No news

Miranda rang yesterday and spoke to Glen. Alas, the first thing she said was that there’s no news at all. She was ringing to ask about a gay couple who have contacted our local authority and said that we knew them. As it happens, it was the gay couple we met last week, who are having trouble with their local authority and making enquiries with other local authorities just in case.

Miranda said she’d like to visit us in two or three weeks’ time, when the work in the house is done. That way she can have a look at the loft conversion. Maybe she’ll have something to report then?

House update, New Family Social, and childspotting

I know I’ve not been as prolific as usual with updates to this blog. Work is busy and the loft conversion is in full swing, which at this moment means we have no roof, no heating, and no hot water (but we’ve had an electric shower installed so no, we don’t stink or anything). Our bedroom is so cold (and has a structure smack in the middle of it propping the ceiling) that we’re sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the living room, where we can put the gas fire on. Oh, and add to it, this morning I was woken up by the dripping of a water leak from the roof. Still, we’ll have more room when it’s all done, which is the whole point. And I’m sure we’ll laugh about it when it’s all done, although at the moment living in a cold house covered in dust, sleeping on an uncomfortable mattress, and being woken up by the builders hammering on the roof is taking its toll on my sense of humour and tolerance...

Last Sunday we met S, J & C for lunch and caught up with them, and then headed over together to the New Family Social get-together. We caught up with a few people we’d met before and also met some new people, which was nice. There were some good news from a couple who are going to matching panel soon and also some shared frustrations among those waiting to be matched.

Last week we also received new issues of Children Who Wait and Be My Parent, the two main publications which feature children who are available for adoption. Be My Parent has several features this month on same-sex adoption, as well as an article on New Family Social, so it was nice to see positive features to counteract the Daily Mail articles of late (although of course the readership is quite different in type and numbers). One of the publications had details of a sibling group we could be interested in. We really shouldn’t be “childspotting” in the magazines as we’re still tied to our local authority for another two months, but we talked about it, read the details a few times, and have decided to contact Miranda anyway to see what she says.

Bits and pieces

Easter was a quiet affair with some friends staying over. On Monday we met up with S&J and their son for a quick walk in a local park and ice cream. Then on Tuesday we took the day off to sort out the junk that has been gathering dust in the garage and finished clearing the loft ready for the extension work to start in a couple of weeks. We have decided that the extension won’t be for a bedroom, but for our home office. We don’t really want to be on a different floor from the other bedrooms, where the kid(s) will be, so our bedroom will remain where it is.

Miranda rang last week to ask for the dates of the loft conversion once we had them confirmed, so I emailed them to her yesterday. When she rang she mentioned that doing the conversion may mean a delay in our family finding and I wasn’t sure what she meant, so I asked her to clarify that. She replied today to explain that if our house had been a building site for a long time or the work wasn’t starting straight away, she would have had to reconsider when to start looking for a match, but since it’s starting soon and should be finished in June, it should be OK.

Yesterday R&A were introduced to their daughter-to-be. They emailed us a picture. She is a very cute little girl and we both went “aaah” when we saw her. They are clearly over the moon. We’ll be seeing them tomorrow for a quick celebratory drink before they bring her home. We are so happy for them. And it’s great to have the experience of someone you know go through the process ahead of you, as they’ll be able to tell us what it’s like when / if we get to that part.

Approved

Miranda rang today to let us know that the decision maker has confirmed the panel’s decision and we are now approved for 1 or 2 children, ages ranging from 0 to 7th birthday. The letter should arrive soon, although with Easter around the corner it may not be until next week. I can’t wait to see it in black and white.

In the meantime, the biggest consequence of this is that we can make decisions again! We know that being approved doesn’t mean that we will be matched or that we will definitely adopt, but we are being positive and assuming that it will happen, if only for practicality’s sake. This means that we no longer have to have hypothetical discussions that start with “if we are approved...” On Friday afternoon we rang the builder to confirm we’ll be going ahead with our planned loft extension to make some room in the house. And I may actually say goodbye to my rusty 12-year old tiny car and buy something with rear doors (really, a must for strapping children in and out of car seats / booster seats)! We’ve been saving for a while for this and the bank has agreed to extend our mortgage, so hopefully we’ll be able to afford it...

We spent Sunday clearing the loft in preparation for the loft conversion. This involved me trying to convince Glen that he needed to get rid of some of the stuff he’s been hoarding for ages. He says a lot of it could be in a museum one day (anyone heard of a “Museum of 60s/70s childhood”? They could come and take it all!). I just refer to it as “tat”. I failed miserably for the most part, but we did fill three huge bags with old clothes and a few things went to the dump and on Freecycle.

We’ve had lots of phone calls, emails, and texts from family and friends. The common theme (apart from the obvious congratulations) is the same piece of advice: go out, go to the cinema, go to the theatre, go to concerts, go on a big trip (well we just came back from one) and do everything you ever meant to do, because once you have children you’ll never go out again.

Prospective Adopter’s Report (Formerly Form F)

Miranda popped round to drop off the final version of the report on Friday afternoon. For some reason we’ve avoided looking at it almost all weekend. We’ve been really busy and we wanted to be in the right frame of mind to read it. Finally we read it this evening. It’s a whopping 72 pages (46 for the main report and the rest are appendices and additional forms) so it took us around 90 minutes each to read it. There are a couple of spelling and minor errors with names and ages and stuff like that, but it’s all there. I am actually quite amazed at how well Miranda has got to know us in the last few months over the course of one individual interview each and seven joint interviews. Her comments are quite accurate and her reflections very encouraging.

On Friday she also lent us a children’s book on dealing with racism to read. Apparently it will help us deal with homophobic bullying. She has also lent us the BAAF guide to “recruiting, assessing and supporting lesbian and gay carers and adopters”. I’ve only read a quarter of it so far, but it looks like it will be a very useful book to read. If nothing else, at least to get an idea of what training panel members and social workers may have had to deal with same-sex couples.

Also on Friday we finally decided to go ahead with a loft conversion we’ve been planning for a while. Our house isn’t terribly big, so it will give us more options regarding being matched with more than one child. And if we don’t get approved or matched we’ll have lots of spare room in the house!

Tomorrow (well, later today, actually given the time of writing) we have our second opinion interview. Miranda said it should only take one to one and a half hours. And after that if all goes well we should be ready for panel in April. Fingers crossed.