Anniversary

In 1998, I spent the 4th July at the Marine Club next to one of the US embassies that was bombed the next month. We all knew who Bin Laden and Al Qaeda were. We also knew that US embassy personnel had delayed ambulances getting to the office building next to the Nairobi embassy, that had also blown up.

Ten years ago today, I was in the air, first flying to Nairobi overnight, and then at the time the planes were in the air over the East Coast of the US, I was on an internal flight. Because I'd flown overnight, I went straight to a colleague's house and had a nap. I woke up later that afternoon and everyone was listening to the BBC World Service. I could not believe what I was hearing, to the point where I thought it was a joke, or exaggerated. I did not see any pictures of the attacks until several days later, and then only stills on the web.

This weekend there has also been news of a  ferry disaster in an ocean I know very well. I have never taken that ferry but once I was on a catamaran ferry in that stretch of water and we suddenly slowed and stopped. We picked up two fishermen clinging to their outrigger boat. They had been there for at least 24 hours and were suffering from dehydration and, because the sea is cold and it is not that warm at this time of year, imminent hypothermia. Poverty kills, in unexpected ways. One of the biggest causes of death in developing countries is road accidents, from poorly maintained vehicles or poorly skilled drivers, or both

The lazy woman's blogging

Nothing much at this end - another suggestion of a match from our agency which once again was well outside our parameters (but we firmly reset the parameters and we think they understood this time).

Might as well do a meme or two (though I hate hate hate that word). This looks fairly mindless though May's H says it is hard. I will let you know when I get to the bottom.

1. Yourself: distracted

2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend [husband]: woodworking

3. Your hair: highlighted

4. Your mother/stepmother: stingy

5. Your dog: non-existent

6. Your favorite item: Bernina

7. Your dream last night: none

8. Your favorite drink: coffee

9. Your dream car: VW

10. The room you are in: office

12. Your fear: widowhood

13. What you want to be in 10 years: mum

14. Who you hung out with last night: fabric

15. What you’re not: concentrating

16. Muffin: cranberry

17: One of your wish list items: Chosen

18: Time: teatime

19. The last thing you did: writing

20. What you are wearing: chinos

21. Your favorite weather: tropical

22. Your favorite book: Wimsey

23. The last thing you ate: halloumi

24. Your life: full

25. Your mood: distracted

26. Your best friend(s): none

27. What are you thinking about right now? writing

28. Your car: A-class

29. What are you doing at the moment?: cogitating

30. Your summer: chilly

31. Your relationship status: lovely

32. What is on your TV?: nowt

33. What is the weather like?: chilly

34. When is the last time you laughed?: yesterday

OK, that wasn't tooooo hard but I had to change some of the answers.

I'm currently making this and contemplating a hat for a VIP award ceremony next month (not me that is getting the award). Mr Spouse is still on DIY leave and has assembled a glass-fronted bookcase to keep ornaments in, and away from small children, as well as making (from scratch) window-alcove cupboards, a small table for my laptop (which I really just use as a hard drive), new legs for my cutting table, and project managing the new loo under the stairs (which so far really consists of ringing round all the workmen only to find that at least one is on holiday - they start in 3 weeks which gives us that long to pack up all the stuff).

Coming out

Although there are a lot of people who know we are prospective adoptive parents, I'm not really ready to tell a whole bunch of other people, and even the ones that know, I'd rather not remind them as I'm not up for boring questions about when it will happen.

So whenever something comes up for which the true explanation is "we want it/want to know it for when we have a baby" I tend to fudge the issue. Excuses range from "it will be handy to have another loo when we have visitors" to "ooh, my nieces will like that doll".

I'm just going to leave it all as a big surprise.

Oh yes

The friend with the christening. Emailed (normally she's allergic to email) to say do we want to meet up when she's up our way. Considering how to reply. I imagine she actually did not get get birthday present, but still feel it would have been at least polite to tell us about the christening.

I don't normally do this

But do please stop by On the Edge to say congratulations. They  met their little girl  today!

(Though they are, perhaps, doomed if she doesn't like pink).

Redux

I feel there's been a lot missing, but not very much happened. Anyway:

Mother and niece (7) came to stay. Mother annoyed everyone. Niece and I went on holiday with the Brownies. All Brownies behaved themselves well and undertook many adventurous activities, fear only being displayed for the most part in the face of potato, peas, and bed-times, not in the face of Climbing Up Large Structures And Jumping Off In A Harness.

Self and Brownies and Niece arrived back home, immediately followed by mother (who does not know the alarm code, who KNOWS she does not know the alarm code, so what did she think she'd do if we weren't back yet?). Mother annoyed everyone.

Several areas of London and Manchester burnt to a crisp/smashed to pieces. Include a) high street shops near my former church (where we got married) b) residential street opposite ditto c) precinct 1/2 mile from mother-in-law's flat and d) small row of shops 100m from MIL's flat. Does not include high street shops nearer my old flat (but not much nearer - church is about 1 1/2 miles away, other shops about 1 mile) as these are heartily defended by Turkish shopkeepers with baseball bats.

Despite rioting, the flat, which was for rent, gets an offer within a week of being on the market. London housing is crazy.

Your author becomes not only published but paid for. If you have not yet seen the link on that other place, email me (as it does, not surprisingly, reveal my name).

MIL turns 91 and thankfully does not have any idea about the rioting round the corner from her house. Also has no idea who I am. She is at least polite and does not say this to my face.

Mother is arranging 70th birthday which is in January, for which she "just wants to stay home and have everyone to stay and cook for them". Even just her two children, their spouses, and my two nieces won't fit round her table. Despite being very rude about them, I do know she has kept a few friends over the years. She does not like the idea of going out anywhere or going to stay anywhere, but wants to take the same people to Paris at Easter, wondering (yet again) why we cannot commit to that yet.

Added into the mix now is that Mr Spouse has surprised no-one but himself and got a First in his degree and is moving on to do an MSc in Something Boring and Businessy which includes a fairly lengthy work placement, which again cannot be predicted, probably cannot be changed, and my mother cannot understand why it can't be cancelled, predicted, or changed.

I shouldn't be too surprised

Our friends (my best woman and her husband) who had one? two? miscarriages and two rounds of IVF plus FET (again, can't remember the numbers, but I definitely supported her through it, that goes without saying) had their baby baptised this morning. I found out through a mutual friend's FB post, who is his godmother. Now, she is currently a closer (both geographically and socially) friend than I am, though I actually knew both of them first. But I'm upset they didn't even invite us.

