We have a date

It's been very frustrating and I meant to write about it in my last post, but KT is still off sick, and last Friday we received a letter to say she would be off for "a few weeks" more. At that point I decided we needed to contact social services and try and move forward with the process of completing our home study.

Good that I did, we arranged a meeting. Fortunately the day before our meeting Mrs Apologetic, (one of the more senior SWs) she had managed to speak to KT on the phone.

It turns out that KT has basically finished everything that she needs to have done for the home study, except interviewing our family references, and (the big one) she hasn't written any of it up! All her work has been taken over in her absence by colleagues in the department, but no-one can take our case, as we are so far down the line, KT is the one who has had all the interviews with us (8 we have counted) and also interviewed our non-family referees. The only alternative to waiting for her to finish the write-up would be to go through months of interviews to repeat the whole process. I don't want to have to do that, and clearly, neither do they.

I am assuming that KT's absence from work is due to depression or stress, from one or two pointers, so there is no real knowing when she might be well enough to return to write up the report. However, Mrs Apologetic suggested that we forget about going to panel for August or September, (grrrrr) and set a "definite" date instead for 15th October. There wasn't much option, to be honest. She thinks that KT may manage to write it all up if given a date which is a long way off, whereas trying to persuade her to write up for the August or September panel may lead to a relapse and ultimately mean we would wait even longer.

She was apologetic. We talked for a while of how frustrated I was feeling - if I thought that this was the only wait, I would be calmer I am sure, but obviously once we are approved the wait could be months and months - even years - until we are matched with a child. Can't even think of that. I know there are other people who have been waiting longer, but it is 5 years since I started trying to have a baby. This kind of setback leaves me feeling like it simply isn't meant to be.

And then the question of the family references. These are being taken up by a SW we haven't even met. Mrs Anon. She is meeting R's mother who lives locally (and is herself a SW though in a different department - they struggled to find someone who didn't already know her!) And as my parents are visiting for a long weekend this week (Thurs to Tues) they have decided they will interview them on Thursday as my family referees. This is not ideal. I had planned on using my sister, as my parents are both 86, and my mother . . . well, I am not really sure how much of this whole thing she has grasped. Her short-term memory is pretty much shot - Dad doesn't even put her on the phone to me any more when I call, she just tends to repeat something about the weather a few times. It's hard to know what kind of a testimonial she will give!

In fact, I didn't actually mention the whole miscarriage thing to my parents - I only recently told them, when I told them about the adoption process, and then it was to my dad by phone. I think it is fair to say we don't have a particularly close relationship, but with them living so far away and being the age they are, it really didn't seem like high priority to include them at every step. Does this sound very strange?

Anyway, my dad is being very supportive, and checking all his questionnaire answers with me, and making sure he doesn't make any serious blunders. So I have been explaining to my aged father the rather critical difference between looking for parents for children, and looking for children for parents. . .and so on . . .

Onward and upward. Just teeth-grindingly slow. I think my dreams of a baby by Christmas just got shattered.