Buckle up, it's a long one...

So, I'm continuing with the 'out of order' thing, and today's offerings are again subdivided into categories. I was going to put the 'babies being cute' category first, but I've realised that if I don't want to lose you all half way through, I'm going to have to make this more like a trip to IKEA - you have no choice but to tramp through a whole acre of stuff you don't want in order to get to the good bits. So, let's start with the category that I can only honestly call:

1) Photos that I took because it was nearly bedtime and I hadn't taken a photo yet


Can you put that clicky thing away so I can go to bed?
Yes, that's an electrical cable. Can I have my mother of the year award now, please? (It was unplugged. I think).

Bottle goes in here, please.
So close to bedtime that we are actually IN our pyjamas.

There is obviously significant overlap between this category and

2) Photos that aren't of babies (gasp), aka photos I took because it was after bedtime and I hadn't taken a photo yet

Weird clicky molecule toy. They LOVE it.



Dusting off the macro lens...
Wash day.

3)Babies actually doing things, including not being cute

I've got no idea what you're talking about, I didn't go anywhere NEAR the cat.

(And speaking of cats... )
This thing is so flexible that I really have no need for opposable thumbs.

Yeah. one of those days.

Mummy... I think you need to switch your flash to manual and start again with totally different exposure settings.
Still just CRAZY about being upside down.

He didn't even twitch. Seriously, this cat deserves some kind of award.


These next three belong together. Seems like the time of them spending a whole day in their birthday outfits is well and truly over...
so much more fun to just eat the stickers.

When they're all grown up, I'm hoping this will remind me that it wasn't ALL fun.

But now finally...

4) Babies being cute
Hurrah! You made it. The Swedish Food Court of photography. Not much to say about these. Basically, I think my point is that the babies are very good looking. The miracle of adoption, huh? Here they are:


Sometimes, I look at her (and him, but mostly her) and think that I can see exactly what she's going to look like when she's all grown up. And yes! She is eating grass. I draw the line at leaves, but I can't seem to do anything about the grass. It's like having another cat.

I can't help myself; I'm a sucker for a boy in a tiger suit. It's like having Calvin AND Hobbes, all at once!



Having posted this, it now strikes me that he looks like he's about to be abducted by a UFO.

Last time you saw the babies loving up to THEIR grandparents - this time it's two of mine who came to visit for the day. (And are currently touring through Eastern Europe - hope you're having fun, Gran and Grandad!) You saw pictures of my parents last week, so which parent do you think belongs to these two? If you are related to me, you get no points - that's cheating.

Our second-favourite cat... Mr Pusskins.




THE END! I'm all up to date! (Until tomorrow, I guess...)

Choose Your Own Adventure Blogging

More cutesy baby pics coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff. And sometimes I feel like a bit of a fraud with the cutesy baby pics, actually, but that's a whole 'nother topic. But now I'm at that terrible 'muddled-in-my-head' stage where I feel like my head is too full of contradictory thoughts, and there's no way I can get it all out without writing pages and pages and pages that will quickly become boring.

So, I'm totally stealing an idea from a few months ago from Brenda (who has the cutest new puppy in the WORLD) and I'm going to ask you to tell me - which of these things should I get down first?

1) My Life as a Celebrity - pushing a stroller around town with my transracially adopted twins
2) Listening to the Experts - thinking about the adult adoptee perspective
3) If I could give just one piece of adoption advice, it would be...
4) The Hospital (this one's probably a bit dull, actually, but if I remove it, my numbering will be all shot)
5) My Children Are Not Educational Toys (answering white middle class questions about race)
6) What Flooring Should I Choose for my Lounge? (not a trick, just something I've been thinking about)
7) Ducklings (attachment, seven-ish months in)
8) Top Tips for Photographing Babies (not a trick, either)
9) Are you SURE nobody told you? (reflections on adoption prep)

So, over to you - what page do you want to turn to? (Am assuming you all read those books as kids, right? RIGHT?)