I have no godchildren, except for my younger niece. My niece is delightful, but my brother and sister-in-law I know had little choice in "friends or family who have actually been baptised" since sister-in-law is Catholic, they live in a Catholic country, and there was no real choice of the church to use - so the godparents had to be baptised - and they wanted one from my brother's side, which basically leaves me - and you can't really be a different aunt-and-godmother when you have a niece that you are not godmother to.

I am not bitter about this in the way that I am definitely bitter, and proud, of being childless. But clearly my friends who have lots of friends who go to church see me way down the list of potential godparents. And my friends who have almost no friends who go to church (this is how my friend C got about 5 godparent gigs) perhaps aren't bothering. But at least Mr Spouse's best man and his irritating wife* actually invited us to their son's (fancy, expensive) dedication (I think they have "sponsors" not godparents but we were happy not to be them as they are Baptist and our theology is a little different).

When we thought we would have children within, ooh, a decade of marriage, we had some ideas for godparents. Mr Spouse's best man would obviously not do, as he does not believe in infant baptism (and neither would his wife. How sad). I was assuming that my best woman would be a shoo-in**, and we had some other ideas - particularly other people who'd played a big part in our wedding. Some of those we keep up with quite a lot, others not so much, but I realise I don't have any other particularly good ideas.

Few of my family go to church (though there is one couple that we were thinking of asking anyway). Few of Mr Spouse's family are alive. We have not made that many friends who are really young enough (sounds mean, but to be pragmatic), because most people our age at church have children and don't socialise with sad childless couples. Fairly new friends are hard to predict - will they stay friends? - and most of our fairly new friends don't go to church anyway. Which is why you fall back on old friends. Or at least those you thought were old friends.

*If you can't remember that far back, they struggled to get pregnant but then announced to us that she was pregnant the minute we joined them for a ski-ing holiday, staying in the same condo, no escape. OK, avoiding the wine and hot tub might have been a clue, so they couldn't really have kept it quiet, but pre-warning would have been nice. And they are currently smug about the fact that we "have to" adopt and they don't, and full of Good Advice about how to bring up children.

**yes, that is how you spell it.

You can stop biting your fingernails

We decided not to have our profile shown. There wasn't anything specific, just a combination of things adding up to us feeling there was too much to handle. I was about 75% positive but Mr Spouse more like 50/50 I'm estimating.

One positive was that we had a nice chat with a social worker at Nice Little Agency. Our profile has been shown other times (they don't tell us about all of them if it's firmly within our criteria) but we aren't currently under consideration (I didn't think we were). They don't need any other copies of our profile just now (we get them printed over there and shipped locally). All well. Apart from our impatience of course!

Restrictive

We are currently in limbo with another situation - I am away with work (fly back this afternoon so won't be able to discuss with Mr Spouse till tomorrow afternoon) and we heard about it on Weds or Thurs so there's been a bit of angst my end, not knowing what will happen. It is a bit tricksy though I think also the expectant parents are not in a huge rush, so can wait a few days to be shown profiles - but I get the impression there are not many prospective adopters lining up to be shown either so we would not be in competition, or not with too many.

This couple already knows they are expecting a boy (ultrasound mistakes notwithstanding) and after reading May's post about names (sorry love, I can't find your post, would you like to provide a driveby link in the comments?) I realised that I have very very restrictive criteria for naming a boy (and, it happens, a girl). I am not quite sure Mr Spouse realises quite how restrictive they are. One of the names must be my father's and the other must be a family name, and it mustn't be the same name as my uncle much as I like that name, because Mr Spouse has a Welsh last name, and it is the "matching" first name. And it mustn't be the same as my cousin (because that would give the child the exact same name as my dad), and it mustn't be the same as my brother (because there are too many of those in the family). There's about 2 options left.

So instead of wondering "is this our baby?" I am now wondering "is this going to be Tarquin Worthington Spouse Jones, or is a different baby going to be Tarquin Worthington Spouse Jones?". Which is a bit of an existential question.

Answers

I'm seeking them. Several of them, the main ones at the moment seem to be "how long will we have to wait to be parents", "will anything go wrong between a match and a placement, and between placement and finalisation" and "will our child love us, will we love them, will we cope as parents, and will they have such difficulties that our life won't be the same again". Secondary to that is "is there any point in our stopping using contraceptives after a placement".

Someone should tell me to stop seeking answers on the internet. Of course I can no more do that than fly to the moon.

What is interesting (and probably partly what makes me keep looking) is the differing sets of answers you find depending on where you look. One UK adoption board, and some "adoption situations" sites (similar to adoption facilitators) seem to give the answer to the first question as "really quickly, it's magic" (with the addendum by the second group of sites of "if you have lots of money"). The other main UK board, and the main US board I read, give the answer "not for years and years and you might end up giving up or changing route". Well, at least we've already done the changing route thing.

The UK adoption message boards generally suggest that nothing will go wrong between match and finalisation unless (and it's a big unless) the social workers are truly incompetent. But the US board has lots of horror stories. In contrast, there's a lot of stiff-upper-lip, kids are resilient, even those that have come through foster care, sure we can't leave our 13 year old alone for a minute but we love him, on the US boards and blogs; the smaller of the UK boards has a lot of sunshine, roses, and toddlers with "normal toddler tantrums" but the larger UK board can be really depressing. If you are considering adoption, steer clear. Or at least try and work out that the people who can spend lots of time posting are those with school age children who have such significant needs that the adoptive parents no longer work.

On the final question, one of the UK boards is linked to fertility treatment boards. So their answer is, pray hard enough and you'll get enough fairy dust that despite your great age you will have a healthy pregnancy. Even though I still have the wobbles, as in the post of the other day, I'm no longer sure I want to be pregnant. I want to have a baby, but I don't think I want to be pregnant.

Jealous

Probably 3 or 4 years ago Overseas Adoption Colleague applied for promotion - it's a complicated process in my job, and involves masses of paperwork, usually only scrutinised once a year, and with petty bureaucrats dogging your every step. OAC was told it was "too soon" despite her stellar publication and funding record. About 2 years ago I did the same and was told something similar. I do have some funding - not as much as OAC, but more than a lot of people in my department. I have a pretty good publications record, perhaps not quite as good as OAC, but getting there. I was told it was mainly my lack of funding that was the problem.

