Month 2
The letter from Families Are
Best arrived – YES! They accepted us and as soon as
we were back from our honeymoon we were to contact them to
start our ‘proper’ application!!!
We were so excited and so happy. We then decided to tell
all our family and friends (close family and friends already
knew) about our plans. Everyone was so supportive. It was
great and we knew we were doing the right thing.
Gail gave us a list of books to read, suggested we join Adoption
UK and practice having as many children as we could to stay
over! We did all of these and think we have shares in Cadbury
World, the amount of times we have been!!
September 4th arrived and we had the best day of our lives
at our wedding, it was the hottest day of the year and it
was amazing. We honeymooned in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand
and enjoyed every single minute together.
We did talk about the adoption and discussed how we both
felt and knew what obstacles we had to face. Jeremy had started
seeing Daniel again which was great. He and Debbie had never
really fallen out, but she had some personal issues that she
had to deal with. Happily. It seemed that she was getting
over these and Jeremy calls Daniel once a week now and sees
him a lot more than before. Gail did tell us that Debbie would
have to be interviewed by our social worker, but when Jeremy
told her about our plans, she was absolutely fine.
We got back home from honeymoon and decided to wait until
the following week before contacting Gail, but two days after
being home, we decided to email her and tell her we were now
married and ready to increase our family!!
As before, Gail was lovely and called Jeremy at work and
sent through the details of the next preparation groups they
ran which were due to start early January. Again we did some
more reading, and eagerly awaited the start of 2005.
It’s the day before the first preparation group. What
do I wear? What shall I take to eat? (everyone is asked to
bring some food for lunch) I rang everybody and anybody and
they all said the same thing – just be yourself!
The day arrived and how nervous were we!! But as soon as
we pulled into the car park we were met by Andy, one of the
Families Are Best social workers, and he greeted us and made
us feel calm again. We walked into the group (we are the last
to arrive – typical) and said our hello’s and
took our seats in this semi-circle of complete strangers.
The group is run by Lynda who is the most amazing lady ever.
She is an adoptive mother of three herself and is going to
be running all of our sessions with Andy and another member
of the social work team each week. We had to introduce ourselves
and had a little chat and by tea break we all felt a lot better
I am sure.
The session was good, but we never felt so drained in all
our lives. We were given some homework to do and some feedback
on the meeting, and when we left we knew we were looking forward
to the next group already.
Thank goodness for red wine!
Before the next group though we had to have our first home
visit!!! Guess what – our social worker is Chris, the
lady that originally sent our pack out – fate, we think!!
We both took the day off to spring clean the whole house,
but in fact Jeremy managed to make an excuse about visiting
his dad to collect something and was gone for nearly four
hours. When he came home ‘Would you like any help dear?’
was greeted by me throwing something (soft!) at him!!
Chris arrived and again it was like we had known her forever.
The only thing wrong was that she only saw the hallway, downstairs
loo and lounge – I needn’t have bothered cleaning
anywhere else!! We had a really informal chat about our lives
and the first session and we took to her very well.
We have since had two more visits from Chris and can honestly
say we have learnt more than we thought we would and are really
enjoying the whole experience.
I think we will miss the preparation sessions when they end.
Fingers crossed we should go before the panel in June or September
and we have lots of work still to do with Chris. We have made
some new friends along the way and are feeling pretty positive
about the whole thing. Will let you know what happens next…….
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