Just call me Mumma

One of the difficulties of living an off-grid life is relying on solar power...as we creep towards Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year (and how we'll be celebrating when we cross that bridge!), there is less and less power. Today, after having four full fairly sunny days of charge, we were still only able to run a laptop for half an hour. Sooooo, while I've been itching to blog for ages and ages, it just hasn't been possible. In the days before LO came into our lives, I would've just popped into town to a coffee shop and spent an afternoon catching up on emails and blogging etc. there, but these days, well, that just isn't going to happen! So we succumbed to temptation and bought a generator - right now it is chundering away outside the back door and pumping out petrol fumes into the clean night air (guilt guilt) but I feel it is worth it to be in touch with the outside world...

Things have been wonderful: crazy, buckwild and wonderful. There have been moments when I've thought 'stop the world, I want to get off for a minute' and there have been moments when I've thought 'there must be ten million angels sitting up there waving their feathery wings over my life right now'. For years and years I have written about aspects of womanhood, including primarily pregnancy and motherhood. Now I spend a lot of time cringing about what I've written in the past... There is nothing quite like motherhood to lay you bare, to strip you down to your raw, real self, and take you crashing through a whole gamut of emotions in the space of just a few seconds. I have never experienced anything like it: the intensity, the adoration, the frustration, the guilt, the extraordinary love, the worry, the anxiety, the laughter, the wham-bam-knock-you-on-the-head immediacy of the whole shebang. Sometimes I wake with his little head beside me on the pillow and just stare at him, overcome by the incredible realisation that he is there: right there, my little bear, taking me by the hand and saying 'MUMMA, THIS IS LIFE!!!' (he can't speak yet but somehow when he does, I imagine this will be his first sentence ;-) )

Ah yes, the co-sleeping thing that springs up in the last paragraph. I always thought we'd be a co-sleeping family, it is something I'd researched and read about before and felt pretty strongly would be the right thing for us. But I didn't realise it would be a neccessity... When the bitter cold nights started here, the terror something would happen to our darling completely took me by surprise. A few weeks in and I began to get less fretful that some dreadful calamity would befall him at any moment, but there's no hiding from the fact that living in this house is freezing at times. When we came in after dark, I yearned for light switches and central heating, not a range that had gone out and stumbling around for candles. But kids are so adaptable, aren't they? Amazingly so. He is more entranced by the moon and the stars, by the first flickering lights of the candles, by the pure, deep velvet silence of night than he seems to be perturbed by the cold. That's the magic of off-grid living I guess. Nonetheless, as soon as he was settled enough, we moved him from the spare bedroom into a cot in our room, then gradually into our bed, starting with little stints in the morning. It was a reminder of how far we'd come when he slept quite peacefully between us; the first time we'd taken him on the bed for a lie down a few days into his being with us, he had cried furiously and angrily and would only settle when he was alone in the cot in the spare bedroom. Now, he starts the night in his cot in our room and when we go to bed we lift him gently into bed with us, usually without him stirring. He reaches out in the dark and touches our faces if he wakes in the night, and settles again instantly. He is so happy and cuddly when he wakes, and more than content to settle back to sleep for a nice lie-in after he's had some milk. I can't even put into words how special it was that first morning when he woke between us and turned his head from side to side to look at each of us, chuckles of delight and hands waving madly! I know that lots of people would say 'rod for your own backs' and all that, but I say rod-schmod. If you've wanted a baby with your whole heart, every moment is precious. If he shares a bed with us for years, who cares? We both agreed that we'd look back on this time when he's all grown up and flown the nest and only have warm, blissful, cosy memories.(Plus, we have a fold out bed in the living room for time just the two of us, if you get my meaning!)

As the weeks pass, our bond grows. At first he was happy to see us, but he generally likes people. Now, we are his Mumma and Dadda, he reaches for hugs and kisses (he is a blissfully cuddly baby), laughs with us, turns to us in times of need. I am amazed and full of awe at how far he has come. Suddenly, a few weeks into being here he began to bust through the 12 month milestones with a kind of feverish intensity. Every day, he did something new that had us squealing with delight. From being a fairly passive little guy, he was suddenly crawling, pulling himself up, walking with his push-along walker, clapping, making all kinds of different vocal noises...lots of achievements we got to witness. Eight weeks down the line and he's not the little person we could leave playing with his xylophone on the playmat, oh no, he's on the move! We spend a lot of time leaping about after him like mad rabbits trying to coax him away from the magnets such as dog bowls, wires, coal scuttle etc. etc.

It's good to come back and write again on some of the things that have been happening, and also reminds me of just how fast time has gone since he has been with us. All that feet-dragging on that part of Social Services, and the change of social worker, and the other ups and downs, seem like a distant memory. Another lifetime almost. Like I say, when I gaze at his sleeping face in the morning, I can hardly believe our luck.

Learning

Every day I wake and remember this gift. Somehow my life has changed in so many ways it's impossible to express them. My friend who adopted ten years ago said she remembers feeling that she'd psychologically expanded - not by choice, but by instinct. I felt this summed it up, this incredible shift in who I am. I am more than just me, pottering through my life day by day. I am someone's mother. Someone needs me - ordinary me! - for all their needs. The choices I make impact this little being on a huge scale. It's awe-inspiring and terrifying in equal measure.

One of my more recent learnings, or at least one I can finally put into practise, is how we mirror one another. I have often recognised this in other relationships, and even read about it in motherhood, but wow! to see it before your very eyes is something else. When my friend gave birth recently I took round a big box of treats for HER with a little note saying 'Here's a little secret: a happy mother is a happy baby. Look after yourself and everything else will follow.' Hmmm, now I have to live my own 'secret'!! Both R and I made the mistake of not eating properly yesterday and failing to care much for ourselves. We have all been a bit poorly and both of us felt terrible yesterday, really achy and tired and generally out of sorts. And, of course, LO mirrored that right back at us!

Before having a child of my own, I would sometimes see mothers berating their children for not doing/being a particular thing, e.g. 'you're being so aggressive', or 'you're not listening to me' and I would think; 'look at yourself first'. I think this is true of most relationships: usually the accusations we level at others could equally be levelled at us. What you give, you get. But practising it every day as a mother? Holy smokes, that's a whole new level of learning! When LO is upset, I have to stop and think what sort of energy I'm giving off. Am I really attentive to his needs or am I thinking when he's settled, I'll be able to get the washing up done or make that phone call...or whatever it is that needs doing? I am so aware that when I feel narky or tired, surprise surprise, he does too! He mirrors my mood back to me in the beautiful, honest, powerful way kids do, and when I remember to stop and take a breather, it amazes me.

What I think amazes me most about this though is our connection. Here's this little being, born to a mother he can't be with, cared for for the first 11 months of his life by people he has had to leave behind...and here we are: mother and son. And he trusts me. He looks up in my eyes and says Mama. I look in his eyes and say thank you. For totally blowing my mind with the lessons you give me every day. For trusting me to care for you. For making this huge, unfathomable leap of faith that landed you right here, in my arms. Let me fulfill all your expectations and be the best mother I can possibly be. Because you're amazing.

And our life begins!

One of the things our little boy's foster carer did was keep a daily record of his 11 months living with them. I was awed by this - there's not many birth children who can claim to have such a record of their early life - and also goaded into action! So each evening after he has gone to bed, I sit down and write what we have done today. The little things, the big things, the ups and the downs. It's a great chance to reflect on the last 12 days since we brought him home and will be a good reminder in years to come of these precious times.
It has been wonderful. It has been mind-blowing. It has been challenging. It has changed our lives forever. Each day he trusts us more and our bond grows. He is growing; physically and mentally, and is filling our home with his huge, radiant personality. There's never a dull moment!

The challenges have mostly been external: badly timed visits from social workers and health visitors when he's tired and fractious, and dealing with the fall-out. Getting my period for the first time since we met him and feeling incredibly exhausted but still doing the 4am wake-ups! Having to work alongside caring for him because I sadly don't qualify for maternity pay as an adopter (self-employed). And living in a house without electricity as the nights draw in earlier and earlier and it gets colder each day.

Now we're in a rhythm though, and I think we get closer each day to mastering the art of electricity-free parenting! Washing his clothes and nappies each evening and hanging them to dry on the range; making sure we have a good supply of candles (we ran out one night and if it was just us we'd have managed but trying to change a pooey nappy with a solar torch - well, kinda difficult!!). R has been amazing keeping all the fires going and the range burning and we have all decamped to our big kitchen - the warmest room in the house - and LO has a huge play area to mess about on. His Nana bought him a gorgeous cosy baby sleeping bag which has proved a godsend on these wintry nights. Yes, we're getting there, slowly but surely getting there. I've been sleeping in his room as he had bronchialitis when we first met him and on the first night here woke up with such a coughing fit, he was sick all down my legs, poor baby. Now he's so much better but I love to lie there and listen to him sleeping, and hopefully soon we can all sleep in our room but we want to take the transition slowly.