OAC was just awarded promotion, which is very good. Very happy for her.

So was Colleague 2. Colleague 2 has a better publications record than I do but has no funding. Zero. None. Not very happy at all with that.

Also not happy with the fact that I spotted yesterday that Colleague 3 is pregnant. I thought at first she'd actually eaten some dessert (not really fair on Colleague 3, as she has as healthy appetite but is naturally small and very active). But no, she was wearing a top with those twee little tucks down the side. Dead giveaway. Of course no-one has told me this (just like Colleague 4 invited Colleagues 2, 3 and 5 through 7 to his wedding but didn't invite us...).

I wish I wasn't like this - but I was trying really hard to hold it together while driving home yesterday, and collapsed on the sofa with Mr Spouse, in tears, when I got there.

These two things feel so closely linked together. It feels like other people are being given things because they are adequate and I am not. I wish I didn't feel like this.

I think it could be the waiting

I'm feeling a bit "meh" as they say.

I've been trying to do productive but nice things - sewing, knitting, Brownies, running (did I mention I ran a 5K race in 33 minutes in a howling gale - third in my age group out of three? I'm aiming for 10K in September).

But I fear I may be veering towards obsessive - must run on Sunday and Tuesday or Thursday, must also run or do some other exercise on Tuesday or Thursday (I have recently tried Zumba, as have a couple of female neighbours near my age, so we have been egging each other on), must finish this skirt this weekend, must go to church, must read this book... and then this other one...

The weather isn't helping - typical British summer - cool, rainy, cloudy and unpredictable. I feel as if I should be relaxing and taking in the sun, and wearing all my nice summer clothes - instead I am stuck in autumn clothes which always make me feel like I should be gearing up for a new academic year.

I'm faced with another Sunday routine (it's getting bad when Sundays have routines) tomorrow - church, get a run in before lunch as there isn't really time after, then Brownies, which is a meeting I'm organising all of (usually we mix and match and either all do a bit towards each meeting, or take it in turns - but I tend to do all the admin and parent letters - so I always feel somehow responsible for that anyway).

I want to go somewhere, do something different, but I have to be back mid-afternoon - I was looking at National Trust houses for example - but one we haven't seen an hour away, doesn't open till 1pm - what use is that?

So instead, I'm doing what I keep trying to tell myself not to, i.e. tiring myself out by keeping myself up too late. I'm my own worst enemy.

Planning

We all know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men*.

Discussion on a forum today was about whether people had planned their families - the implication being that the opposite was the Oops baby.

Clearly if we ever had plans about the best time to have children they went West long ago.

But to me what others call "planned" I call "hope plus luck".

To me, if you say "I planned to get a promotion" then you are just being a bit arrogant. Maybe I'm alone, but you can try, you can do your best, you can be lucky, but to say you planned it implies others who plan - but do not get - or don't plan - are inadequate.

And I may be alone, but it always seems to me that it's similar for having children. So it always feels to me that they are saying something negative about my planning skills if they do.

I'm sure it's possible I'm being oversensitive. But there are so many implications of inadequacy in this game. Why didn't you get married earlier? Why didn't you "just" do IVF? Why did you "let" them take so long to approve you to adopt/send the paperwork overseas/find a match? Why are you doing something so unethical? Why aren't you prepared to adopt a British child?

So I could really do without another one.

*in case you've forgotten, they gang aft agley.

Open Adoption Roundtable #26

How do/would you talk with children about siblings in open adoption? How do you approach this as a (first or adoptive) parent, or how was it handled in your family if you grew up with siblings who didn't live with you? For prospective adoptive parents or first parents without other children, has this been something you've thought about how you would approach?

I have not shared many details of the situations we've been shown and I am going to be annoyingly non-specific here, to the point of boringness, nay tediousness, but I can definitely say that siblings were involved. Of the three situations we've been given details of, at least one had a child/ren that were being raised by their parents, at least one had child/ren that had already been adopted, and at least one had a child protective services order that meant no further children would be raised (at least not unless circumstances changed drastically). We saw a couple of pictures (and though all of the expectant parents were, still, expecting, and we didn't see any ultrasounds, it was a bit heart-wrenching to see what a child might look like).

So we have already had to think about siblings.

We were given full details including general living area of the placed sibling/s (and obviously the parented sibling/s). We knew how many and how old, not just for the purposes of getting a full health/pregnancy history but seemingly for the purpose of getting a better idea of the situation. All three sets of expectant parents asked for at least some degree of openness, but we don't know how much they already have with their placed child/ren - though at least one picture was of a placed child so in at least one case there are at least pictures being shared.

So we can know that our child, if any of these situations had worked out, or indeed in future situations, would be able to know about all older sibling/s (unless there are some that the expectant parents are not disclosing to the agency). We would have to address issues of, why was A raised and not me, and/or why was my mother not "allowed" to "keep" me.

If the future repeats the past, there could be further siblings but we would have no idea if we would get to know about any that were placed (in the one case not voluntarily). I think from our side, we would try to get in touch with the adoptive parents of the placed child/ren.

Contact with birth siblings is actually far more common in the UK than is contact with birth parents. It would be very rare here for adoptive parents not to have information about birth siblings, either older or younger, and adoptive parents here would understand that more (and do express frustration with the adopters of their child's siblings, who won't keep contact).

So I guess you could say we have a plan, or at least we've thought about the issues. But the practicalities are different. At least one of the placed child/ren lives in a different state to their birth parents. So although we are definitely planning to visit at least the state of our child's birth, even if we can't visit birth parents, that would mean we'd have to try and visit multiple locations to have direct contact with sibling/s - is that even practical in the long term? Would their adoptive parents want that? I know I've connected with cousins I saw rarely growing up, but is that inevitable assuming you are both willing, or does it assume some similar values in your upbringing?

But as far as talking to our child/ren, we have definitely had to think about that. Even in the UK, where most birth siblings of a child who was removed will also be removed, some will still be in the home (perhaps if half siblings, with their father). Some will be living with birth relatives. So we have been asked to think about how to talk to children about parented siblings.

In some ways that's harder than placed siblings - though of course we know children (whether birth or adopted) have all those impractical questions that make parents weep or despair, about why their parents can't have another child, have five more children, adopt their sibling/s.

I know it is all handwaving at this stage and it's easy to say it will all be fine and dandy if we are open - and I'm sure it won't - but I'm hoping that one aspect of "open" will be "open about the whole birth family" right from the start.

