goodbye old friend

On friday I waved goodbye to Mikey's chair (looks terrifying doesn't it?!). It's been amazing and has made all the difference to our family over the last year. Having a chair that Mikey was safe in, that was stronger than he is and that can be high or low was brilliant - and hard to come by. But in recent months the chair has become unsafe, because Mikey is houdini. He can work the straps loose, he can bounce the chair (which I'm unable to lift) across the room even when the wheels are locked and when he bashes about in it when he's angry or stressed it becomes a metal torture chair!

BUT, because Mikey is physically able to sit, and the fabulous NHS is sadly strapped for cash, we won't be getting a replacement. At the moment we're wedging Mikey onto a little chair at a small table and he's coping well as long as we're right there to keep him sat down and to help him keep his food on the table. We really need to find a chair that is suitable for sitting at a normal dining table but that will also cope with Mikey's super strength! We're considering a Stokke chair, but I don't know whether they'll stand up to the Mikey test. Anyone got experience of them? If they're the right thing, it looks like it'll be a christmas gift - they're not exactly cheap!

I've got a date in the diary for Mikey's specialist health visitor to come and observe a mealtime and to give us some advice for feeding. I'm tired of meals being stressful and I would love to see my boys eat more than weetabix, yoghurt and beans on toast (inevitably, Dan ends up only wanting to eat what he sees Mikey eat)! Hopefully she'll have ideas for keeping a jumping bean with the flexibility of a fish and the strength of a bear in a chair and will help us crack the bleakness of mealtimes as they currently stand! I'm expecting miracles please!

adoption: finding out about Mikey

I think it was thursday when the phonecall came. It was the end of August. "I may have found you a child", said our social worker. "Oh my!" Said I, and the rest is a bit of a blur! At that point, all Paul could tell me over the phone was that it was a boy, about 6 months old and based in Liverpool. We made plans for him to come round the next day to give us more details. I left a "callmeassoonasyougetthis" message on Dave's mobile and my mind began to spin!

Dave was at the end of the children's holiday Bible club at church and we were getting ready to have a holiday starting on the Sunday night. That holiday would end up being a crazy whirl of DIY and nesting, trying to get the house ready. Until you have an idea of the age and needs of the child you're going to adopt you can't really decorate or buy anything, so the preparation was crammed into a short space of time!

We spent that evening wondering. Wondering what his name was, wondering why he was up for adoption, wondering if we would say yes, wondering how soon we could meet him. The big thing we both knew and agreed was that we trusted God, he'd been in charge of the process right from the start - unless there was a really clear, obvious reason why we should say no to this child we would pursue meeting him. We were almost certain this would be the boy for us.

When Paul arrived the next day he gave us Mikey's form - a lot like our form F, all about him and his background. Paul stayed quiet while we read through it. Things that stand out in my memory are: the black and white photocopied picture of him was blotchy and horrible - nothing like the lovely, gorgeous boy we eventually met! He was described as a happy baby who slept well. He was healthy and he came from a busy foster home. He had moved in with the foster carers at 3 days old, coming from the hospital he was born in. The form also included pictures and information about Mikey's birth family and contained really helpful explanations in their own words of how they felt about the situation and their hopes for Mikey's future.

There were things we wanted to find out more about and things we wanted to negotiate (like the level of contact Mikey's birth mother was hoping to have), but we knew without having to consult that we would say yes! Plans were made for us to meet with Mikey's foster carers and social worker.

The system with our agency (and I think the rest of the UK!) means that you're not offered a selection of children and asked to pick one. Your social worker should know you well enough to make clear choices on your behalf and so adopters are shown one child, believed to be the best match. If that doesn't work out, the social worker searches again. You're also expected to have made a pretty much 100% decision before you actually meet the child so that a vulnerable child isn't messed around by people meeting them to size them up - they've experienced enough confusion and loss already. Although of course, if at any point you're not happy or you feel it's not going to work out, you are absolutely encouraged to say and stop the process before it goes too far.