In reality, any challenges fade into insignificance beside the wonder of just holding this little being; letting him explore my face as he drinks his milk, gazing into his huge brown eyes and thinking WOW! You are the best thing that has happened to me, truly a gift from heaven. And listening to him burbling away, trying out different sounds and delighting in his newfound capabilities. R and I are more often than not in hysterics, he is a very entertaining little man and he knows it! Watching him play with his new furry friends who gather around him to patiently have their ears and tails pulled. Bathing him by the fire, his skin as soft as silk and his little hands splashing vigorously. Taking him for walks in the papoose and seeing him soak up these new experiences, the sights and sounds and smells all around. Even his first storm did not disturb him; he watched the waves crashing up against the house with a most equanimical expression on his face! These are all joys we've dreamed of, and boy, were they worth waiting for!

Part of me wonders if I'll ever get anything else done than caring for my darling, running the home and trying to hold down a job...but that seems plenty for now. At the end of this week we get to gradually introduce him to family and we can't wait. I have so yearned to see people and to share all this with those I love, and this chapter will really open up all our lives. Just imagining them meeting this long-awaited babe finally after all these years makes me shiver with excitement. Here he is! Our darling has arrived!

Homecoming...

Oh my goodness gracious me...there are no words to adequately describe the enormous joy, incredulity and wonder of the last ten days. Meeting LO for the first time, I had expected to cry from the depths of my soul (with attempts to rein it in for his sake of course!) but instead I felt calm and centred, a magical feeling of 'there you are'. He is our son, and just as we dreamt him. So many evenings, driving back from the foster carers', we have looked at one another in wonder. We couldn't love him any more than we do. We couldn't have visioned a more perfect and incredible being to bring into our lives. He's amazing. He laughs from his belly, his eyes light up when we come in the room, he loves being tickled, he loves wriggling and leaping about in supportive arms, he loves crinkly crackly toys, he loves his milk and snuggling up...

It is so like falling in love. Last night, after we'd dropped him off at his foster carers' house for his 'goodbye evening' with them, we came back and sniffed the blankets he'd lain on!

In a few hours, we go to pick him up and bring him home. We are bringing our little boy home.

WE DID IT!!!!

Extraordinarily, blissfully happy today. Yesterday we had our matching panel - and we passed!! When they came into the waiting room afterwards and shook our hands, we both burst into tears...what a pair! Felt like so much was hanging on that moment - and now, finally, we can move into the next chapter of our lives. OH MY GOD/GODDESS/ALLTHATIS, we are going to be parents!!!!

We were both seriously nervous beforehand, firing intense questions at each other and fumbling to answer them. When we arrived at the meeting place, we were early and the sun was shining, so we went for a little walk to gather our strength, fearing an onslaught like the last panel. But it was our twelve year anniversary so it felt like an auspicious day. And everything was truly flowing our way. The panel members were warm and friendly, and we all laughed together. They seemed delighted with the match and hardly asked us many questions at all. In fact, when they asked us if there was anything we had expected to be asked but hadn't been, I looked down at the pages and pages of notes in my hands and laughed! It just felt right. The whole thing was so beautifully smooth.

Our friends went in straight after us and were successfully matched with their little boy. Afterwards we went for a drink and all sat there looking at each other in stunned surprise!

And the best piece of news? Our little boy - who for so many months of his early life was inconsolable - has become the happiest and most joyful child. All of the people at panel who had met him commented on it. When did he start becoming so happy? Around June time, when we found out about him, and began our nightly rituals of sending him love, imagining holding him, talking to him, visioning everything we would do with him. I'm sure so much of his contented outlook is to do with the wonderful love and care his foster parents have lavished on him, but part of me just feels that there is also a deep, deep connection there between us three, founded five months ago and growing stronger every day...

Better...

My beautiful sister looking over the Atlantic

Dad's beach stone colour mandala

Me and my dog

Yesterday, I posted a pretty gloomy tirade. This morning, I am feeling a lot better, largely thanks to a wonderful message from Kate and a wild, wet and windy walk yesterday afternoon with the dog. Getting out in the fresh air, whatever the weather ALWAYS makes me feel better. Thank goodness the dog makes me go for a walk, as I'm not sure I would have been able to convince myself it was a good idea in yesterday's stormy weather. The waves were crashing up against the windows, scaring the bejeezus out of all the animals. Today, the sea is calm and the sun is making sporadic appearances through the clouds.

Last week R and I went away to Pembrokeshire, Wales with all my family, 12 of us. It was a week of walking, eating, drinking, laughing, dressing up and general uproarious silliness. One day a bunch of us went down to a beach and my dad made this colour mandala from beach stones - how gorgeous is that? My sister was looking out to sea wistfully and I captured the moment in sillhouette. And when I came home my dog and I went for a mega walk through field and forest and I took a picture of us together as I'd missed her so much. Pretty embarrassing when someone stumbled across me on my knees trying to capture me and the dog...

But happy days. These photos remind me, happy days in ABUNDANCE.

Yesterday we were sent a video of LO by his SW. He was gurgling and laughing and is beginning to look so grown up now with his little teeth. I can't explain how incredible it was to hear his laughter echo around our home, and see his face light up. We love him, oh how we love him. Not long now....

Separate

I am beginning to get a sense of just how vast the difference between adoptive and birth parenting can be. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't under any illusions about this before, it's just that some events have transpired to bring the reality home. Sometimes, it feels like there's a void between me and other parents. A rift has developed between me and my sister, someone I have never really argued with before or at least not for any length of time. Indeed, up until recently I would have described her as my best friend. But adoption seems to have changed all that. As the adoption situation became more complex, I found that there was no common ground between our parenting journeys and we drifted further and further apart as I tried - and failed - to articulate some of the emotions I was feeling. I wrote in a previous blog post about how I wished I was pregnant because of the different treatment of pregnant women to those preparing to adopt. I know that if I were pregnant, my sister and I would be talking about birth plans (I always said I wanted her around, or at least nearby, during my birth experience) and getting excited about the big day and the babymoon to follow. Instead, R and I are preparing for our matching panel meeting with heavy hearts, as we just have not clicked with our new social worker and feel increasingly alone. I'm not sure my sister even knows we have a matching panel meeting next week. I wish I could explain what this is all like without seeming to be doom and gloom about things. I am trying not to be doom and gloom, but sense that this is where I have lost connection with my sister, and others, as R and I struggle to ride the waves of our adoption preparation. Preparing for parenthood shouldn't, after all, be a doom and gloom period of your life. All the years I supported pregnant couples, I was caught up in the excitement, the deep personal transformation, the joy and wonderment of their adventure. I wanted adoption to have the same qualities. I knew it would be different, of course, but I still wanted to capture some of that magic. Until our social worker went on emergency leave, all was going so well....

From reading others' blogs, I know that this is just the beginning of a the sense of separateness that keeps adoptive parenting in a special category from other parenting. I am aware that I need to create a network of support around us as we embark on this new stage of our lives, but I just don't know where to begin. How to explain the ups and downs, the rollercoaster of emotions that come from knowing your little boy is just an hour's drive away but you're not allowed to be with him, let alone meet him, until the endless endless bureaucracy has been navigated? How to explain the sense of dislocation as you try to get on with normal life but find yourself frustrated and angry and powerless? How to explain what it feels like to read the letter your son's birth mum has written for him - the pain and anguish in her words and the realisation you're going to have to help him make a sense of that and the tragic truths of his birth family?

Spending time with friends and their families brings it home how simple parenthood can be - just getting pregnant ('it was a complete surprise!') and then getting on, in your own sweet way, with birthing, caring, mothering, playing and being with your children. There's no assessment of your capabilites, no questioning of your finances, lifestyle, life choices, relationships and no intrusion into your family life. There's no sitting in a room with a bunch of strangers who know the most personal and intimate (and painful) details of your personal life and have no qualms in asking you about them. There's no defending your right to parent, over and over again. There may be isolation and loneliness, but you can rest assured there's billions of parents the world over just like you. Even if you can't get out of the house, they're just a click of the mouse away.

I am feeling blue and missing our beloved social worker, so this has turned into a royal moan which I hadn't intended. I want to be happy and full of excitement and joy that in 17 days we will meet our son (maybe...though after last time and the last minute cancellation, we're less inclined to count down the days). Instead, I feel anxious about the matching panel without our social worker next week (they're going over our finances with a fine-toothed comb as I don't receive maternity pay as a self-employed adopter) and sad about the breakdown of communication with the people I love. I feel bad about posting when I feel this dreary, but sometimes it is just good to get it off your chest. Forgive me, most of the time I am a very happy camper.