Not For the Likes of Us

I have heard this, not in those precise words, but almost, from other people about adoption, on a number of occasions since we announced we were thinking of adoption. Usually it is from people who actually don't need to make the decision: they have birth children, or they are trying to build a family but have not yet exhausted other avenues, or they may have children in the future but they are not particularly driven to do so.

Usually the reasons given are one of a) you're really brave, b) I don't think I could love an adopted child as much, or c) the process sounds too hard and I doubt we'd get approved/chosen.

Frankly I resent the implication that we are special, unique, or in some way gifted. I don't feel brave - I mainly feel scared - that we won't be chosen, yes, but also scared of being a mum, and scared that we won't do the right things for our child, and that I won't have any semblance of my old life - but that is fear of really major changes such as having a child that is so disabled I won't be able to work - not of missing a Saturday lie-in. I feel these are the kind of fears all prospective parents should have, but they aren't forced to think about parenthood as much as we have been. I do also feel broke, of course!

And although we don't have living birth children to compare, perhaps the ones we don't have would have been perfect. Perhaps we'll have more than one child and, like other thinking parents, we'll worry we'll love one more than the other.

And to be honest if we - medical problems, age and all, and in a fairly traditional part of the country, and very indecisive too, can be approved, I can't think anyone who doesn't actually have a criminal record or is imminently about to divorce or can't be bothered to spend some time with children, wouldn't be approved to adopt - possibly not everyone will find the first agency they approach is the one for them, it is true.

So there just remains matching. And I'm currently torn between "hurry up" and "I have too much to get done!"

Oh yeah, and the being broke bit.

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!

Too much information?

I have a friend who got married in the summer, after several years of public "I would so like to be married" followed by public "I'm so in love with him". There has also been a lot of "oh everyone's babies are so gorgeous, I can't wait to have one".

While it's possible of course that she has a medical condition she is keeping quiet about, I wasn't quite sure how to respond when she had a F*ceB**k update today of "AB thinks it is a very disappointing time of the month." Even if she and The Husband started trying the minute they got together, that is only just over a year. And knowing her, that is quite unlikely, and they were not living in the same city for most of that time.

So, in lieu of a comment along the lines of "pull yourself together, you can complain when it's been 7 years, but until then, we don't want to know the contents of your underpants", I posted a link to Julie's hilarious post.

It's me...

you thought I'd gone into a hole in the ground? or you hadn't noticed I wasn't here?

Anyway my so-called life has been grinding me down in a variety of directions, some good but just damn busy (planning a Brownie sleepover and some extra taster sessions in schools, starting playing in a new orchestra, knitting some Christmas presents), some just plain busy (most of my teaching for the year in the first few weeks of term, but leading to a knock-on effect of mental paralysis, fighting a few fires, and now a rather major administrative job for the end of term), but some a bit confidence-destroying.

In some areas it takes very little to knock my confidence and anyone else in academia will know that horrendous comments on your writing style are par for the course. In fact, one refreshing thing about my media experience was that (especially since it is usually face to face) people are usually quite relaxed and even flattering about your writing. It was suggested that I could do some freelance work and this week I finally submitted all my paperwork, and suggested a story - and felt very deflated not to get any response at all. I've been feeling like a bit of an underachiever anyway, and this was all it took to make me feel a bit despairing.

I've been bottling it up and Mr Spouse was having an irritating time with what I call "his chums" and he calls "the wastes of space" (the students on his course who he's been allocated to work on a project with) so I hadn't really talked about my work issues. But I thankfully got it off my chest yesterday and, though I was going to write about that earlier, we had another chat about another issue which I also feel i need to put down.

I am very fed up of our current contraceptive choice and am also feeling like I would like to have some hope still of maybe trying to have a biological child, even just to feel that door is not completely closed, so I suggested perhaps we could ditch the protection for the moment. He is very much not happy about that. Part of it is worrying about the adoption process and wether another miscarriage would disrupt it, what we'd do if I got pregnant again, would we put things on hold, or what. But I really had not realised how strongly he felt about my state of mind after the miscarriages - he says particularly after the last one.

We talked quite a bit today and it does bring back feelings for me quite strongly. I feel it was really, really horrible but I survived. But he says it may have been more frightening for him, outside, than for me (and of course he was very sad too). I am coming round to the idea that I will not have a much greater chance of getting pregnant this year/next year than in maybe 1-2 years' time when we have a baby in the house. And I think Mr Spouse is probably right that a loss then would make me much less sad, that I would have something to live for.

That last phrase sounds awful. I think you all, and he, know that I was never that bad. Perhaps something to get up in the morning for is more accurate. But although actually, I am doing OK, I'm going to stop typing now because I'm feeling a little sad.

Possibly of interest

to someone other than me, anyway.

I was geekily looking up NICE regulations on infertility and apparently they are going to be updated to reflect new research on IUI, types of IVF etc. Details here.

Of slightly greater interest is the fact that National Adoption Week has just ended. I did not particularly feel like linking to anything I'd read, though it was nice to see more about it in the news than usual. I am left though with the feeling that I (and possibly Mr Spouse) are quite thick-skinned or unobservant, or perhaps lucky, as we've had far fewer insensitive or just plain mad comments from social workers, members of the general public, and friends, than a lot of people seem to have had.

I'm actually quite glad...

...that trick-or-treating plus associated tat is taking off with a vengeance in the UK. My brother and I suffered as children with a mother who insisted on celebrating it when our friends were either carving pumpkins, dressing up a guy, or saying "eh? what?". But (when Mr Spouse overcomes his Bah Humbug tendencies) we'll be able to do it with ours.

Gosh

I haven't done the someone-else's post for a while, and I was trying to do it on Fridays, and it's not quite Friday any more*, but I just read this, and well, just, gosh.

What a dilemma.

*I joined a community music group which will lead, when I've practiced a bit more, to playing in an orchestra on Saturday mornings, though I'm rubbish at the moment. It meets at 9am on Saturday. Not a typo. It is on half-term break tomorrow. I am hoping I actually sleep in!

Unawares

I've had a bit of a manic week (our term only just started but it started with about 1/4 of my teaching for the year in the same week, the next 1/4 is this coming week and the rest spread out over the rest of the year, basically) and while I had plenty of countdowns on Facebook I somehow missed that Friday was Pregnancy/Infant Loss Awareness Day until I read May's blog.

