Reeling once more

T has decided the adoption process likes to confound us. There we were happy we had a link and expecting a late Oct/early Nov panel date. That was until today when in Conwy. T tried to answer a call from our SW but failed - she left a message asking him to ring back which he did promptly.

Our son's SW wants panel on 30th Sept and Intros to start a week later as his FC is going away for a week from 26th Oct and they feel respite to Intros would not be a good thing - could we mange this. Cue two people on Conwy harbour front hurriedly phoning work while on holiday. Fine for me - T has the complication of Eid-al-Adha which is predicted to be around 15th Oct. One cannot get pharmacist locums where we live around either Eid. Cue call back to our SW who understood this and went away to talk to her manager and also medical advisor as the short notice might mean going to panel without meeting her.

We wandered round the Castle at Conwy and then down to Bodnant Gardens. Driving back through Snowdonia at a point we actually had signal, we got an email from our SW telling us she had spoken to her stand-in manager (annual leave for actual manager) who felt we could manage without T for 3 days during second week of Intros and she had also got us a medical advisor appointment the week before proposed panel. We then went looking for phone signal around foot of Snowdon - ended up in car park in Llanberis. Promptly spoke to our SW again as she phoned following up on email to check about FC meeting times. Then T forwarded email to his line manager and company boss, following up by speaking to line manager directly. Meanwhile I finally told my mother (issues with her spreading too many details round family so is kept a bit out of loop) that we had a link and the timescale. Phoned Dad (he is away for work) before sending emails to three people at work who needed to know.

Given work a fine conundrum to solve - I was teaching 2 modules in 6 weeks - now I am not with under 3 weeks to go before term starts. The decision to go with new timescale is absolutely right as we do not want our son disrupted as much as respite could do. Ok have around 4 1/2 weeks to do stuff we thought we had 9 weeks+ to deal with but we will get there. What happens happens for a reason and this match just feels so right to us.


 

Reflections on today

Well I have finally found time to blog again although it isn't going to be a long one. I hate Clearing...... Well actually I don't it just takes a lot out of me and involves me working 8 days solid - finally got some time off today. Shall see how we are doing when I go in on Tuesday - it's been tough again this year but we were getting there as of yesterday.

Anyway enough of my work life - time to talk about what this blog is supposedly about. We had the meeting with our potential link's SW today. In fact as T put it later we had SWs in our house today for the longest time thus far in the process as ours arrived at 1.15 and left at 4.45. She came early to discuss the child's SW questions with us before she arrived at 2.30 - which we both felt was valuable. Also finally managed to show her the fence round the patio which was partially her suggestion in the first place. It is now partially painted so doesn't quite look like it does below.

The pre-discussion made the subsequent 2 hr discussion go a lot easier. Not going to talk much about the questions as a lot were pertinent to our potential links story - and it is his story. Did talk a bit about his age and why we were not dead set on having a very young baby (honest answer - ever since I started thinking about adoption as a single mother 11 years+ ago for some reason I always envisaged a toddler). We also discussed a fair amount about attachment and we would foster the breaking of current attachment to foster carer and making attachment to us. Also got to here a bit more of his background and talk about contact (which is a bit of a minefield in this case).

His SW assured us he is still developing at the right pace and is a lovely little boy. He is well attached to his FC, and seemed to cope ok with his respite placements. Indeed apparently every FC he spends some time with wants to keep him. After it was all done and his SW left ours said she felt we had presented ourselves really well and answered the questions as she expected. Just got to wait with everything crossed till next week. Hopefully we should know on Tuesday after his SW has spoken to her manager. Then we should get some photos of him which means we can start talking a little to our families about him - well ok my sister & brother-in-law know a fair bit but they are adopters themselves.

I am feeling more positive than I did before - this does feel like the right match for us so just got to hope his SW agrees.

Going back in time…

Well we got the official letter yesterday to confirm we were approved - and a load of information plus some forms to sign :) On extract of minutes, it was nice to see the reasons for approval (7) and no concerns at all :D However it did show that it had actually taken us 9 months to get to this point - from application to approval which I hadn't realised. Thought it was November we put application in and in fact it was October (before prep course). I did say my memory is a sieve......

This week

Warning very rambling post - which is an indication of my state of mind at the moment.....

As T put it earlier this has been one interesting week. Starting with panel on Monday which was a real high and is still sinking in to be honest even if we had phone call on Thursday to tell it it was all final. Following that I worked Tuesday then have had three days with only partial working ( thankfully summer with no project students). I had what I thought was a migraine Wednesday morning which wasn't that unexpected - I tend to get them after stress has calmed down. But it never properly went and got worse so I looked at blood pressure. It was up beyond the tipping point for me so off to the Doctors I trundled on Thursday to get my dosage increased as we had thought may happen. Slowly sorting but I wish I didn't get these spikes in BP. Hopefully this dosage should keep me stable- T (being a pharmacist) has always said I may need a higher dose than I was initially on.

Holidays past & future

Holidays for us have till this year consisted usually of 1 week abroad, most years 1 week with T's parents on their yacht, and a couple of weeks camping usually in UK. In terms of amounts, T gets 25 days plus another 5 days that he buys - I get 35 days plus some extra days between Christmas & New Year and an extra day after Easter. To complicate matters further his runs for a calendar year & mine runs April to March.

This year we managed a week in Cyprus during our usual week at April/May crossover week - which is revision week at uni. Otherwise holiday has mainly been used for adoption stuff - our home study fell in this holiday year for T and across two years for me. So I had to use less holiday than he did in this year.