A letter to our son

Darling son,

Though we can't yet be with you physically, in every other way you are a huge part of our lives. We think about you constantly, talk to you a lot of the time, and have begun to see the world through your eyes. How wonderful a ladybird seems, or a butterfly, or the dog chasing her tail! We imagine you laughing when you see that. And we've seen pictures of your laugh, and can feel it expanding all our cells, opening our hearts with joy. Here is the little altar of things we have been gathering and making whilst we wait, somewhere we can focus on as we dream you into our lives. (At the back there is the 'count-down calendar' until we meet you.) We are busy creating a nest of love for you to come in to, and we can't wait to welcome you.

With love, and more anticipation than I can possibly begin to convey,

Your mum and dad xxxx

Every day angels

September, September. I love this time of year, the feeling of potential it engenders. As we move towards Autumn Equinox towards the end of the month, the earth's energies are turning inwards, preparing us for the quiet, reflective and still winter months. But I always feel energised and enlivened at this time of year. Perhaps it's something to do with it being the traditional back-to-school time, but I want to embark on new projects, learn something exciting and actively engage with things again. I woke at about 7am this morning to a world shrouded in mist, with a sun earnestly trying to break through. The garden was covered in cobwebs sparkling with dew, something I hadn't seen in a long time. It took my breath away, the natural world on the cusp of change like this, and I welcomed in a new season, a new chapter.

On my drive up the seemingly deserted road, I spotted a woman who we've met a few times through the workshops we hold. She's always bright and bubbly, and I liked her immediately when we first met. This morning she'd come out to take a few photos of the mist hugging the sea. She asked about the adoption, as she'd followed our journey over the last couple of months through our sporadic chats. I explained where we're at, told her about yesterday's debacle, and ended by saying the stock phrase I expect everyone to say; "we'll get there in the end". So many people have said this to me that I had begun saying it myself. "Yes, you will," she smiled. "But in the meantime, it's really really frustrating for you, isn't it?" I wanted to get out of the car and hug her. Sometimes it means so much just to have your feelings validated, not to have someone brush them under the carpet with cliches like "you'll get there in the end", but to really engage with what it might feel like. As I left her with her camera, I glanced in my rearview mirror and smiled and smiled like a loon at her. Thank you, I hope my smile said. Thank you for really being just who I needed to see this morning.

On the subject of every day angels, I wanted to tell a story about my brother-in-law's mum. A few days after I'd written a post about feeling invisible as an adoptive mum, she came up to me when I was on my own in my sister's kitchen. She put her arms around me. "Congratulations, mum-to-be," she said. And those words meant more to me than I can say.

All those every day angels, thank you. And today you have inspired me to try to be an every day angel too.

Bring in the lions - the hoop-jumping continues...

After a weekend of manically putting up fencing in the garden and guards on just about everything in the house, we had our health and safety assessment this morning. Bearing in mind this was first done many months ago, and we passed at panel on 11th July, it feels uncannily like we're going backwards now.

Everything was poked and prodded. We were advised to box up all the lower shelves of books and put them in the loft: "toddlers like pulling things off shelves". A further fire guard must be purchased - one that sticks out into the room, all windows and the French doors must be covered in a kind of sticky-back plastic "in case he hits a toy hard against the window". The pantry must be gated off, and the cats and dog are now to have their food behind a gate. The fencing we've put up everywhere in the garden must be another foot higher. And most ludicrously of all, the whole patio must be surrounded by a high fence - "advisable until he's at least 8 or 9".

I struggle with this kind of nanny-state-ism. Our parents or grandparents didn't grow up in these cotton wool kind of environments. Children learn through their environment, they have to be able to assess dangers and risks or they grow up fearful, unable to make decisions for their own safety. One of my favourite parenting books is 'The Continuum Concept' in which Liedloff describes how children in indigenous tribes in the jungle allow their children to be active decision makers and part of society. Yes, we must protect our children, but we can't keep them in a padded cell so that they have no experience of real life. If real-life environments were as dangerous as these social workers were making out, the human race would have died out a long long time ago.

It led me to reflect on some of the greatest adventures of my own childhood, free from parental 'guidance', in a lovely garden called The Chase that belonged to family friends. This vast kingdom was the most wonderful playground, filled with hidden dangers, banks to scramble up or down, different levels, little mildewed steps through overhanging trees, rope swings, and - best of all - an old beaten up truck half hidden by vegetation which my friends and I would delight in climbing all over. Think of some of our favourite children's literature - 'Swallows and Amazons', 'The Secret Seven', 'My Family and Other Animals' etc. etc. (there's so very many) - all of which involve adventuring and assessing risk. We are doing our children a disservice by creating safe, sanitised worlds with no opportunity to explore, to engage with the environment, to make choices. I know children who have been brought up in this kind of way and, without exception, they are all terrified of the natural world. They check over their shoulder to get confirmation from their parents before they try anything. They have no faith in themselves, in their own capabilities.

We discussed further what was going to happen from here. One of the SWs visiting is going to be away on 26th September, so the next matching panel date we might be able to get is 10th October. To be told 12 days before your matching panel date that it is going to be cancelled, and then told it won't be for another month makes the blood boil. Neither R or I want to kick up a stink as we want to keep them on our side but oh! how I wish our SW hadn't had to go on leave. By now we'd have just 11 days until we met our son. Instead, we had his SW telling us today just how much he'd changed - "every time I see him, he's changed so much! He's pushing himself up to crawl and we think he'll probably race through the crawling stage and go right on to walking soon." We want to witness these changes. We just want to bring our son home now or, at the very very least, meet him. Let's hope he gets to come back here before his 1st birthday, they said today. Yes, let's hope, we thought, but hey, the ball's in your court, you've got the power here.

Frustrated. Powerless. And living in a house that vaguely resembles Fort Knox.

Matching panel cancelled...

The big bad SW from last week called up.

Apparently our health and safety check wasn't done properly. I mentioned that she wanted locks on all the windows. Well, she wants a lot more than that.

She insinuated that our beloved SW didn't do the PAR form properly. She wants to re-submit it after we've had a health and safety check by two SWs on Monday. She has cancelled our 12th September matching date. She doesn't know when we'll get to meet LO (and doesn't actually seem to care), but the paperwork will take three weeks to file.

We begged her to be reasonable. The PAR mistakes were theirs, not ours, so why should we and LO be penalised? We promised to get all the things she wants done this weekend but please, please, please don't cancel the matching panel as we already know October is all booked up. But she does it by the book, and won't shift.

This power-crazy lady is messing with my mind. We've cancelled work left, right and centre, we've arranged our lives all ready for our big, big day: the day we meet LO, which was going to be 14th September, 2 weeks today.

She said to R; 'I can't understand what all the rush is with this one, why your SW has been in such a hurry to push it through.' It made us wonder what she meant; that we'd got too cosy with our SW, and they think she's doing a sort of matey job on our case?

Maybe our SW was pushing it through because it makes sense to bring LO home to his family as soon as possible? Maybe she just cared about us and about LO?

I feel strangely afraid of this woman and her power.

Finding inspiration

We have started the countdown! Although the actual date of meeting LO keeps changing, in roughly two weeks tomorrow we will meet him... This fills me with the most delicious anticipation I have ever experienced, each morning waking like a child at Christmas. And, just like a child at Christmas (how long were the days then?!), every day seems 100x longer than it used to. Our lives are about to change. Completely and forever. And we just can't wait.

I have been making the most of the opportunity to read, well aware that this kind of time will be a bit thin on the ground when he comes home. This week I have been reading Alfie Kohn's inspirational book 'Unconditional Parenting' and re-reading an old favourite, Liedloff's 'Continuum Concept', about attachment parenting. I read a lot of books on parenting for my work, but it's exciting to re-read these books now with an idea of how I might actually put them into practice.

I also write a column on our off-grid life for a local paper and recently wrote about my addiction to quotes. A good quote acts as a catalyst to change, to introspection, to inspiration. Now I am - finally - the owner of a posh phone, I have downloaded an app (still can't quite believe techno-phobe me is writing that!) with daily inspirational quotes. Today I received this: 'The greatest prayer is patience.' That's from the big guy, Buddha, who obviously knew what he was talking about (perhaps he even adopted?!).

And another quote I love, and turn to again and again in the preparation to parenthood comes from a beautiful and thought-provoking little book called 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

A shared grief

I mentioned in a previous post that our SW was going through a big personal crisis. Yesterday we found out that she has taken time off because she can't cope with all that's going on, and we have a new social worker taking us to matching panel. This SW is OLD SCHOOL. When she came over yesterday, it made me realise how ridiculously lucky we'd been with our SW; how much we'd laughed together and how we'd even, when she broke down last week, had a group hug and cried together. With this new SW I remembered that SWs aren't paid to be human, they're paid to be PROFESSIONAL. I ballsed it up straight away by not cleaning the house (we quickly realised with our SW that this wasn't a big thing) and then revealing that we were worried about our SW and to send her our love. Ears pricked on the new SW - 'worried about her, why? What did she say?' Help! Cue much guilt for landing our beloved SW in it.

