That Email - or "how I told my colleagues . . ."

Here it is - my email that I sent to the rest of my team at work - I have finally 'come out' and told them what is going on. Then, yesterday we had a big company 'do' which included plenty of opportunity for talking to various people about the situation. Lots of people know now. It is becoming more and more real.

There is a whole post that I want to write about my trepidation in this stage of the process, but I am working up to facing the truth and putting it in writing. . .

In the meantime, here is what I wrote:

SUBJECT: A LITTLE BOMBSHELL

I think the time has come to break some news . . .

Last summer, in the middle of August 2006, I picked up the telephone and called Social Services to send me some information on how to adopt a child.

That was just the beginning of a long and fairly arduous process which has involved various courses, lots of reading, many, many meetings with social workers, (particularly our own, rather sardonic, sometimes very negative one!), lots of form filling and soul-searching and even considerable work on our garden to convince the authorities that we were not planning to drown any prospective child in the brook!

Finally, on the 15th October (last month) we attended the dreaded ‘Adoption Panel’ where R and I had to appear before 12 members of a panel of deeply scary people who would decide whether or not we could be approved as adoptive parents.

I am truly excited and delighted to say that we were approved to adopt one child in the age range 0 – 3. Or possibly two children, if close in age. OMG. Really. Deep. Breath.

Approval, however, is really only another stage on the way. It’s kind of when the waiting begins.

We are now waiting to find “a match”.

We have been waiting for a month, and have been told it may take up to . . . well, any length of time really . . . and there is no guarantee it will ever happen.

So back to ‘normal life’.

And then on Tuesday evening our Social Worker called with the news that they have found a potential match for us. She was adamant however that we MUST NOT get excited at this stage as it is very early days. There is a long process to go through, other couples are also potential matches at this point so it really may not be for us. (But we are keeping our fingers crossed – and you know me, I am not a bit excited!)

EVEN IF this one does happen, we are unlikely to take our little one home until some time after Christmas. And PLEASE REMEMBER – this one REALLY may not happen. I just wanted you to know what was going on.

There, I told you it was a bombshell!

V.


P.S. If your next question is what do I plan to do when we get a child, my answer is that adoption leave is almost exactly the same as maternity leave. You won’t see me in work for at least a few months!