Excited and suddenly nervous

Our social worker was talking to us about the different ages of kids we might like to adopt. For a long time we said we didn't mind, we just wanted kids, but they urged us to narrow it down, so now we've said under 2. She was talking to us yesterday about a one year old she had in mind. My heart skipped a beat. Suddenly things seem real, tangible. I went for a walk with the dog and ended up talking to our future child (the couple coming the other way on the footpath looked at me like I had lost my marbles), imagining what it would be like to be with them. So close...they already exist. Then, last night, I suddenly felt nervous. R is away in France and I'm here alone this week. The pure isolation and solitude of the place naturally lends itself to musing. And muse I did.

I realised I know nothing about what one year old children are like. Yes, we have lots of godchildren, I've been there the whole time as my nieces have grown up, and I've watched my friends' children grow from babies to teens...and yet, call me a dunce but it just dawned on me last night that I'm not really sure what one year olds can do...can they walk? Talk? I even found myself late-night Googling what a one year old looks like. It seems I've spent so much of the last eight years looking after pregnant women and their tiny newborns, I hadn't really given much thought to post 12 months. And here I am about to become (possibly) a mother to one. And, having found out the kind of things a child that age might be doing, it also dawned on me that we won't hear our child's first word, or see them start to crawl or even begin to totter about. I felt like a fool that I hadn't even really properly thought about that. I mean, I'd thought about that, but not quite let it slip under my skin, if you know what I mean...

My sister, always one to calm my nerves and uplift me, sent me off from hers today with a pile of baby books up to toddler and aged three. I'd scanned my bookshelves last night and found about 50 books on natural pregnancy and birth, but none on child development. Yesterday I felt a bit wobbly. I feel calmer today. R is back tomorrow and we will start reading up on what it's like to parent a one or two year old.

It's good, it's exciting. it's becoming real. I knitted a pair of booties in blue wool yesterday. I might knit some in pink tomorrow.

Adoption panel date booked for the summer

Suddenly seized with an overpowering urge to BLOG! Now that's a new one. I've spent the day 'writing' (read 'procrastinating') and trying to cajole myself into switching off the pesky internet. It wastes more of my time than I can say. Today I have been researching Edwardian living for a novel I'm working on, so it has actually proved useful. No, seriously, watching someone recreate an Edwardian hair-do on Youtube is research. R is in France with work so I am home alone with the kitties and the dog and just about to jump into bed with a big pile of books.

I just wanted to update where we're at with the adoption. We have the most incredible team, and they have whistled us - in a most light-hearted and joyful way - through the process. Our social worker is fun and kind, and the three of us are often in fits of giggles about one thing or another. This was a surprise - all the literature prepared us for some painful knuckling down with the sense that it-would-be-worth-it-in-the-end. But our experience hasn't been like that. Okay, it wasn't always easy to rehash our pasts and pick apart the reasons we behaved certain ways, and both of us found the medical checks intrusive but that's because neither of us have been to a doctor in nearly a decade and felt pretty poked around and patronised (I was told I had a heart murmur - three months of stress later, after a meeting with a very kind cardiologist, I'm told there was a mistake and I'm actually A.O.K. That was after they got my notes mixed up with someone who was on serious prescription drugs. It wasn't the best part of the process.).

But the adoption team themselves have been helpful and interested and kind, and just generally very keen for us to become parents. After much deliberation (we still haven't officially decided) we're thinking of adopting just one child, rather than siblings. Our social worker has some children in mind, and as soon as we come out of panel she will give us their paperwork. That's in July. So we could be mama and papa by autumn time, or maybe even earlier. This gives my whole life a certain dream-like quality. It's like being pregnant without the actual pregnancy, without any idea when the due date will be, what age our child will be (under 2 though).... If I were pregnant, I would be winding things up at work by summer time, but we're working right up until the wire because we don't actually know where the wire is! It's extraordinary and strange and sometimes I wake up and think it's all a dream. The idea that by some miraculous intervention, after all this time, I will hold a child in my arms and say 'Mummy loves you' just strikes me as truly remarkable and not quite, well, real...

Here's something I read the other day that made my heart soar. I felt it was somehow written for R and I. My sister wrote this out in her best script for my mum and I remember it in our childhood kitchen. It's from Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet' - On Children:

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.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might

that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.