She then went round the house and started pointing out where we'd have to get locks on the windows and build gates and things. I was pretty close to telling her to f*** off, that we'd been through that part of the process and had passed. But I didn't. I held my breath and said 'if we lived on a busy street, I wouldn't leave the door wide open so that my child could walk into the street. Instead, we live on a cliff and I'll employ the same level of conscientious parenting I would if I lived on a busy road.' She told me it was very unlikely we'd meet LO on 14th September and it would likely be the following week. Crushing, but I'd been expecting it, so it didn't feel as bad as anticipated.

She also gave me all of LO's birth mum's psychological assessment notes. Now, anyone who's read these knows that you have to take it slowly. Make a pot of tea. Break it into manageable chunks. Take breaks. Have a cry. I knew they'd make tough reading, so I was careful with myself and tried to do it in a nurturing kind of way. What I wasn't anticipating was the enormous and overwhelming level of compassion that swept through me. Little things she said, ways in which she behaved with LO. Never missing a contact session and trying, desparately, to assert her maternal love and authority whilst being constantly watched and assessed in a cold office building. She loves her son. She isn't perfect and has made awful mistakes in her life. But it just struck me how incredibly, breath-takingly LUCKY R and I are. That we had parents who, though they made mistakes as all parents do, loved us and provided us with stability. LO's birth mum never had that. She had violence and abuse and hatred. She was never taught how to love. And from the moment she tried to make a normal life for herself, she was watched. Everything she said and did for the last twenty odd years is recorded and picked over. I suddenly felt her loss so acutely, especially when I read the psychologist's final assessment that she wasn't fit to parent: our gain. But - so very, very acutely - her loss.

In the middle of trying to process some of this information, my mum called. My mum has MS and is struggling with day to day things. She was tearful and anxious. We talked for some time. After the phone call, I felt exhausted; exhausted because my mum is going through so much and needs so much love and support. And I had a massive cry. Many years ago, my friend Chas said that she had a big cleansing cry every week, just to shift stuff and even if she didn't really feel like crying. Recently that advice has been pretty useful. Yesterday, I cried for my mum, trying to do simple things and failing, finding photos of herself pre-illness and missing those days. I cried for LO's mum, for all those times she wasn't loved and for the self-hatred and the hatred of others that followed. I cried for LO's dad, for the confusion and heartache and loss. I cried for our SW, who has lost something so special to her. I cried for LO, for his loss of a mum who loves him but doesn't know how to look after him. And, I'll admit, I cried for me and for R, for all that we have been through.

Sometimes, it feels like you lift the lid on the pain of humanity and look in, just for a moment, and it is huge, vast, overwhelming. We can just take a little bit at a time or our hearts would burst. So we mingle our tears with the tears of everyone - our shared pool of grief (was LO's mum crying last night for her son?)- and move on. Because to linger there would be dangerous, and we have to take what we've learnt back out in to the world and try and make a more positive future.

Healing Aloneness

We came back on Monday from a beautiful weekend at possibly the best festival in the country, Off Grid in Somerset. Every year, we go along with my sister and her family to this blissful, heart-centred, small and special festival, and every year it fills me with hope for the future we're creating as a worldwide community. After a few hours of being on the magically decorated site, you begin to feel your edges soften and your heart open. Everyone smiles. People talk to one another. There are loads of crafts activities for adults and kids, amazing talks and learning opportunities on everything from transition towns to building a strawbale house to bees. Home-spun music, loads of dancing, local cider, fires and musicians and gypsy caravans and costumes and a huge - VAST - feeling of belonging. Beautiful, kind-hearted and aware people abound and this weekend we got to hang around with 500 of them, plus some of the leading thinkers who are shaping the world for the better.

On Saturday morning, when the sun made a very welcome appearance, my sister, brother-in-law, R and I were lounging on cushions drinking chai in a gorgeous outdoor cafe. Nearby, my nieces played with friends they'd made and got down to the serious business of trading some of the eclectic wares they'd been making over the summer. The cafe also sold crystals and they were all along the edges, giving the place an ethereal kind of feel. They had shelves of books you could peruse at your leisure. I picked a few, some old favourites I knew would help me shift into that different time and space, and a box of Crystal cards. These beautiflly illustrated cards showed the different crystals and their properties and are used for divination. So, lazily, I spread them out upside down before me and ran my hand over them as I thought of a question to ask....'what support does my son need?'

And the answer?

Anhydrite - Healing Aloneness

When we fear abandonment, Anhydrite reminds us that we are not alone, are connected and embraced in the heart of the divine. (Oh... Wow... Incredible moment.)

For me, and motherhood, I got pink tourmaline - connecting to the heart and nurturing. For R, for fatherhood, he drew lapis lazuli - coming back to centre.

Now to make a little family altar with our sacred crystals.

An 8 month pregnant wish...

Sometimes I wish I was pregnant. Not because I want anyone other than LO - I don't, he is the most precious person to us already. Not because I envy my pregnant friends the wonders and magic of pregnancy - I made my peace with that a long time ago. But because right now I'd be eight months pregnant and I think people would treat me differently.

I know that there can be some shocking oversights in day-to-day life; people not giving up their seat to a pregnant woman, for instance. But on the whole I know that pregnant women are treated with a kind of reverence. They are allowed outbursts of emotion. They are expected to be tired and overwhelmed at times. They are asked tenderly how they are feeling, sometimes by complete strangers. Others get caught up in the magnificent energy they exude and smile at them, say 'not long to go now!' (I witnessed this whilst away with my friend a few months ago, everyone we met whilst walking the dog smiled and spoke to her about her big bump.) They leave work amidst a flurry of cards and presents. They have blessingways or baby showers during which friends and family toast the good news and offer advice and gifts.

I know this attention might be unwanted at times, and I'm sure there are moments when every pregnant woman wishes she wasn't carrying around a big sign saying 'I'm about to have a baby! Talk to me about it!'. But there's something about being an adoptive mum that makes you feel a bit...well, invisible. You don't want to tell lots of people in case it falls through at the last minute. You're expected to carry on as normal until you meet your future child. Outbursts of emotion and general exhaustion are seen perhaps as moodiness, irritability, and at worst, irrational. In some cases, people are embarrassed by adoption - the elephant in the room being why you've chosen that route - and they avoid talking about it altogether. Others are furiously opinionated about adoption today, about the prospects for children whose early life is blighted by difficulty. Finally, there are those who ask impossibly impertinent questions about the birth family, without seeming to think how it might feel to answer those questions. The birth family is an endless curiosity box, pored over by people intent on sharing their opinions (I have refused to answer questions on this subject, other than the bare neccessities). I have been told many times, by people who have never been through it, how incredibly difficult, time-consuming and invasive the adoption process is - rarely have I been asked what it is really like (not that bad, actually, until the last chapter).

Sometimes, I would like someone to smile at me, say 'congratulations! Not long to go now! You look amazing! Radiant! Sit down and have a cup of tea, let me help you with your bags...here, have a tissue, it's perfectly normal to have a cry.'

Now, wouldn't that be magic?

Nervous

Today has been many things, but relaxing isn't one of them. Outside the sun is shining, the sea is blissfully still and azure blue, the crickets are buzzing and dragonflies flit lazily about the garden. But I woke with a sense of foreboding. Today is LO's last contact with his birth mum; am I already so connected with him that I felt his emotions surrounding that? I don't know what time they met, but at about 10am my anxiety reached a peak and I felt jittery and ended up snapping at R. Part of our general nervousness is because another birth family member has reappeared and turned up to the last two contact meetings. Though our LA have been vague about it, I know that adoption service's main aim is to minimise disruption to a child's 'normal' life as much as possible, which is why adoption or kinship care within the family or friendship circle is, in their eyes, the best option. R and I don't have a leg to stand on until matching panel on 12th September and we were acutely aware of that today.

Added to that, our SW is going through an intense personal crisis and she cancelled the meeting we had this afternoon. R received a call telling him this, and asking if we were free to meet with a different SW on Tuesday. Alarm bells started ringing...why do we need to have a meeting? What is it they can't tell us on the phone? It was a senior SW too, so we both went into our private worlds of panic (R was out and relaying messages to me at home). I was suddenly overwhelmed by a certainty that it wasn't going to happen - a dread filled me completely. Sanding down the chest of drawers and changing table, I thought 'we're going to have to put these away in the shed and try and forget this whole chapter in a few days'. I had been planning to paint LO's name on to the changing table but I stopped myself.