I was at church this morning on my own (Mr Spouse really needs to learn not to say "ooh let's have a curry" and then vastly overconsume...), and the service sheet was sponsored by an older couple we have got to know a little, but who've never had family with them in the services. We assumed they had no children or other family but it turns out they had a son - who died about 15 years ago, at the age of 23 - on 15th October.

I lit a candle for him at the end of the service, and thought about it afterwards. I'm hoping we will get to have a baptism for our child in this church, but I don't want that to mean we never acknowledge our other children. A few years ago we sponsored some Easter lilies in memory of one (I think - it may have been more recent than that) and, which was fine with me, Mr Spouse didn't add our names/reason to the list (you can be public, or not, usually the lilies are in memory of someone and we all know that there is a cloud of unspoken names around them). I have a feeling he doesn't want to dwell on remembering them. He knows I get sad sometimes and he does too, but he doesn't want to look at our sole pair of scan pictures, and he doesn't want to go to the local infant loss and miscarriage service again. So i don't know how he'd feel about remembering our other babies as part of a baptism service.

Moving on to marginally more jolly topics. I am feeling a tad left out at work. There is a crowd of about 4 or 5 colleagues who are all slightly newer than me, one of whom I work very closely with, I actually feel I carry her a little but I also know she's had a hard time so I give her a lot of slack, we buy each other coffee when we're team teaching, she is part of this crowd. One of the group invited us to a housewarming (though has since moved, but with a new baby so I doubt the housewarming was repeated!), and one to a birthday a couple of years ago, but I've missed a couple of birthdays through being away over the summer (I was actually feeling even MORE left out but realised that I wouldn't have been around when all these parties were happening).

We have a small circle of friends here, very small in fact, and I often feel a little isolated. But I would also like to get to know these particular colleagues (except, unfortunately, the one I teach with) because they would be great collaborators. I've tried to approach them for both work collaborations and just to be friendly, and we've never really got beyond superficial conversations in both directions (and I know I can be rather overwhelmed at work, and I can show it, and that can't really make people too enthusiastic about collaborating with me, frankly).

As none of these people are really new, I can't offer to "show them round", I guess it's hard to get to know someone better when you realise you missed your chance the first time - but that's what I'd quite like to do.

Oh dear

Forumsville.

There is a certain adoption message board in the UK (and you won't have to search too hard to find it).
The majority of children who have been adopted are those that have been abused and/or neglected, with a smaller number removed before any abuse could happen, but some of those having been drug exposed.

I get that.

I also get that we are likely to be in a very different situation.

It's just the attitude, not particularly to birth parents (and there are many posters who can be very balanced in that respect) but to contact. From those saying "what's the point of direct contact when a child was removed at birth, they won't have a relationship to continue, and that's the point of contact", to those saying "really you should not think about a relinquished child from the same town, what if members of the birth family - shock horror - saw the baby in the street"... anyway you get the picture.

I am going to have a chat to Mr Spouse about this but I also wonder whether to mention this to our social worker if/when we see her again. Of course there are other adoptive parents who are positive about contact with birth family (even if it's for preventive means, as when a 9 year old will be rational about their birth family being at best exceedingly flaky while a teenager will turn all drama queen and want to go and live with them again).

I just feel like I (completely inexperienced, not even an adopter yet) want to go on a mass re-education campaign. And I know I'm really enthusiastic, and gung ho, converts are the most irritating preachers, but still...

Not an issue yet, but...

I've just been reading Heather's post about the words and phrases we use. Both Nice Little Agency and Official Hague Person use the terms "birth mother" and "birth parents", though I may have spotted a couple of "expectant parents" thrown in the mix, and I don't recall them using "our" or "your".**

The OHP also got us to change a couple of "our child" to "a child" in our profile though it didn't seem very consistent, as in, I felt it was OK to say "we are looking forward to taking our child to the playground" though they didn't, except they didn't get us to change it every time, and obviously we would say "we would like to adopt a child", but there are grey areas and they seemed to pick up on some but not all of these.

We have not yet had our profile read through and edited by NLA themselves but they place shortened versions on their website. While we cannot control the words they use when talking to expectant parents, each letter starts "Dear birthparent". Most of the stories from adoptive parents say "our birthmother".

So... advice please... what should we do? We can obviously write our own profile and I don't think they are going to tell us "No! Say Birthmother!" but what about the bits they edit in? And what about the impression that the whole thing gives, though (erm) I suppose we might appear more aware if we are the only ones not saying "Dear birth parents" in our profile??!

**yes, they have Expectant Parents right on the front web page for the agency. Good.

My spidey senses are twitching

Was out last night for a birthday of a friend - she has just turned 36 and her man is 8 and a half years younger (NOT NINE she says firmly), and two of her friends who I've got to know a bit better recently were there. One of them I assumed was early 30s, recently married, but it turns out she's 39, married 7 years. And gets irritated by babies on planes...

I was on the brink of sharing about adoption (friend whose birthday it is knows, but not many details) as we were talking about my nieces being dressed in scary 1970s pinafores by my mum (I must take a picture of the patterns she has hoarded, they are truly frightening). But I thought better of it.

While I do know people who absolutely don't want kids (which is I think less common in the UK than in the US, I think it's more common here as we are an indecisive nation, to be on the fence and fall the way nature takes you), usually I find as it is relatively uncommon here they are quite strident not just about irritating kids or parents but about their own wishes.

The birthday friend has said she'd happily get married tomorrow but has mainly expressed satisfaction at being an aunt for the moment. I know the new friend has siblings but I think she's the oldest and her younger sister is single. Their parents live locally so perhaps they have managed to dial down the "where are our grandchildren" nagging, which gets wearing I imagine if you don't want them, just as it does if you want them but can't have them.

So I'm curious now, is this a "don't want kids and find parents and babies irritating" or a "wanted them and don't think we'll have them now, so find parents and babies irritating."

Smug

When I am a parent I will not:
Write down every single day from birth to six months (and longer) exactly what time my child slept, fed, and filled his nappy, carrying a notebook round for the purpose, and pondering spreadsheets were I more computer literate.
Blame my houseguests for waking the baby, half an hour after they go to the loo, and thence causing him to cry for 90 minutes.
Tell my friends that "all children who go to nursery hit other children, and I don't want my child getting attached to a childminder instead of me, I heard Oliver James say it on the radio so it must be right."