Meeting the social worker and the female foster carer from the couple caring for Mikey was scary - I really hoped they would like us - I felt very anxious that his foster carer might say "no way, I'm not letting him move in with you"! The ice was broken pretty fast though - the foster carer had brought a DVD of Mikey and our only working player was in our bedroom. Up we all trooped - me, Dave, foster carer and our social worker Kath (who had taken over from Paul after his placement finished and continues as our support to this day) and we all sat on our bed and watched this amazing DVD! I remember feeling giggly at the crazy dance music in the soundtrack and noticing Mikey's nystagmus and already feeling proud of him showing moments of physical strength and loving his gorgeous, croaky groans and babbles! I remember telling myself "this is your son, Alice" but my brain didn't know how to respond to that - all too weird and hard to imagine!

I really can't remember a thing that we talked about! I do remember his foster carer being kind and really positive towards us and his social worker being very honest and also giving us reason to hope and feel optimistic that it could all work out. We made plans to meet Mikey at the start of October. It felt like a million years away!

I still watch that DVD sometimes. I watched it so often between that meeting and seeing Mikey for the first time. We showed it to close friends, we showed the pictures on the cover to our youth group, we took it to my sister's wedding and sat and showed it to my immediate family (including a tiny, days old Iris). It's hard to see that 6 month old baby as our tall and feisty Mikey, but I love the moments in the video where you see a flash of the boy the baby would become. I can't wait till Mikey's able to understand that it's HIM on the screen and to tell him about the day we first saw it and first knew we would love him.

The picture shows one of the photos Mikey's foster carer emailed us to keep us going in that long wait before we met him. Those pictures were as precious as jewels to us.

odd boys

Just eaten way too much pizza and it seems to have made my brain stop working! So instead of talking about adoption today I'll just upload some peculiar videos.

Here's Mikey drinking lemonade. How cute is he?!


Here's Dan skating on plastic toast.

Our camera's video setting is broken BUT you can still hear Dan's lovely singing - I'm especially enjoying his song endings. He sang this song at full volume most of the time we pushed him round St Ives.

Urghhhh, I may have overdosed on pizza. I'm off to bed with some indigestion tablets, cos that's the kind of effortlessly glamorous life I live. Remember, dear reader, jealousy is an ugly thing.

holiday!!!!!!

I really should have warned you that things would go unexpectedly quiet but I'm so unused to going on holiday I only just remembered to get someone to feed the cat!

We got back yesterday afternoon and have just about had time to wash clothes, read through what post managed to get through the royal mail strikes and buy milk I can drink my tea.

If you would like to look at beautiful pictures of St Ives and the amazing apartment we stayed in I suggest you check out Dad's blog - he's a great photographer and his pictures really show how peaceful and gorgeous the place is.

My lovely parents decided to include us kids in their 60th birthday treat and took us on this incredible holiday. So Ruth, Stuart, Iris & Rosa, Hannah & Felix, Mum & Dad and me and the boys all stayed in a converted sail loft right on the beach. My favourite bits have been eating together with all the grown ups in the evening, getting to know Iris and tiny Rosa a bit better, Mikey and Dad making sand castles and seeing Dan in particular really get to know my family and be hilarious and relaxed with them all. He's now in total hero worship of my Dad, which seems entirely right to me! Dan enjoyed himself so much he woke each morning before 4.30am. We're now trying to train him to sleep again - I really LOVE my sleep.

We celebrated Dan's birthday while we were away. Two years has gone very fast! He got a sweeet trike which he loves very much. I'm still trying to make his present from us - I've not been very productive on the evening knitting front in recent weeks.

It's 8.30pm here and I'm ready for bed! I'm planning to post more adoption stuff soon if that's OK with you? I'd love to share what it was like meeting Mikey for the first time and how we deal with things like telling him about his adoption and keeping in touch with his birth family.

adoption: getting grilled. Not so bad after all!

I'm attending a parenting course at the moment and many of the stories I am hearing about people's experiences of life and parenthood are heartbreaking. I mean it. In a group of 10 I am the only representative of a family with a happy, solid marriage, a dad who is involved in his kids' lives, and children who have barely seen conflict. Sadness is the norm. My dad has written a good post recently suggesting that the solution to a lot of society's big issues often lies not primarily with schooling, or social work but with parents. I think he's right and I think the problem here is that parents are hard to reach and hard to change! I'm grateful for the help I get from homestart and surestart.

