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 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.