Nor will I:
Keep the two-year-old up when we have dinner guests, not just until dinner is served at 8 (admittedly only half an hour after the dinner guests arrived) but until he starts to rub his eyes at 10.15 pm, requiring the dinner guests who have to leave at 10.30 to play with toy trains for the evening, and to be very careful with crystal wine glasses and hot drinks, rather than having adult conversation.

Nor indeed will I:
Keep the four-year-old and the six-year-old up until 11pm, claiming that there is no evidence children need more sleep than adults. Or shout at the six-year-old's aunt (who researches children's language for a living, but that's not a proper science) for using letter sounds rather than letter names when reading to her, but then when she cannot learn to read, request Jolly Phonics as a gift.

And finally I will not:
Assume my child's Brownie leader is psychic and able to intuit whether their child wants to come back to meetings in the new school year, without any replies to texts, emails, phone calls or letters.

Of course you know I'll do all those irritating things, and more.

I don't normally do this..

OK, I do some lazy posting by picking nice posts from other people, but this is a great bit of news:

Florida lifts ban on gay people adopting.

How really very nice

Another pick of the week - I'm reading this story in installments, and feel really happy that Fernando and Robbie have had A Good Day.

How I got here from there

It's feast or famine around here, I'm afraid.

When I was a young adult, I mixed with the wrong sort of people. People who told me that it was wrong to be gay, that it wasn't what God wanted, and that something had gone wrong in the world for there to be people who were attracted to those of the same gender.

I hope I'm accurately reporting my feelings at the time in saying I never quite bought it. I am pretty sure I only realised I knew gay people when I got to university, but generally thought it was "okay" so long as the "rules" were being followed. There's a certain school of thought that if you think everyone should be celibate outside marriage, this applies to those who cannot get married (to someone of the opposite sex) too - like some who choose or are called to be celibate as a vocation.

I now realise that this was a lot to do with sour grapes. I wasn't in a relationship for many many years (and the ones I had didn't get very far off the ground), but didn't feel "called" to celibacy, so I didn't see why other people shouldn't also be celibate unwillingly. Now I am with Mr. Spouse and if someone turned round and told us we couldn't be together legally - well frankly, sod off. Sod right off.

And we are one of those unnatural couples who cannot reproduce, but long to be parents. So when a furore broke over some Catholic adoption agencies closing down rather than allowing gay couples to sign up, I was pleased that at the time we were considering adopting through the one such agency that encouraged gay couples to apply (our social worker says she is not sure they were really that open, but their literature seems fairly balanced).

But these are relatively "advanced" rights. If you are unfortunate enough to live in a repressive society, yes, it's horrible that it is like that, but you do learn to tread carefully. If you want to educate your daughter, or not wear Islamic dress, or publish anti-Government articles, in some countries you also have to proceed carefully, enlist overseas help, and not make a song and dance about it. So, having lived in a country where it is not legal to be gay, but I have not heard of any prosecutions, and knew friends who had underground boyfriends (if, er, you know what I mean), I assumed it was a case of softly, softly, changee laws.

But it is not just an issue of whether you can kiss your boyfriend in a bar, marry him, or adopt children. It's an issue of people's lives. This documentary has filming in two of the places I've worked in recently, and is really scary. It's the kind of situation where you feel like you need to do something, or hit someone. Preferably someone pretending to be a Christian.

So, by coincidence, we had the chance to hear a talk on the issue at Greenbelt. We only went for the day, which is an odd way to do a festival, and it meant we didn't get into any music, but it's more of a talk and arts festival anyway. And getting the last train back to London - was how I ended up talking to Peter Tatchell on a station at about 10pm last Saturday. Despite appearances in the media, he is very temperate and softly spoken. A real eye-opener.

Tourists

We've been in London for nearly 4 weeks over the summer and although we have had quite a bit of boring stuff to do with our rental flat to sort out, we've been taking full advantage of the capital. I have a feeling that Mr Spouse has actually seen every single museum in the city. He went to the Clockmaker's Museum the other day. Seriously. I on the other hand have actually had to do some work, but have managed to get out a bit.

Yesterday we went to Oxford (OK, not in London!) to meet up with my mother, brother, and two nieces. Probably by dint of keeping off sticky topics, we had a really good day. We went to a museum that has been newly done up and has lots of great drawers for kids to pull out, things for them to handle etc. The girls are now 4 and 61/2 and were really good all day I thought - the younger one even stopped throwing gravel in the goldfish pond in the Botanic Gardens when I told her to.

My mother regaled me with my brother's latest idea, which is that children don't need any more sleep than adults, which means you can put them to bed at 11pm and they will be fine the next day. Sometimes when my mother moans about my brother (or to my brother) I will sympathise with one or other of them, but I'm staying out of it this time, I muttered something non-committal to my mum, and I suspect my brother won't moan about my mum (this is less frequent but it does happen) because he doesn't when he knows she's right or that I'll agree with her.

Anyway, enough waffle, what I also thought was that I hope we end up with a similar relationship to our child's birth parents to my auntie relationship with the nieces - living in a different country but visiting relatively often, they know me and remember who I am (and happily have done so since they were small) and think of me as a fun relative who will take them out and do fun things, but who they do have to listen to when I am in sole charge. And I give irritating advice which brother and sister-in-law are free to ignore.

OK, back to the original subject. As you may or may not know, Oxford is where I studied as a postgrad, and on the whole had an excellent time (immature male postgrads who share a house with you and bring back ever-younger one-night-stands, notwithstanding), and made some of my best and oldest friends. I used my imagine-yourself-where-you-want-to-be technnique to remember pubs with outdoor space for dinner, and thought of one I spent rather too many hours in - but was slightly embarassed therefore to walk straight past the entrance to the alley the pub is on. In a former life I am sure I could have found my way there in my sleep.

Today unusually rather than me saying "let's go OUT" and Mr. Spouse saying "I'm tired" we reversed roles; he took me to Camden Lock Market which astonishingly I have never been to. Cannot think how that happened. Anyway I bought a clocket, because I am a fashion victim, and tried on two or three winter tunics, and bought one. Mr. Spouse tried, but didn't quite manage, to tell me I was too short and fat to wear one of them. But the one I bought was a lot less fussy.

The money trail

We know that NLA has received our full application... because they've cashed our check/que! (it wasn't a very big one...)