I wonder what it would be like if all prospective parents weren't just sent to antenatal classes, but were quizzed, grilled and trained like wannabe adopters are. Here are some of the questions we were asked - I think be forced to think things like this through really helps not only in preparing you for the unknown but for opening your eyes to the baggage and pre-formed ideas that will unavoidably affect your parenting - for good and bad.

How would you answer...

• Describe your upbringing, what do you remember about family life?
• What things were important to your family?
• What things would you do that your parents did? What would you definitely not do?
• Did you enjoy school?
• How do past romantic relationships affect you now?
• Write down your support network - people who support you and know you well, including where they live and how often you see each other
• How do you think your life will change when you have a child (e.g. your job, finances, time, social activities)
• What would your partners' perfect day be like?
• How do you cope with disagreements?
• Are there any parts of life that you know you don't agree on or that are hard? (e.g in laws, how money is spent, your plans for the future, etc) - how will these issues be affected by the arrival of a child?
• How do you share out household duties? Will that stay the same when you have a child?
• How do you think you will discipline your child?
• What are your dreams for your child (marriage, college, good job etc.) How will you feel if those things aren't achieved?
• How will you respond if your child grows to be very different from you (e.g. chooses to reject your religious faith, sexual orientation, etc.)
• What things in your home need to change before you have a child?
• Can you cope financially (prove it!)?

These are just skimming the surface, but it gives you an idea of the kinds of things we talked with our social worker about. Everything you talk about goes into an enormous document called a Form F. In that form your social worker describes you and makes their recommendation as to whether you should be approved as adopters. The idea of the form is that the panel who read it should feel like they know you before they meet you - where they grill you again and then either accept or reject you as adopters.

There's more to the process than the social worker meetings, but it's a big part. For many people it's harrowing, exhausting and painful but for Dave and I, a lot of it simply reminded us of the BLESSINGS we have been given - especially exceptionally loving and wise parents and the strength that comes from having a church family.

I remember the day we first met our social worker, Paul. He was a student - even younger than us! We'd just been having our central heating and bathroom done - it was all ready, except the loo was unusable. I remember praying like mad that he wouldn't need to wee (he didn't)! I remember being so nervous! That day stands even more clearly in my memory now though because the day we first met our social worker was the day Mikey first met his birth parents. The day we took a big step forward in saying "yes" to Mikey was the day Mikey's birth parents said a heartbroken "no" to him. 31st January 2006, the day Micheal Joseph was born. I know where I was!

adoption: the process in the UK (with none of the correct social-worker jargon!)

Mikey, 11 months

Adoption seems to vary a lot from country to country. In the UK you basically have three groups involved: The children waiting for families, the adults waiting for children and the social workers acting as go-betweens. The majority of the children waiting to be adopted have been taken away from their birth families as a last resort and by and large this is down to abuse, neglect and birth parent/s not being fit to care for their children because of substance addiction, severe illness or a history of behaviour that strongly indicates that future children will suffer abuse or neglect. The minority of children in care are there because their birth families feel unable to look after them - often because of disability or disfigurement. You rarely get the movie storyline of parents killed in a car crash and in the UK you rarely get a woman taking the option of adoption while they're pregnant - abortion is relatively common and growing more so with increasing anomaly testing during pregnancy and laws that allow late abortions in the case of disability.

Basically adoption in the UK is rarely a birth parent's choice and always, always, always has a sad story behind it somewhere.

This is why it takes a while to be 'okayed' as adopters. These children aren't the solution to a fairytale desire for the perfect family, they are vulnerable, complicated. An addition to the family that brings a lot of extra baggage.

I get a bit frustrated when chat show hosts moan about how long adoption takes and, admittedly it didn't take as long for Dave and I as it takes for many adopters. In my opinion, if we're entrusting some of our most vulnerable children to adults they've never met before the least that can be expected is that those adults will have been police-checked, that they will have been carefully trained to understand what sorts of experiences the children they may become parents of have undergone and how they will be affected. The least we can expect is that those people have been thoroughly interviewed over a period of time, allowed to discuss their own childhood experiences, prepared for parenthood and approved by an impartial panel.

