A New Chapter

Well… I’ve never been nervous about posting a letter before, but then I don’t think I’ve ever posted something which will change our lives in such a significant way as this will.

Today’s the day we officially register our interest in starting the process of being approved for adoption. That’s a bit of a mouthful, so maybe I should just say today’s the day we enter the adoption process. Our form has been posted with a proof of posted obtained from the local post office, and now we wait for a ‘maximum of 5 working days’ to get a response.

We are now at the mercy of our local authority’s adoption service, and await the judgement of our worthiness of being parents. We have been told by quite a few people that they think we’ll make great parents, one person even said that they thought any child would be very lucky to have us as parents, which was very heartening. But, they’re only qualified to say that insomuch as they are parents themselves, they are not social workers. Plus they may be a bit biased as they were all friends and family.

Currently I’m trying to work out whether we should have cleared out the spare rooms before we sent the form off, but the rational part of my brain keeps telling me that there is a long way to go yet, and plenty of time. Maybe I’ll make a start over the weekend just to calm that thought a little bit. I need some office space anyway, so it’ll kill two birds with one stone.

I ordered a few more books yesterday about adoption and people’s experiences of the process, both in general and from a gay couple’s perspective, and I look forward to those arriving so we can read them.

One concern we both have is that we have two dogs, when we had our initial meeting with a social worker back in March at one of the council’s Adoption Informational Events, we were told they could be a problem. The social worker did admit to not being a dog person, and I’m hoping that was why she left us feeling so incredibly negative about the whole thing. I grew up in a house with dogs, I know how positive and beneficial they can be when you’re young. We are responsible dog owners, our dogs are really friendly, and besides, we’d never leave them in a situation where they would cause a problem to a child anyway. Like I said, we’re responsible owners.

Anyway, that’s a bit of a digression from what this post was meant to be about.

We have entered the adoption process (assuming they accept our application form of course!) and thus we begin a new chapter in our lives, or perhaps we’re beginning the prologue to a new volume in the story of our life as a family.

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