Then, the phone call to say that the meeting was just to go through some paperwork for the matching panel. What a relief! Not the news we dreaded at all. So, how come I'm still as jumpy as a March hare? R just called to ask me what I wanted him to pick up in town and I nearly kicked over my chair in my haste to get to the phone. Please let this nervousness be just that, nervousness, and not my crazy intuition on overdrive. Let this be the time my intuition has gone utterly askew, and all will be well.

Eavesdropping

Once a week, I go back to the university I used to study at (many!) years ago. I started studying there again a few years back, doing an adult ed course, and now I meet up with fellow learners there, sit in the cafes or read in the library. I like the feeling of being there, caught up in the hub of learning and activity, and the library has an incredible range of reference books. I realise it sounds a bit like I cling to my youth, and I have to admit it's always fun to listen to the conversations of the students I once was. They see me as a bit of an old lady now so I can eavesdrop quite merrily! Last Tuesday I overheard a conversation between four students that followed this stream: selling your body for medical science - sperm donors - fertility treatment - adoption  in the UK and US - attachment - oxytocin (feel-good hormone) - breastfeeding. It was the most interesting conversation and I was amazed that they were having it - it pretty much covered a whole series of topics I know a lot about now.

What was so striking was that it reminded me how passionate we are when we are young - we feel we know everything because we have read some books and done some research and we can't wait to get out in the world and tell everyone! I thought I knew everything there was to know about natural birth having interviewed 10 women for my dissertation, and was a passionate advocate for that and breastfeeding. It went on to inform my work and gradually I learnt through the experience of supporting women about birth and new parenthood, but it was really those passionate, heartfelt and heated debates I had with people at university that struck me as I listened to these students. How endearing it is to hear the fresh, innocent opinions of people who haven't yet learnt through life experience (and I also remember how irritating older know-it-alls were when they smiled in a just-you-wait kind of way so I hope to god I never do that to anyone!!).

It also reminded me that you just don't know how your life is going to turn out. When I researched natural birth, I just assumed it would be part of my life story, but my life has taken a different turn. I wondered if any of the students would look back on that conversation ruefully when they're older, and their life has taken a different turn. One of the students was going to a lecture on the neurobiology of attachment and I wanted to go over and ask her about it because it sounded so interesting - and relevant to me!!! - but I chickened out because I didn't want them to think that the old lady sipping her coffee and pretending to read notes had in fact been listening to their (quite loud!) conversation all along...
(Rather incredibly - and brilliantly - after this eavesdropping session I was ID-ed when trying to buy a bottle of wine - hey, not so old-looking after all!)

In other news... I have become a knitting nut and spend almost every evening making something, usually for LO. Here is the latest addition to the pile of knitting:

Over hill and dale...

Last week I felt frustrated and low. This week, largely thanks to me reaching out and telling a few folks how I was feeling, I feel more positive and calm. In terms of the process, R and I still cannot make a sense of it. When our SW tried to challenge it, she was told to get back in her place and that LO's social workers and the managers knew what they were doing and 'wanted to make this match work and needed to have time to do that'. (So do we, foolish people! And, surely, the best way to do that is for our son to get to know his parents as soon as possible, ending destructive contact sessions and beginning our lifelong bonding process???? But no, we must wait another few months whilst they 'look at the paperwork'.) But I came to a realisation that I can either rail against the system, feel angry and powerless and sad at all the precious weeks and months we're missing out on, or I can relax and settle back and know that soon we will be a family. 

A friend who has also been through the adoption process sent me a poem. It made me cry, a good healing and ultimately joyful cry, and reconnected me with the vital truth: that we are mothers long before we are able to hold our child physically and that energetically LO is already our son. The poem reminded me of that so eloquently and tenderly. We look at photos of him constantly and laugh aloud at some of his comic little expressions...there is so much joy in the midst of all the bureaucracy, so much laughter, connection, love - overflowing love, and light. Our seaside home is the perfect place to experience all these things - we wake to the sea, the tides, the clouds, the birds laughing and playing on the wind, the eternal cleansing and changing of nature, truly the most healing and restorative way to be in the world. Sea swims wash away the aggravation, windswept walks blow away the 'mind-fussing', clean, fresh invigorating sea air fills us with optimism and warm sun fills us with light. What a wonderful place for LO to arrive into... We are truly blessed! There is a lifetime of 'moments' ahead of us as a family, some wondrous, some challenging, but we have surely had the very best start simply because of this place, this dream-like place.

So I've been on lots of walks this week, through sleepy villages, along the seafront, alongside rivers, through the newly-harvested fields, getting deliciously lost in a forest as the sun went down. We're planning a little wild camping on the edge of the same forest in a few weeks time. R got me some new walking shoes from a charity shop and I tested them out yesterday on a long hike with friends - brilliant! My feet were getting a little blistered in my old running shoes but these are more comfortable and roomier, and mean I will get as much walking in as I can before LO comes. Wild flowers in abundance, sheep and cows grazing, skylarks on the wing, the smell of woodland and warm grass... my sister bought us a fantastic baby carrier - basically a large rucksack with waist support but very ergonomic and beautifully made - so we can take LO out on our walks. I spent a large portion of my baby and toddler-hood on my dad's back exploring the countryside so am excited to share the same delights with LO.

And my best friend had her baby ten days early. I went to visit them with a feeling of love practically exploding my heart all the way on the train! He is breath-takingly perfect, delicate and wise-looking. He has his dad's nose, his mum's elfin facial structure and ears, and thick straight black hair - so much of it! I felt in awe, that wonderful feeling of sheer surprise, as if I had slipped through a portal into Alice's Wonderland, to a place more radiant, colourful, alive, incredible and magical than the humdrum day-to-day. It stayed with me all evening, after I'd left the sleepy new family and was travelling back on the train, buzzing lightly in my chest. Soon, it will be me and R, holding our little one, gazing at him with a feeling of awe and wonder.

Through the ringer...out the other side

I haven't posted for so long because I've mostly been getting on with life post panel, and since our social worker went on holiday the whole process has ground to a halt. Twice I have woken in the night after a dream about Little One and had to shake R awake to ask him if the whole thing is a dream. Twice, and both times proper night sweats. I used to dream regularly about being pregnant and, as the dream progressed, things would get sinister: the baby would shrink or disappear or my belly would stop growing and I'd look down and discover there was no bump there at all. Then I would wake and realise it was all a dream. No bump. No baby. So these adoption nightmares are nothing new, it's just the context that has changed. In one dream I was talking to people about Little One and everyone was looking at me like I was bonkers; "who's Little One?' they were asking, and I slowly realised that the whole thing had never happened...until I woke up. And that's the wonderful delightful blissful difference about these dreams - I wake up and the adoption is REAL, Little One is REAL, not with us yet, but still REAL.

Nonetheless, the following day has been tainted by that edgy feeling that something is about to go wrong, just that smudge of anxiety a bad dream always leaves behind. Our SW is back from holiday today. Soon, things will start happening again.

I spoke to LO's foster carer last week. I heard what he'd been up to, that he was cutting another tooth and pushing himself up to crawl, rolling over...all these things R and I want to witness. This is surely the most frustrating part: we've been approved, LO is freed for adoption, and now we have to wait for a matching panel date (not until September). That irritates me more than I can say. Plus LO is still having direct contact with birth mum and at the last meeting another family member turned up unannounced (I only heard this through the foster carer who said she probably wasn't supposed to tell me) and spent time with LO without anyone working out whether this would be in his best interests.

Since this has turned into a bit of a rant, I'll write a little about the panel, which was when my feelings in general about the process started to change. I can see the point - just - of having a panel, but some of the questions they asked us were ludicrous, including a breath-takingly stupid question about how a child would feel about us not planning to get any more pets at present (we have FOUR, including a dog, surely plenty?!). There was also a repeated question about how we planned to get a buggy up our road - it's a little steep at the beginning and can be uneven. I said we were both fit and healthy and could manage it (I've done it many times with friends' kids), but that didn't seem to be enough. We were also asked about education, finances (of course!) and other things that were all included on our 50 page PAR form which they had in front of them - for some of the questions on the PAR I'd written several pages. So we had to fight the urge to say; "Look at the paper in front of you! It's all there!!!". I think, to be honest, it was the way in which the questions were asked that upset me in the end, as if we had to defend our right to parent. Sitting in a room with 12 people firing questions at you in a guilty-until-proved-innocent way is disconcerting to say the least. But I think we did well, we smiled and laughed and acted relaxed, and took the questions in our stride.

It was afterwards that it hit me, and for a few days I felt really low and exhausted. I felt a bit like we'd been prodded and poked and hung out to dry, and there were quite a few teary outbursts when I thought about it. We got our approval, which was the main thing, and eventually I came to the conclusion that I had to put the whole episode behind me. Meeting with LO's foster carer helped, though even that was under the scrutiny of the social workers - everything, everything, under the watchful eye of the social workers (although we do have a lovely SW and LO's is really sweet too, sometimes it would be nice to be autonomous!).

