Chapter 42 - Matching: Meeting Our Little Man (momentarily)...

NEVER THE SAME AGAIN...

The day had finally come for out "fly by" visit to the foster carers to see the little boy who might one day soon be our son. We were aware of the rules... LOOK, DON'T TOUCH! However, it was still an amazing opportunity to start to get a feel for who this little boy actually was. Up to now we had only seen some photos of him. It seemed that our authority didn't do the videos of children which others seemingly do. Or perhaps that was just for the more difficult to place children where there was the possibility of out of county adoption?  Or maybe we just never saw them? Either way, it felt like a unique opportunity.

We would actually get to see (we were pretty sure of this at the time) our son-to-be!

Chapter 41 - Matching: Meetings - Momentous and Mundane...

DOTTING EVERY "I" AND CROSSING EVERY "T"

Well, a good number of the hurdles had been successfully leaped. We were pretty sure that the grumpy little boy staring our of the front page of the CPR form was the one for us. His social workers were pretty sure that we could be the parents for him. There were still things to work out and we would be seeking to dot every "I" and cross every "T" in the paperwork. 

We now felt that we were sufficiently far down the road that we could start telling people. We had, up to this point been pretty protective of ourselves and only confided in a couple of our closest friends - the real inner circle of our support network.  We hadn't even told our families yet. We reckoned that for them, in particular, it would be more difficult for to deal with the potential disappointments if we had decided not to proceed. Given our long history with infertility and first trimester miscarriages it would have felt like running around telling everyone the moment we saw two little blue lines. After a while those little lines had come to fill us with a mixture of dread and foreboding rather than joy...

Chapter 40 - Matching: Under Scrutiny

SET CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SON

Well, wheels were being properly set in motion. Denise phoned us the following day with a firm date to meet our little boy's social workers. It would be an opportunity for us to ask more detailed questions about him but also for them to scrutinise us. They would dig into us as individuals and as a couple (we were used to that by now). They would examine our motives for becoming parents and to parent this child in particular. They would look at the emotional environment in which a child would grow up and consider whether they considered the match to be a suitable one.

No pressure then.

Chapter 39 - Matching: Decision time

A LEAP OF FAITH...

We had given ourselves a week or two to try to assimilate the information which was presented in this little boy's CPR form.  Yes, there were questions which we would need to dig into. Yes, there were small gaps which we felt we needed to fill in. Yes, there were some medical issues which we needed to check out. Yes, there were still a world of uncertainties to weigh up. But... and this was a big "but"... day by day, hour by hour and page by page we were coming around to a feeling that this might just be our son we were reading about.

Intellectually it seemed to make sense to say "Yes" but intellect can only take you so far in cases like this. Alongside all the weighed-up pros and cons we were both developing a feeling in the pit of our stomaches that this was somehow all... just... "right"! This was somehow meant to be. 

Chapter 38 - Matching: Further investigations

A LONG HARD THINK...

We were finally considering a child. There was a fair amount of paperwork to look through. A huge number of documents to analyse and draw conclusions from. Hundreds of lines for read between. There was  a description of this little boy, a potted history of his short life to date, a description of his birth family and their circumstances, a family tree (which looked like several intoxicated spiders had crawled across the page, so fractured were the various familial connections). There were medical reports on the little man and his wider family. There were some headline psychological reports on his parents and feedback from his foster carers on his progress to date.

It was an awful lot of information to assimilate. And of course there were worries... What if we miss something? What if there is something important in there and we don't realise the significance of it? What if there is some vital element that is missing from the reports? What... If... They're... Hiding... Something...?

Chapter 37 - Matching: A little more information

ADMINISTERING CPR

So we had both passed a weekend in a bemused cosmic, space-cadet mode. We were in possession simultaneously of far too much information and nowhere near enough. We knew we had been linked to a little boy. We suspected his name might begin with the letter "A". And that was it. What on earth were supposed to do with that? How could we process the meaning of those simple facts? Answer we couldn't. However, come two o'clock that afternoon we would know more. We would have in our possession a detailed report on this little boy, his background and his circumstances. 

All this was of scant comfort to me as I sat in the semi-darkness at 5:30 in the morning waiting for a taxi to arrive to take me to the railway station. In a perfect storm of bad planning I was due to head off that morning for an insane grand tour of the country. Sure, it had been in the diary for some months now. An insane three day road trip. But that was scant consolation now. There were more pressing matters on my mind.