We also got an email from the notary here to say he is ready to send the paperwork round the endless trail of government bodies that need to see it before it arrives in the US with OHP. After it arrives, I think we'll be legally clear to look for a family in OHP's state but not in NLA's, until they are sure our home study is as full as they'd like. We have been having a mini-Kafka moment with NLA and our UK social worker where NLA wanted our addresses for the last 10 years, the UK crowd had verified the last 5 years, NLA wouldn't take our word for the intervening 5, so we emailed the addresses to our UK SW who emailed them to NLA...

Anyone got a handy brick wall?

This week's favourite

Just lovely - from A Nickel's Worth of Common Sense.

Down the rabbit hole

I am unashamedly addicted to blogs, at least to reading (and also to procrastinating boring work jobs while writing - I should currently be making up some titles for some people who are giving talks at a one-day event, who haven't given me titles, and I should also be reformatting a variable list. ZZZZZZZ). I don't comment as much as I could, but I'm also slightly handicapped by still not having found a good blog feed reader that works on my phone (no, it is not an iPhone thank you).

I found when I was doing my last bit of journo stuff however that I read loads and loads of sciencey blogs (hooray!) but no regular blogs. So, if you were hoping for me to read your blog in the next couple of weeks - sorry. We just arrived in London and I'm doing another two weeks of pretending to be a journalist, starting on Tuesday.

I have however found a few new blogs recently. There are a lot of adoption blogs out there but a very large majority of them seem to be written by US married mothers who adopted domestic infants, many of them in semi-open adoptions. I've been looking around for some different ones, and have found:

LindyLoodles - UK, waiting for a match
Looking for Moonpiglet - UK, pre-approval
From Husband to Father - UK, pre-approval
The Johnsons - also UK, also pre-approval
(some or all of these are people who I found through Adoption UK)


A Nickel's Worth of Common Sense - Canada (I am pretty sure), open adoption from foster care/birth children/what is called "permanent guardianship" in the UK (I am in awe of this woman, she has six kids at home and still finds time to write!)
Think Bubbles - when I say this is a real life friend of mine, well, erm yes she is but we both met her through t'internet! Anyway she has two teenage sons adopted from foster care, sadly things did not turn out well for no 1 son.
Two Guys Adopting - another blogger I am in total awe of - these guys have a son adopted from foster care, and one of them writes extremely detailed posts about every single day with their son!

Lia, Not Juno - expecting a boy and talking about placing him - has recently moved to Wordpress - I am toying with the idea of doing the same*
Statistically Impossible - a birth father in an open adoption

Anyway I may or may not be "around", though I do have a meet lined up with another London blogger, unless she stands me up... no I'll understand really (sobs into hanky...)

*I did have a spell of weird comments a while back but went over to no-anon-posting and now it's mainly spam - but Blogger have sorted out their spam comments. So as I seem to be under the radar for people who want to sound off, I may just stick here for the moment.

In which we become slightly less poor

I have to fill in a US tax return - it doesn't do me any good or bad as I neither pay US taxes nor am entitled to a rebate, but it's a legal requirement, and they get snippy when I want to go back to the US, if I'm not up to date on them. Occasionally they have a Federal cash handout. I get these too, even if I haven't paid any taxes. This year, Mr Spouse got one as well, as he did his taxes last year!

The US government, unlike some others I might mention (*cough* the UK *cough*) actually encourages people to adopt - to the tune of $13K tax rebate.

They've just changed the rules so you don't actually have to pay the $13k before you claim it back. It's really to encourage people who wouldn't have paid that much in tax because they don't earn much - I'm not quite sure if our US taxes per year would reach that but over the five years you can spread it, if we did pay them, we'd easily pay that. But now we can claim it anyway!

I suspect there are 2 1/2 people to whom this applies, so it's not like we're going to bankrupt Obama. But it will be jolly nice to have a small amount back. Actually, it will be "back" since I paid them in the distant past.

Living space: choice, privilege, right?

This post was inspired by a post of A+A's, about living small. I like what they are doing, it is great to be in a neighbourhood where you can see a lot of people, and which is diverse. I feel lucky that we live about 2 streets away from our area's main Muslim community and that I can be part of a mixed women's group and that I know some of the members well enough to have a lengthy chat when I see them in the street and even to pop round and say hello. But we live in a large Victorian house that you can see in my previous post.

I'm lucky enough that I was able to buy somewhere when I lived in London and Mr Spouse had a house when he moved here as well. We joked that we had to look around a while before we found somewhere cheap enough. But actually it is fairly cheap to live here and on two salaries, we'd have been able to afford this place even without much of a deposit. We had to buy extra furniture (we didn't have a dining table or crockery storage, and we have an upstairs study/sitting area that needed a sofa) and we had the kitchen redone plus lots of cosmetic decoration.

I come from a privileged background, there is no denying it. My grandfather in the UK had a huge house - it had a spare flat that, if it wasn't rented out or lived in by the cleaner and her family, was a play space for us grandchildren (mind you, my grandfather had 5 children separated by 30 years). My grandparents in the US had a smaller one-storey building but set in gorgeous California land. We grew up in a Regency house on four floors. My parents had to put in heating, a floor in the basement, I suspect an inside toilet, but it was also somewhat spacious. We did learn to be frugal in what posessions we needed when we lived abroad for a couple of periods when I was a child but that was by choice and also a result of privelege - my dad was also an academic and was on sabbatical. My brother and I thought of these as an adventure and both I and my mother have always prided ourselves on packing light (yes, really!).

I love living in older houses, but before we moved here, the last time Mr Spouse lived in an older house was when he was 7 and their back-to-back (think East is East, bath in kitchen, no I am not joking) was condemned. They had had a bit of space there, and moving into their two-bedroom high rise he had to give away his train set. This was his pride and joy - he had his picture in a local paper with this train set. Small living was probably not high on his list of things that made him happy. I got to go back to my toys and my own bedroom after our years away.

They lived in the flats (think opening credits of Shameless, I think I have already said that!) until they got fed up of having the upstairs neighbours' baths overflow into their living room. Then they moved to the 26th floor in another block, but that was condemned (think famous flats in London that collapsed). They did move back to a two-up, two-down rented place but then Mr Spouse bought a one bedroom flat - the first person in his family to own property - and his parents were moved by their social housing landlord into a different one-bed as they didn't need the space.

So... do you aim to live small, do you feel this is a positive thing, or a luxury? Do you like living near, and knowing, your neighbours? How close is too close? Or are you happily indulgent and will take any space you can get, and would a mile away not be too far for your neighbours?