Anyway, rant over! We received our first 'adoption' present from a friend yesterday - a beautiful silver frame perfect for a picture of LO. I also finished knitting him a stripey penguin - photo to follow. I realised that one thing that gets lost in the whole bureaucracy of adoption is a sense of self, so R and I have spent the last few weeks regaining our true selves: hanging out, going on long walks, hosting workshops here, spending time with friends, laughing and generally being OURSELVES rather than people on a PAR form!

Before too long we will be parents and that is what this whole thing is about...

Approved by the big bad panel

Just wanted to check in - briefly - and say hooray, hooray, we were approved! Our whirlwind week now over and some of the dust settling but lawks, has it thrown up some crazy emotional stuff for me...been a proper waterworks for a few days and trying to regain some sort of sense of self away from all the endless endless bureaucracy. More on that - a lot more on that - in another post, but just wanted to drop by and say it is going to happen. We are going to adopt a child.

Panel in a few hours...

Leaving in an hour to go to panel. Amazing that we've got here and that this is the culmination of a year's interviewing and learning. We're excited and surprisingly not as nervous as we thought we'd be but we'll see what emotions cook up when we're waiting to go in! We have a list of all the panel members, including photos, and nobody looks/seems too terrifying. Going to eat a big lunch now and then spend a little quiet time reflecting and preparing. Having read through our PAR form again today, it seems extraordinary that all 11 panel members have read it, and know everything there is to know about us...

After today, if all goes well, we can move on from talking about us and get on with talking about our son, and that's the bit we're relishing the most.

(Oh, and I'm relishing seeing my husband dressed in an outfit of suit trousers and shirt rather than his usual scruffy t-shirt and shorts! He just walked past saying; 'I feel like I'm going to a wedding!'!!!)

Wish us luck!

Our gurgling, smiling, laughing boy

Wow wow wow, what a week! Yesterday we had my niece's 'Coming of Age' 13th birthday celebration - all her family gathered in her garden in a circle to give her their wishes for the future and to guide her under a human arch and through a beautiful arbour her dad had made - the first steps to womanhood. This was incredibly emotional, I can still remember lying my head on my sister's bump 13 years ago and talking to my niece in utero. Now she is this incredibly funny, bright, witty, wise and articulate beauty, and she literally makes my heart surge with love. What an honour it is to witness children growing up. Yesterday felt special because my sister took time to create a ceremony to mark this transition and it gave all of us the chance to stop and reflect and honour this beautiful being.

Today, we met our little boy's social worker for the first time. We'd got up at six am to blitz the house (it was a crazy mess as we'd both made gifts for my niece - R a table and a candleholder and me some knitted wrist warmers and an embroidered shawl - and there was literally stuff EVERYWHERE!) and she arrived with our SW at 9am. She was warm and friendly from the off, and we liked her immediately. We further warmed to her when she made a big fuss of our dog. She seemed to 'get' us, our lifestyle choices, why we have created such a simple life so we can pursue our creative interests. She also understood our choices about living in nature and getting outside every day, and not having TV or other distractions to our time together. We have frequently met with questioning and incredulity about our lifestyle, and it felt so affirming for someone to just understand us in this really compassionate way without us having to explain ourselves 100 times. She understood that we chose this way of life because of how we wanted to bring up our children, and how important it was to us that they had a really hands-on, playful, nurturing, outdoorsy, warm kind of childhood with both of us sharing parenting and plenty of time for reading by the fire, cooking together, growing veg together, going on walks, playing endless games, rockpooling, camping...all the fun things we share with our nieces and have envisaged for our own children. So - WOOO HOOOO - she understands us! Which made us feel buzzy and happy.

Then we watched a video of the little guy. I can't really explain what this felt like. Those of you who've been there will know the enormous and overwhelming rush of love, the tears, the laughter, the urge to reach into the computer screen and just touch - to draw your future child to you. It's an extraordinary experience, like being Tiny Tim and looking in at cosy windows, but with the knowledge that soon this will be the face you wake up to, this will be the gurgling laughter that will light up your lives, this will be the little body you dress and hold close, this little person will grow up with you as mum and dad. I'm still emotional when I think about it. Just seeing him laugh when he's tickled, and playing thoughtfully with his toys and gazing at the camera and pulling at his toes - it made it all so amazingly, mind-blowingly real. His SW let us watch the video several times as she needed to take it away after, but we will get a copy hopefully this week. I can tell we will watch it permanently!

Off to panel on Wednesday...then meeting his foster carers on Friday.

Becoming real...

A whirlwind of activity forecast! Next Monday we are meeting our little boy's social worker for the first time. She is coming here to our off-grid cliff-top home and quite what she'll make of it is anybody's guess but one thing you can say, for an adventurous little boy it's a pretty exciting place to grow up - acres of countryside all around, the sea to swim in, a pebbly beach and loads of rockpools at the end of the garden, a huge veg garden and a river to row in with Dad. But it does get cold in winter and we rely on candlelight and a range to heat our water - hey, you can't have it all!;)

On Wednesday 11th we have our panel date (our SW is coming tomorrow to talk through the finer points with us - what not to say etc! I'm worried that my nervous gabbing habit will land us in trouble so am planning to keep schtum unless someone asks me a pertinent question like, how come you two are so crazily poor? Eeeek, SW says our finances 'might well come up'.)

On Friday 13th - unlucky for some but amazingly lucky for us - we get to meet our little boy's foster carers for the first time. This makes me feel like a weepy and excitable Weeble toy - we will get to ask them questions about someone so unbelievably precious to us and he will begin to grow in our minds and hearts.

His SW is also going to bring a video of him when she comes to meet us. This makes us deliriously excited too - isn't it incredible, amazing, awe-inspiring how deeply and completely you can fall in love - hook, line and sinker - with someone you've never met? We've seen 5 pictures of him and read the things he likes doing (drinking milk, playing with his shoes and socks off - that's my boy!) and already he is precious to us, too precious to even convey in words.

It keeps making me think of that Velveteen Rabbit story, that by believing in this little person so much we are manifesting him all around us...each day he comes closer, becomes more real, a part of our lives.

Yes, I'm ready for motherhood

Yesterday, after talking about where we were at with the adoption, a friend turned to me and said: 'So you could be a mother in a few months?' to which I replied, yes, that looks like the way things are going. And then he asked me a question that floored me:

'And are you really ready, I mean, ready to be a mother?'

I bluffed my answer, as I always do when put on the spot, mumbling something about workshops and reading and all the cerebral stuff that isn't really parenting at all. And then I went away and thought about it....for a long time.

There's a particularly pernicious assumption that pregnancy is the only initiation to parenthood, that by growing a child within you, you gain access to a secret world of motherhood that outsiders cannot enter. I would have to say I think this is a fallacy. Over the years of supporting pregnant women, I have urged many, many clients to consider more than what colour they are going to paint the nursery or whether their new Bugaboo will fit up the stairs. I have written articles on the spiritual transitions we make in our lives, parenthood being one of the biggest, and how we need time to reflect and rituals that validate these. I have written about keeping a journal, spending time in nature connecting with the elements, creating rituals that both challenge and expand our understanding and consciousness. Over the years, I have been saddened that we live in such a capitalist culture we've lost sight of the sacred, the journeys and paths we forge through life, the challenges we overcome, and the way everything can be magic if we choose to make it so. In fact, one of the reasons I became so jaded in my work with pregnant women was because I just got tired of hearing about the fact the extension wouldn't be finished on the house in time, the nursery a couple wanted to send their unborn child to was already getting booked up, they had to buy a new car/kitchen/bigger pair of jeans...

Conversation with each new couple seemed to be increasingly devoid of the real questions of parenting: will my child be happy? how can I support their spiritual and emotional growth? what challenges will having a child put on our relationship and how can I prepare for that? what are the best foods I can feed my child? what steps can I take to ensure that I get the support I need? who will I want to be a mentor for my child? what values do I want my child to grow up with? how can I make time to adjust to the enormous changes new parenthood brings? what will be the effect on my lifestyle/friendships/daily activities and am I ready to make those changes? will my heart explode with this new capacity for love? will society support me in my new life as a parent? or will I find myself marginalised, suddenly less important than I was as a worker bee? who am I and what kind of a parent will I be?

