muddy festival.

In September some surprising people said some awkward things. Incidentally I related the beautician incident to another mummy friend who was also pretty ghasted.

In October I hadn't gone back to work yet but I moaned about it, and Baby Spouse visited and started nursery.

In November I rather feebly took part in IComLeaveWe, but also we had an emergency visit to the paediatrics ward.

And finally if you've read this far, in December I was still agonising over who to tell and who not to tell, and how, about Baby Spouse's history.

However...

We are visiting Baby Spouse's home state for a couple of weeks in order to 
a) get him a new passport (not essential to do this here, but much quicker and easier - we were in and out in an hour and picked it up in 10 minutes the next day, and the agents sang him Happy Birthday!)
b) have a family holiday, so far so good on that one! And he's getting over his jetlag better than we are, too.
c) visit our friends, his foster carer etc. in Nice Little Agency-ville
and probably most importantly
d) visit birth family.

It's the latter that has thrown a spanner in the works. We got an email today from birth grandpa to say that Nella is in jail - we think at least for only a short period, and it's possible she'll be out by the time we are due to meet, but I doubt it.

So... at least this has happened now while he is too young to know he is supposed to meet her. And we can make sure he knows about this when he is older - it's a whole different scale to "didn't keep appointments with us" which has been the level of unreliability to date.

One year on

This time last year, we arrived at the airport in Baby Spouse's birth city the most tired possible after frantic packing and a really really long flight (there's a really long layover to almost anywhere here for some reason - we think if we decide to visit other family on a future trip we'll go to them first of all).

Two days after his first birthday, he's crawling faster every day - he follows you around which not just cute but actually quite nice - he was crawling around on the plane and in the passport office - and tonight he crawled into the bathroom for his bath.
He has an excellent trick where he holds up his hands to his forehead as if the world is all too much for him - if you start he does it back to you. I think it's "I am a drama queen" but Mr Spouse thinks it might be "Greetings, Earthling!".
He claps and waves (but on his own timetable, and he hasn't worked out that people not looking at you can't see you waving). He looks at me and says "Mama" but Mr S says it's just random - though tonight he said Da to Mr Spouse so perhaps he'll change his tune.  He also and says something that's either Yeh or Hiya, as well as all his other random noises - he seems to have a new one every day. He's also discovered other fun things to do with his mouth, like blow raspberries while you have a mouthful of milk or yoghurt.

Everyone asks us if he's pulling himself up (it's the new "is he crawling yet") but while he can reach stuff on the coffee table he isn't actually pulling himself up on it. He will also give you things and doesn't yet grab them back. Of course he's chewing everything (two top teeth, not quite in time for Christmas, and four on the bottom, and we bought him this book for his birthday. As Mr Spouse says, it looks like the person who wrote it actually has children.

We are very lucky - and although someone called me "Granny" yesterday, I'm trying not to care.

Snot fair

So, it's nearly our first Christmas as parents. I'm probably supposed to be getting massively excited and planning present opening and taking photos of Baby Spouse entranced by the Christmas tree.

Instead I am mainly wiping up snot and trying to put away clothes that are too small (but we have no more vacuum clothes bags and the next size are waiting for labels but it's Mr Spouse's turn to do that and HE has the baby's cold too), and also trying to bake cookies and cake (but I ran out of flour and eggs while Mr Spouse was driving home from the supermarket).

And much as I love my readership, I would rather watch trashy films than sit in front of the computer.

So I'm watching Bridesmaids, and this post is brought to you courtesy of my smartphone. Excuse typos.