I keep reading in the news what a dreadful year 2016 has been and how no-one can wait to see the back of it. It is undeniable that a year which started with the death of Bowie and recently saw the elevation of Donald Trump is pretty dark and it’s not even over yet. However, in this little corner of the world, 2016 has been pretty darned good. I finally became a mum. To be perfectly frank with you, the last 3 years have felt a lot worse to me on a personal level than 2016. This was when we went to panel, found our matches, went to panel again and brought our children home.
Panel. I cannot describe how loaded that word is when you’re going through adoption. These are the people who are going to decide your future. Your happiness. Your family. In the ‘normal’ course of parenthood, there are only a couple of people involved. This is quite different. Not only have you had to share your deepest and darkest secrets including your medical and financial records with your social worker but now all of these people are going to see them too! Excuse me while I have a mini mental breakdown… They are all good and lovely people of course. Their job is to ensure that our social worker has done his job and that we aren’t a couple of crazies slipping through the cracks.
The rational thing is that we wouldn’t get this far unless the panel were going to say yes to us. M should have picked up already if we were not to be trusted. Regular readers of this blog will know that the 8 weeks spent waiting for panel were riddled with self doubt and an unshakeable belief that they would take one look at me and reject us out of hand – and breathe.
The day of panel, we arrived at the agency feeling nervous (this is the average emotion felt by both of us; lovely husband’s calm balancing out inner turmoil). Of course, our panel was delayed. They had a long morning. Doesn’t usually happen. Of course it doesn’t. This is just happening because it’s me. Still, it afforded time for a bacon sandwich which can never be a bad thing. M sat with us for a while. He was feeling completely confident. ‘Smile’, M said. They will love how much you smile. To be fair, I know about 500 teenagers who would be confused by the thought of me smiling a lot. I was now being considerably outweighed by positive emotion. My wealth of feeling was being pegged back. The door opened and M was called in. Social workers always go in first to explain themselves. Not that he needed to – M’s work was superb. He had written a detailed and impressive document which accurately reflected us. He wasn’t gone long and then the door opened again…
It is not an exaggeration to say that the introductions to members of the panel took longer than the questions they asked. There were at least 15 people in the room. Medical, psychological, legal, adopters, adoptees and administrators as far as the eye could see. They were all very smiley and welcoming. I wondered where the sting in the tail would come from. Nowhere as it happened. I think we were asked about three questions. They were reasonable, thoughtful and challenging. Much of it centered around how we would separate our professional selves from parenting. Something I will come back to a lot as I write I think. It’s a really big question. We know a lot about children but it’s mostly from an intellectual point of view. The reality of living with them 24/7 would be different. I blabbered on. Husband was concise. I smiled and smiled again and just to be sure, I smiled some more. It was ten minutes. Ten minutes. Actually probably a bit longer than the ‘normal’ route to parenting…
We sidled out of the room, making sure to smile again just to be safe. Ten minutes later. There it is again. Ten minutes. We got panel approval. M didn’t know what we were worried about. Ok, we had to wait for the recommendation to be ratified but really it was done. We were on our way. Again.
When Martin called me to tell me the date of panel a few weeks prior he said ‘so you two had better really enjoy your Christmas this year’. Well, we did enjoy Christmas 2015 and we did our final couple of days sales shopping in Cardiff and staying in a nice hotel. We even snuck off to Harrogate the week before panel to have one final, final stay in a nice hotel. It was all really lovely and everything you could possibly want – but I am so much more looking forward to spending that time with my own little family this year. Just writing that has brought tears to my eyes. Even when the world looks really bleak, I have them to believe in.