I think we are just about right where we are - I have always lived in a town and as a real inner city dweller Mr Spouse would not be happy anywhere isolated - one of his stipulations is being able to walk to at least a basic shop and to services so you don't have to drive to the doctor's when you are too sick to drive. But unless you are very lucky, even in those halcyon days (note tongue firmly in cheek) of Victorian terraces and all the kids playing in the street, neighbours can turn into noisy neighbours, irritating neighbours, and nuisance neighbours.

And you even get that in rambling middle class neighbourhoods - I'm reminded of the bad beginning piano playing of our neighbours when I was growing up. Still, my brother learned the trumpet. We got our own back!

Yes I know this is a bit lazy...

But life is like that. Anyway, this is a great post, and Martin, you'll be sorely missed (especially for the dreadful jokes).

Sorry but I have to share this...

This picture was taken by a professional photographer at the children's Christmas party run by the factory Mr Spouse's dad worked in, circa 1961. If you squint at my previous post, or if you are a FB friend, you'll be able to work out he's the kid with dark hair and his head in his hand. We think they are watching a magician. Note Vimto bottles. Very Hulton Picture Library, don't you think?

I'm not sure if this is lazy or what...

But I'd like to try and start doing a "someone else's post of the week". Kind of like Creme de la Creme, only smaller.
I've just read this post of Bernardeena's and it was so well written, I just had to share.

Colour me confused

We are in a bit of a go-between situation between Official Hague Person and Nice Little Agency. Here's crossing our fingers that Nice Little Agency decides it's not too complicated to get accredited should we ever want to adopt again.

Anyway, we've got lots and lots and lots of cheesy pictures, we've sent them off to both sets of people, and we are resisting both OHP and NLA's efforts to start all our profile/letter statements with "dear birth parents" as, erm, they aren't yet (in fact likely they haven't given birth yet as well as not having relinquished any children). Though I think OHP were right to tell us not to write "our" child as obviously he/she is not our child.

NLA have earned various gold stars for trying to avoid extra expenditure and being very flexible, they are very happy for documentation going to them to be sent with (and therefore notarised with and therefore not charged extra for) documentation going to OHP. I panicked for a bit today thinking we'd have to have (and therefore pay for) another social worker visit but they say a letter from our regular social worker will do nicely.

Anyway I just thought I'd regale you with exciting tales of paperwork, and show you page 1 of our profile. Excuse flab in my picture at the bottom, and sorry it's a bit blurry - converting from Publisher to PDF to JPG obviously loses something:

I thought it was quiet...

but it's not that quiet. I am still very confused by Google Analytics, which I moved to after I found I couldn't use statcounter any more (and I can't remember why that was). But Google Analytics says I had no visitors in July at all. Which, er, isn't true.

Anyone got any better hints and tips? It's not that it's broken entirely as it says my other blog had a couple of July visitors.

What I Did On My Holidays

An installment here.

Professionals

This is from the Open Adoption Roundtable #18.

We are obviously not in an open adoption yet but have had interactions with lots of social workers - all of whom are in principle very keen on openness. But fully open adoptions with birth/adoptive parent directed meetings between both sets of parents and children are rare in the UK. Because most adoptions are from foster care the most common forms of openness are either letter contact, supervised and often quite tense birth parent visits, or self-arranged and relaxed visits with siblings or extended family members.

I get the impression the social workers are a little surprised we are so on board about openness - in fact I think they have been, probably quite wisely, preparing us for less openness than we'd be comfortable with. Practically speaking, we're never going to have a weekly visit, drop-in-when-you-want, first day of school and every birthday type of relationship. But we'd be happy (other things being equal) with regular visits with us and birth parent(s) without any agency/social worker involvement.

Our social worker is, I think, assuming that we'd actually have more contact with extended family (e.g.organised maternal grandparents who might have been a possible choice for raising a child, where one issue with a birth parent might be a lack of a permanent home). Oddly, though I imagine this might be a possibility, I can also envisage an opposite scenario, for example a birth parent who has not told their own parents that they have a child, so that we might meet them without being allowed to meet grandparents. This would be hugely unusual in the UK - and I think more UK adopters would have direct contact with extended family - so it's going to take some explaining to our UK social workers if we end up in that type of situation.

OK, now I have your open adoption attention - I need a quick bit of advice. We're just working on our profile, and I have put:

"We think it is very important for our child to know their biological family.

Because Dr Spouse’s mom’s family are from the US, she visited her grandparents there every summer when she was a child. We hope we will be able to take our child back to the US often to get to know their biological family."

Sooo.... I asked around and was told (not by a professional) that perhaps we should hold off on mentioning our hopes for openness, in the profile, in case it was read by expectant parents who were less interested in openness than us.

Now, if we had a link with expectant parents who wanted ongoing letter contact and were open to talking about in-person contact - then I think we'd be OK with that. Because from other people, I know that even if we set up to have ongoing in-person contact we might end up back in a letter contact, discussing in-person contact, situation anyway if circumstances changed.

So, what are people's opinions? Better not to mention our hopes in our profile, and speak about them in person? Or mention the most we'd be able to cope with (we think) and risk putting someone off who would rather have less?

HELLO

Sorry for the silence, but I'm not getting many real comments anyway so I'm not sure if people are just reading and going "meh" or not reading.

I'm in the middle of my media placement and it is such fun but very time-consuming - more because I've got a few urgent day job things to keep on top of in the evenings than because it's really such hard work. I can't really do anything toooo hard for the radio people in case I mess it up! And we are in London, having a nice break from real life, and I've just been to a conference (with digital recorder and fancy mike in tow, and having done a few fancy interviews, well, I thought they were fancy).

Now many of my regular readers know of the good ways to make your period start. I know I shouldn't be complaining having had two ridiculously short cycles, but at the weekend it was over 5 weeks and it was getting a bit ridiculous. We had (mainly) been careful and I was (fairly) sure I had ovulated late but I was trying the usual things. Wearing white knickers, going on a really long journey, and I even thought I was in the final approach when I had a migraine (looking back, it's been about 1 every 3 cycles on the final day or so). But no. It was getting so long that even Mr Spouse was getting anxious.

For the first time ever it was him who suggested getting a test and me who didn't want to. But of course it worked perfectly. Test on Sat afternoon and period started before I went to bed that night.

And, you know, I'm so busy with work, adoption paperwork, doing our profile, that to be frank, I really, really didn't feel disappointed.

Sometimes I amaze myself.