Having said all that - at every point in the process for us I was desperate for the end, desperate to meet my child and just get on with the job of being a parent!

I have a feeling that if I talk about the whole process in this post I'll be writing forever, so I'll just give you a rundown of the highlights and talk a little more about the bits that made a real difference to us tomorrow.

For us it went like this:

• Early August '05 - introductory open evening
• September '05 - we sent our application form off to the adoption agency
• November '05 - 3 days of training for prospective adopters
• Jan - May '06 - interviews with a social worker
• July '06 - approved as adopters by the panel
• August '06 - our social worker rang us to tell us about Mikey
• October '06 - we meet Mikey and later in the month he moves in
• March '07 - Mikey's adoption is made totally official by a judge in court

In just over a year we went from our first contact with the agency to our first meeting with our son! That kind of timing is pretty similar to a couple planning to start a family, conceiving, going through pregnancy and childbirth (except without the varicose veins and gas+air)! For us, it felt like forever, but it also felt like an extremely positive experience where we were really nurtured and genuinely prepared for parenthood. I can't give enough praise to the lovely people at our agency, adoption matters northwest!

adoption: making the decision

Three years to the day that Mikey moved in, I thought you might like to see a picture of how breathtakingly gorgeous he looked when we met him! This was taken at Mikey's foster carers' home on 10th October 2006 - 5 days after we'd met our son for the first time!

I LOVE being asked questions about adoption and this is, I suppose, a chance to answer some that I'm asked all the time (especially a horribly belated response to the fabulous Dawn) and perhaps raise some questions too.

The question I'm asked most regularly is "what made you do it?", so here goes...

Before Dave and I got married (during our brief 7 month engagement!) we talked about all sorts of things and tried to feel as prepared as we could. Dave and I are fortunate to agree on lots of the big things in life - it's the silly little things, like washing up, that cause the most conflict between us! We chatted about what we would do if we couldn't have children of our own and both felt we wouldn't want to go down the IVF route - it just wasn't for us. It was quite natural for us both to say we would consider adoption. I suppose it's quite an easy thing to agree on when you've not had any experience of trying to start a family and the emotions that go along with it all. So for a while, that was a decision made and we didn't think about it for sometime after we got married.

I guess it was at some point in the first year that we talked about it again and one of us raised the question "would we choose to adopt a 'hard to place' child - like one with a learning disability?". I don't know if this seems like a weird thing to think about, but Dave and I both have experience of growing up with people with learning disabilities around us. Dave's dad has worked with adults with learning disabilities since Dave was very young and I grew up with relationships of varying closeness with peers with learning disabilities. I guess those experiences helped it feel more normal to us, and also know what some of the reality was like.

Dave and I tentatively, excitedly, said that yes, we would be willing to adopt a child like that. In fact, the more we talked about it (and we talked about it a lot in the weeks and months to come) the more keen we became. It sounds utterly perverse when I say this, but we were almost hoping we wouldn't be able to have our own children so that we could adopt a child with a learning disability. I can't explain this desire, except to say that I think a lot of it is the way God was changing our hearts and minds - it's not what I dreamed about doing when I was a teenager, it's not the average wishlist of a couple in their early twenties. But it became our genuine joy, our longing for the future.

I remember it was a trip to Tescos in Spring 2005 that we practically stalked a mother and her gorgeous little girl with Down's Syndrome, talking together about how cute she was. At the checkout I turned to Dave and said "let's do it - we don't have to have adoption as our plan b, let's just plan to do it!"

And that was it - the decision made! We hadn't thought about when, whether we would try to have "our own" kids first, whether we would be allowed to do it. We just knew that one day, we really wanted to adopt a child with a learning disability.

Little did we know that in Spring 2005 a little baby was conceived. He would have Down's Syndrome and his birth parents wouldn't realise it until he was born. Little did we know that they wouldn't feel they could look after him. Little did we know that God was preparing us to be Mikey's forever family while he was knitting him together in his mother's womb.

Next... the adoption process.