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.

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 long wait...

Yesterday was a long day. Our SW had called on Friday night about a potential match, and she assured us she would be in touch further to arrange a meeting this week after the longest bank holiday ever! By yesterday morning we were desperate to hear more, trying, and failing, to keep a lid on our excitement. Luckily we had a fashion shoot here at the cottage, with a team of New Yorkers descending with a gold mercedes and a mind-boggling collection of clothes and shoes (have an amusing picture of the dog asleep on a Louis Vuitton clutch surrounded by Jimmy Choos), so that kept us distracted. Nevertheless, between feeding fourteen hungry fashion folks and helping them set up in the rain, we kept the phone near. When the shoot had packed up and gone, it was getting dark. 8pm and still no word from our SW. R had left a message for her, and I'd sent a couple of texts earlier in the day. She'd said she was in a meeting and would call us later. We'd seen her at a local procession over the jubilee weekend and were reminded that for her, we are work, but for us, she holds the key to our future. What a strange balance we have to strike! So I didn't ask her any questions when we bumped in to her as I thought it was important that she has time-off for her family etc.

At 9.30pm we got a text apologising for not being in touch and assuring us she'd call tomorrow. I dropped a couple of stitches in my knitting (making a cardigan for our little one) because I was trying to knit by candlelight and was feeling on tenterhooks! This morning she called. She hasn't been able to get hold of the child's SW yet, so no more news than that she's given us already. She is going to try again today. So again, we are waiting by the phone for news, trying to get a handle on the excitement. No fashion shoot to distract today either! We don't know at the moment if other couples are interested or in line, so we could be getting our hopes up unneccessarily. We're veering between a ridiculously whoop-whoop kind of delight and a nervous kind of fear.

She told us his birth date today and it was a weird thing. In my family we have a long lineage of palendromic birthdays e.g. the fifth day of the fifth month. My grandmother, mother and I all have them. R and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary of meeting on 10/10/10. Our wedding day was 5/5 and two of my bridesmaids have palendromic birthdays. So, when I discovered he too had a palendromic birthday, the same as my late grandmother's, my heart gave a little flutter. I always light a candle on this day to celebrate my grandmother's special day, so unknowingly I was welcoming in a new life too last year. Trying not to be too superstitious about it, but hey, it still feels magic.

Hear me roar

Seriously, I did roar today, and I mean really really roar. My mother-in-law called after her visit with the social worker yesterday and our SW had told her that our child would most likely be coming to live with us in OCTOBER. Great, not so far away, very exciting. Except that we'd been told that matching would be very quick after our 11th July panel date, and we could even go to matching panel the following week. So we had kept August and September pretty free (challenging to manage when you're self-employed and work comes up that you have to keep turning down). Then we heard, second hand, that we were looking at October. And I really did have a little showdown, roaring and all! It felt good to get all the frustration and rage out. Just this limbo limbo land drives you bonkers after a while, this state of always being put off, having to hang on a bit longer. It seems cruel to do it to people who have been waiting forever to become parents anyway. I know when we get there, this bit will become irrelevant, be swept away by the extraordinary life changes ahead but ye gads, they keep you on your toes, don't they?!?!

Think I might just go back to bed....