Infertility
Rejection
Restarting
Approval
And now...
So we were approved as adopters. It felt like we had travelled the proverbial long and winding road. Our emotions were tattered and we were physically exhausted. It felt like the end of a road but in reality we hadn't even really started on the road, we'd simply been told that we were allowed to go on the road, like an adoption version of the M6 toll! It was like a scene in a movie where the heroes are trudging forlornly across a desert and climb what they think is the final dune to see the desert stretching out in front of them.
So we took a deep breath and on we trudged.
Matching is a clinical word for the process that adoptive parents and childrens social workers try to come together to match a child to the perfect family (and it's always thought of in that way, the adopters come a very far, and very correct, second to the needs of the children). Our social worker sent us profiles and we logged onto a website which contained profiles of children who are waiting to be placed for adoption (seriously, it's like a weird adoption-themed version of Facebook!).
I should probably now talk about how much Adoption has changed over the years. Years ago children were placed for adoption because of shame. Children born out of wedlock or born to young mothers, or a whole host of other reasons that society decided were immoral (which only goes to prove that society is an idiot!) were adopted at birth and the children were never told. Some of them probably grew up, led full lives and went to their graves never knowing that the people who brought them up were not their mother and father.
Now, with societies morals changing for the better children don't tend to come into the adoption system at such a young age, but this also means that adoption has changed. It is now not a means to find a home for babies whose parents do not want them, or are not able to look after them; it is now about finding a safe and loving home for some of the most vulnerable young people in our society.
This is because the children who are available for adoption have been removed from their families because of neglect, abuse or violence, because of this the children often suffer from Global Developmental Delay, Infant Alcohol Syndrome, drug addiction or severe cases or what looks like the descriptions I've heard of PTSD (I'm not a doctor so their may be a fancy name for this that I don't know about). This is because they have missed out on a lot of the early-years nurturing children need to fully grow and thrive.
Anyway, back to our search. We were sent profiles of various children who our social worker believed were good matches for us. If we decided that we thought they were too we would request the child's Permanence Report. The CPR is the report that details why a child was taken into care and put up for adoption. We read about instances of abuse and neglect that aged the both of us by a number of years. If you think the world is a horrible place, just wait until you read some of the stories that you don't get to hear about.
I'm a positive person and it is a good job because the things I read made me very, very angry (me being angry is like Richard Dawkins saying that Christianity is right after all). I had to separate myself from the words I was reading and focus on the positive messages coming through the words on the page.
We began to think of it less like what child do we want to complete our family, but rather which child would benefit most from the skills and the type of parents that we would be. We knew that one of our strengths lay in talking and listening. We'd been together for 13 years and hadn't ever stopped talking and listening to each other. A child who we could talk to and listen to was our preference and we'd always wanted two (and we didn't want to have to go through the approval process again!) so we decided that an older sibling group would be perfect.
We attended an event at our adoption agency and saw a profile of a pair of children we knew would be perfect. These were children we could help. These were children who would complete our family. Kevin and Lana were ideal. So we asked for more information. We found out that there was something in their history that we had previously said we would not consider so we had a long discussion about that and decided that in this instance we would like to proceed. The problem didn't seem quite so daunting when applied to actual children who needed our help that it did when presented in a list at our initial social worker meetings.
It wasn't long before we heard back. Kevin and Lana's social workers were interested in us too and so they set up a meeting. We'd climbed the last dune and we could see the oasis in the distance with all of it's lovely, refreshing water.
Not every oasis in the desert is real. Sometimes it's a mirage...
p.s. childrens names have been changed
p.s. childrens names have been changed
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