Now, I could be wrong, but most people I know who come to adoption do so after trying for their own biological children. (This assumption was, however, challenged in our adoption workshops when 4 of the 8 couples already had birth children and wanted to adopt for altruistic reasons, but on the whole, I think this situation is rarer than the former.) With any number of medical interventions now being touted as a miraculous way of cheating nature - from IVF to surrogacy - these years of fertility treatment can stretch endlessly. During this time, couples are faced with some of the biggest challenges of their lives. Unable to fulfil their most basic, primal need - to procreate - they battle with an increasing sense of their own failure. This either brings couples together or it pushes them apart. Those that make it through this first set of lion’s jaws, and come out battered, bruised but still clutching each other’s hands, are ready for the next set.
In between this, there is the endless barrage of (sometime well-meaning but sometimes not) conversations, everywhere from the dinner party to the water cooler:

“When are you two going to hurry up and have children?”
“God, you’re sensible putting it off, things are just so stressful with kids.”
“I guess you’re putting your career first.” (Thanks Daily Mail)
“I know a couple who tried for years and then got pregnant when they went on holiday/relaxed/started the adoption process/gave up work/moved house/took up swimming/ate more nuts…” (you know the bag - delete as appropriate)

Couples that survive this tend to get tougher skins, are more able to laugh at themselves and learn, over time, to let the little things go. They become resilient, amazingly so, and ready to face the next challenge.
Then the adoption process starts, and they are subjected to a level of intrusion no ordinary parent would expect to undergo. Are we suitable parents? Why? In what ways? Doesn’t this, that or the other from our past stand against us? No? Prove it. On and on, the searching, scraping, digging away at our pasts and what has brought us to where we are today. Not for the faint-hearted but certainly something that helps us grow in other ways than just a pregnant belly. How do we parent a child with unique needs, with a chequered past? What might those needs be? What skills will we bring to the table? How do we cope with the fact our child will not be our biological child, but a unique individual with a unique identity?

We explore, we excavate, we reflect, we question. We wonder at the parenting we received. We wonder who we are, why we are the way we are. We dig to the very depths of our souls. And we come out of it with a stronger sense of self. Maybe a little battered and bruised in places but with a better understanding of how to deal with batterings and bruisings.

There are the practical sides of parenting: the feeding, routines, nappy-changes, night-time disturbances and soothing, that most of us will have to learn and make up as we go along, but what parent doesn’t?  There’s no rule book for that stuff and an adoptive parent, like a biological one, will have to rely heavily on instinct.

So, in answer to the question (and I know this is a long answer!), I would say: YES. A resounding YES. I would even go so far as to say that as an adoptive mother, I am even better equipped to parent than my biological neighbour.

For all adoptive parents out there, don’t forget that you have the skills, the knowledge, the intuition and the incredible capacity for love that are requisites for parenting, however convoluted your journey is to get there.
Thank you for reading. Now I can step down off my soap-box ;)

Please help me fight discrimimation against adoptive mothers!

Here's something a little shocking:

Researching our financial options for impending parenthood, I discovered that as a SELF-EMPLOYED ADOPTIVE MOTHER I do not receive statutory adoption pay. Discriminatory? Very. See below for very cross letter I sent my MP (his name actually is Norman, I didn't make that up). Working pregnant women, by law, receive statutory maternity pay regardless of whether they are employed through a company or self-employed.

There are several things you can help me do as my friends - sign this petition (not mine but one I came across) and/or cut and paste your own version of the below letter to email to your MP. I know that's asking a lot and I don't expect you to send a letter/email if you don't have time, but any help getting this issue raised in public consciousness would be very helpful. I can see a placard-waving few months coming on here!

Just to give you an idea of where things stand at present, this is the current response to questions about this discrimination:
"As you are aware maternity benefits are primarily provided to protect the health and safety of the pregnant women and new mother when she has given birth... Statutory Adoption Pay is not available to the self-employed. The Government did carefully consider the position of self-employed parents when SAP was introduced but it was considered that the costs of setting up and administering a scheme similar to maternity allowance would be disproportionate to the numbers involved." (my italics)

Right. Well, thanks. Those 'numbers involved' currently include me, and I won't take it lying down. So any help you can give would be gratefully received!

MY ANGRY EMAIL TO MP:

Dear Norman,

I am writing to you because my husband and I are in the process of adopting and researching our financial options. Today I discovered that as a self-employed individual, I am not eligible for statutory adoption pay. This seems to be a shocking discrimination. Working pregnant women, by law, have access to statutory maternity pay regardless of whether they are employed through a company or self employed. Why are adoptive mothers discriminated against like this? Women who go on to adopt often do so after years of trying for their own biological family. Consider how it must feel then, that after years of failing to conceive, they are at a distinct financial disadvantage to women who get pregnant and have their own child.

Surely the work we do is just as valuable as biological mothers? In fact, it could be argued it is more so. We are providing a secure and safe home environment for seriously disadvantaged children. If we did not adopt these children, it would fall to the state to provide for them financially and bring them up until they are 18. These are children who have suffered more trauma and separation in their early lives than most of us will experience in a lifetime. To enable them to go on to live secure, happy and fulfilling lives, they need the best start in their adoptive families as possible. These children need adoptive parents who are able to devote time to help them adjust, who can be there as they cope with some of the attachment issues common to adoptive youngsters.

To deny a self-employed woman statutory adoption pay, so that she has to jeopardise the health and happiness of her child and return to work, seems thoughtless at best and, frankly, downright dangerous. If we are to give these children the best chance after rocky beginnings, we need to support those who will be dedicated to their care: their parents. Discriminating against self employed adoptive parents, and making them feel like lower class citizens without rights, does not achieve this.

I am still reeling from the shock of my discovery and want to reach as many people as possible so we can fight against this blatant and unacceptable discrimination. I hope I can count on your support in bringing this to light in parliament. We must act to change the law.

will he smile?

Long time no write, but for good reason. We've been in a whirlwind getting all the paperwork ready to go out to panel members. Our SW, bless her, is possibly one of the most disorganised people I've come across. This upsets my mother-in-law who thinks she should pull her socks up a bit, but as I said yesterday, I'd prefer our SW to be compassionate, aware, kind and fun than uber organised (though a combination of both would be nice). And that's exactly the kind of person we got. However, the last week has made me reconsider that just slightly, as we got a call on Friday saying she'd forgotten we needed to fill in an eight question C9 form, and she needed it by Monday. This was after many other calls saying did we have this or could we look through our notes for that... The week was spent frantically trying to track things down from relevant authorities. We had a pretty jam-packed weekend lined up, hosting workshops and driving up to Kent. So I spent five hours working on the C9 form on Friday, finally getting it finished by bedtime. The C9 is really an adoptive couple's chance to say who they really are, what makes them tick, why they're suitable parenting material, so it was a pretty big deal. Eleven pages later and I think I got my message across. Then our SW called saying she needed to interview two of our friends before Monday. Bless them, our good friends K and B gave up their Sundays to separately meet with the SW. Talk about eleventh hour stuff! But now the forms are all in, and we haven't had a phone call asking for anything else...yet.

In the midst of all this, we've been getting wildly excited about our little boy. As the days go by, he becomes more and more real to us, the sense of him being part of our life more and more vivid. What I still can't get my head around, no matter how hard I try, is what it will be like to 'meet' our son - not a wide-eyed newborn but a little man with experiences of life already. Mine will not be the first face he gazes at. He will already have faces and voices that mean a great deal to him, and we will be taking him away from those people he has gradually come to love and trust. A more extraordinary set-up for motherhood I cannot think of.

My uncle and his wife adopted a little girl from China and he told me about when they arrived at the orphanage to meet their daughter, alongside many other western couples. The babies were unceremoniously distributed to the waiting couples and most began to cry fiercely. Here they were, separated from the only carers (however limited their care) they had ever known, and handed to a pair of nervous, pale strangers speaking a foreign language. Imagine too the adoptive mothers and fathers, fraught from years of infertility, unsure how to comfort or even hold an infant, paranoid that everyone's watching them fail at this very first step - what a traumatic start to a new life for them all. My uncle's wife recalls breaking down in tears in the airport toilets as they waited for their flight home with their new daughter. Their little girl would not be comforted, was distraught and terrified, and my uncle's wife was trying to change her nappy in a cramped toilet. All the little clothes she had brought to dress her daughter in got soaked in wee and a Chinese woman walking past tutted loudly and began to rebuke this struggling, helpless new mother in Chinese. Ugh, I still shudder when I hear this story, despite the fact that all three are now doing well many years later, and are a happy and flourishing little family.

At least for us, our little boy will be with experienced foster carers who will know to introduce things slowly. I have been lucky enough to care for lots of babies in my life, so the practical stuff won't be too nerve-wracking. What is nerve-wracking though is the moment we meet as a family. What if he cries? What if he is nervous or afraid of us? I know that the foster carers will prepare him as best they can for our first visit and he will have seen the DVD of us that our LA has integrated as part of the process. But you know how you want it all to be perfect? And how everything, just every single thing of the last six years, is hinged on that one moment - the HELLO, the becoming parents moment. So I just don't know quite what I'd do if he burst into tears!
Please, please, powers that be, divine intervention, whatever, if you grant me one wish, let it be that our son looks at us and smiles...

The top ten things I can do because I'm not pregnant!

Over the years of trying to conceive, and then choosing adoption, it is easy to focus on the negatives. In fact, our SW asked us the other day 'where we were on not having our own kids'. Not an easy question to answer, but interestingly, we'd just come back from a happy and relaxed week away with my pregnant friend and felt pretty chilled about the whole thing. I've spent most of my working life either researching pregnancy and birth, or supporting pregnant and birthing women and new mums. It's not without a sense of irony that I glance up at bookshelves heaving with books on natural birth and breastfeeding (though I've now, with a sense of release, donated these to my pregnant friend). However, adoption it is, so I see no point in dwelling on what might have been. This morning at my yoga class, I was suddenly struck by all the things I could do that pregnant women can't, such as:

1). Get really physically fit for motherhood. No struggling with a post-birth body that's stretched and torn and tired, and with leaky and aching breasts. In fact, I can enjoy my runs and bend in all sorts of complicated poses in yoga with a sense of freedom.
2). Share feeds with my husband. We've discussed shifts in the night, and taking it in turns throughout the day. Whilst breastfeeding is something I am passionate about, I can still see the benefits of not having to deal with sore and swollen breasts, constant feeding, mastitis, cracked nipples, or feeling like a milk machine. This is purely selfish as I know that breast milk is the best food for babies, but hey, today I'm looking at the positives!
3). Be able to travel where I want, when I want. Not that I'm thinking of jetting off to Barbados (but can I, Mr Bank Manager, please?!) but the fact I can if I want to, right up to until the 'due date' feels good.
4). Eat whatever I want. Soft cheeses and sushi anyone?
5). Not be beholden to the swing and sway of my hormones. As women, we are biologically programmed to release certain hormones at certain points in our lives, and new motherhood is when we are awash with them to help us bond, feed and connect with our babies. So I'm hoping that those good hormones will kick in (I've read that they're released simply by being around a baby) but of course I won't be entirely governed by them in the run up, fractious, tearful and unable to think clearly.
6). I can work however and whenever I like. I work from home so my hours are flexible anyway, but the fact I'm not sitting at my desk with fluid retention and an aching back is surely a bonus.
7). No physical pregnancy strain. Old back problems not triggered by carrying a bump around. No fluid retention, morning sickness, back ache, pelvic pain, urinary problems, aching joints, stretch marks etc. etc. Of course, I know not every pregnant woman suffers from these things but through my work, I've seen quite a few who do!
8). Sleep as much as I possibly can right up until the 'due date'. No tossing and turning trying to get comfortable or getting up 100 times in the night to have a wee. No night-time frets about the birth.
9). Though I was actually looking forward to giving birth, for the sake of my new perspective, I'll add in that I don't have to make birth plans, worry that caregivers won't stick to them, worry that some unforeseen circumstances will unravel everything I'd hoped for, or fret about medical complications. I believe in healthy birth but you know, at least I don't have to worry that I'd have to eat my words and the last decade of saying that!
10). Celebrate our panel day and other summer festivities with a few drinks. Not that I'm much of a drinker, but I can if I want to! So I might plan a night out with friends after panel and get a bit tiddly just because, well, I can!

So there are my top ten reasons why I'm pleased to be adopting and not pregnant right now - the silver lining to our situation...

Matching panel in October?! No, please, no!!!

Trying, and failing, to concentrate on anything other than adoption. I can't stop thinking about our little boy, about what he's doing now, about everything that has happened to him so far. At home today with deadlines pressing down on me from all sides but unable to stop myself from opening my emails and looking at the photos of him...again...and again...and again. Each time makes my heart do a little flutter. It is still all so unreal whilst simultaneously being the most exciting time ever. I can't quite believe it's all happening and I'm sure that's a feeling I'll carry with me right up until he is here, at home, with us. SWs, both his and ours, are off on holidays during July and August so I'm trying not to think too much about those delays. Our SW told us yesterday that the only matching panel date she could get was October. Our hearts literally sank but she's said she will do all she can to find a window, a cancellation. Because if we have to wait until October I think I will just gnaw off my hand or something. Again, the waiting game.

The adoption triangle

Okay, I said I didn't want to look at any more photos of children waiting for adoption. I said that photos made me confused and unable to think straight, they made me wobbly at the knees and tearful and muddled. But today we looked at pictures of 'our little boy'. Still not quite able to type that without putting it in quotation marks. Still not quite able to leap into that amazing world of whole-hearted, total and utter trust. But he's cleared for adoption so there's no muddling at that stage. Potentially, after our panel on 11th July, things could move quite fast. Our SW came round today with all his paperwork. We read about his birth family - things that made our hearts ache and things that made us shudder - and how generations of people can be tangled and destroyed and messed up in ways that seem inconceivable to us in our safe little worlds. We read about the things he liked, how he has gradually, gradually learnt to trust his foster carers and warmed to them (so we're aware of just how disruptive another move will be, new attachments to form - no illusions there), how he burbles and chatters, how he sucks his thumb. All these things make him real, almost tangible. If I sit very still and listen, I can almost hear him and feel him beside me. Soon he will be here.

Reading Stix's account of her fear of bumping into birth family reminds me how entangled and enmeshed we are with the family of our children as adoptive parents. Reading through all 'our son's' birth mum's story made me reflect on what I was doing in my own life when she was caught up in another terrible drama in her life - she exists out there now, maybe pining for her child, maybe angry and lost. Her son - our son - exists out there too. All of us in the triangle of adoption exist in parallel, each is going to change the other's life, but none of us have met yet. Strange, and ultimately - if thought about for too long - mind-boggling.

Have been trying to explain to friends the complexity of where we're at at the moment - how we don't know where we'll be or what we'll be doing over the coming months. That we're going to have to disappear for about a month during introductions and for the first weeks as a family. People keep throwing invites at us to festivals and the like and when we say we're in the middle of adopting they say 'oh, bring the little one along too'. Difficult to explain it's not really like that, that our little boy can't just be carted from one event to another, that he will need time - perhaps a lot of it and perhaps a lifetime of it - to be settled with us, and to attach properly to us. Nigh on impossible to explain that though, people look at us blankly like we're being histrionic and over-protective. Seems the hiding away bit will be good for all of us.

Right now, though, I'm just dreaming. Full of hope and excitement and, I'll admit it, an edge of fear. Hard to believe that after all these years I'm actually going to be a mother.

A personal blessingway...

I'm writing this as a way of not writing the 6000 words I have to hand in at 5pm today as part of my post-grad course. I have written 3000 so it's not total disaster but still kinda nerve-wracking. I come from a long line of self-employed journos and we seem to only be able to work when we're wired on coffee, pulling our hair out and watching the clock eat up the minutes...

Our SW is coming on Thursday to talk more about the little boy she's got in mind. His SW is off on holiday for two weeks on Friday so we need to get in there quickly. I haven't told that many people - some close friends, my sister - but not our parents, as I think if it fell through it would be too much for them. There is another couple, but they're out of county, so it looks like we might be first in line. But then that made me feel sad and guilty for the other couple, probably as excited as we are right now.

At the weekend, my friend's sister and I held her a surprise baby shower. I've never really been hugely into these because they seem a bit grabby and synonymous with our capitalist culture, so we aimed to make it more of a 'blessingway' (though I did notice one card with a pregnant woman on it saying 'Dream...Plan...Shop'. Really? I mean, for f's sake, isn't there more to preparing for parenthood than frickin shopping?!?!). I decorated a little tree with cut out hearts in different colours on which the guests wrote their wishes for her little boy/bump - Love, Abundance, Besos (from the Spanish contingent) etc. I also asked guests to bring along their favourite children's book and there were some absolutely magic memories there! Plus we got her a lovely sling that has lots of different positions, including one for breastfeeding. All in all, a very special day, and it was a treat to see her face when she came in the room!

It's a funny thing though, her 'blessingway' made me think about the plans I had drawn up for mine - bump painting, making garlands for the birth, gathering together different things friends had drawn strength from during their own labours/early days - from nettle tea to a precious stone etc. It seems a bit odd to have one as an adoptive mum, and I can't quite get away from the idea I'd feel a bit fraudulent. Without a bump to rub, and a birth to prepare for, I think I'd feel a bit of a spanner to be honest! So no 'Dream...Plan...Shop' cards for me, thank GOODNESS!!! On the other hand, as I mentioned in a previous post, I am going to do some kind of little treat for myself to celebrate nearly-motherhood - perhaps going away somewhere quiet and planting a tree; taking out a day to swim and eat good foods and write in my journal; making my own little wishing tree or book for our child; even going away somewhere for a night and having a massage and some reflective time...my own personal blessingway.