Project 365: horribly out of order

The problem with a photo-a-day project (apart from the fact that you have to take a photo, like, every day) is that the longer you leave the downloading and posting, the more there is, and the longer it's going to take to do it, which means it becomes more difficult to do, which means it gets left even longer. Or at least, that's what seems to happen to me. If anybody else has done this, and has tips for how to stop it all piling up into a big teetering heap and then collapsing messily around you, please do tell. Because I'm all out of ideas.

But onward and upward! The last photos I posted went up to the beginning of April, which means I have a month and a bit of new ones to get through, which isn't going to happen all at once. So, I'm taking a break from the strict chronology and presenting a special themed edition. Parts 1 and 2 today - the rest at some point in that comfortingly faraway place called 'the future'.

Part 1: Loved up grandparents

My parents were here for a few weeks, and it seems that a lot of the pictures I got while they were here were of the babies staring, lovestruck, at their new favourite humans. There is a particularly high density of pictures of Mum and baby I gazing into each other's eyes.

Or kissing.


I love this picture. These may be the two most differently shaped profiles in the whole world, and two very different skin colours, but they sure look like family to me.

Should I be jealous?
He's moved on to grabbing her necklace! Normally he grabs MY necklace!
Oh good, she's been distracted by the other baby.
Yeah, not for long.
I wonder would he fit in my suitcase?
(No. No he wouldn't).

I didn't get as many photos of this, but as I mentioned last time, baby L had an equally huge crush on her grandpa. And who can blame her, when he tries this hard to entertain her? (and lets her lick his reading glasses?)

We're very sad they're gone, and we all miss them a lot. I haven't had the heart to tell the babies that they are now at home in Australia playing with their other grandchildren. I'm not sure I could deal with inflicting that much heartbreak.

Part 2: Cornwall

Pretty self-explanatory, really. We went to the beach! (More than one photo from some of these days - sadly the holiday was not THAT long).

It was fun.

Okay, after each wave comes another wave. I get it already, alright?
We ate some sand.
and contemplated infinity
and then ate some more sand


Best of all, it was sunny nearly every day

- so we only had to go to the art gallery once
which is fortunate, because it was some kind of an anti-tardis - much smaller on the inside than it looked from outside.
It's not really a holiday unless you have a self-timer shot, into the sun, with a wonky horizon, is it?

So that's that: coming soon, part 3: self-indulgent baby portraits!

Adoption: on earth as it is in heaven?

[note - I'm writing this about an issue that I think exists in the Christian adoption community. As such, it's written from an explicitly Christian perspective].

Having adopted two tiny humans, I have become so much more aware of what God did when he adopted me - not because of the similarities, but because of the differences. And I've become convinced that these differences are important. I think that those of us who are Christians in the adoption community can be guilty of overplaying the similarities between God's adoption of us, and our adoption of children. I think that when we do this, we are at risk of wrongly casting ourselves in the role of 'saviour', or trivialising the amazing truth of God's adoption of us (or both).

Here are five reasons that I think overdoing the links between human adoption and divine adoption can be confusing - for us, our children, the church, and the rest of the world.

1) When God adopted me, he adopted someone who is totally unlike himself.

Personally, I think this is the biggest difference between my adoption by God and my adoption of children. I am able to adopt children because I am in comfortable circumstances, and they need adoption because of profoundly uncomfortable circumstances, but there is absolutely no difference between us, really. I am richer, and older, but that's it. If the world had been ordered differently, the adoption could easily have been the other way around. But for me and God? There are huge differences between me and God, and these are in our fundamental, essential natures. Him: creator, sustainer, redeemer of the Universer, totally holy and totally righteous. Me: a frail human sinner, totally unworthy to be in his presence. But rather than rejecting me, he makes me part of his family. He makes me part of his family. Once we understand who God is, and who we really are, this is staggering. It should amaze us.

Not so, my adoption of little people. Two big sinners adopting two little sinners, and we become a human family. Wonderful, joyful, but not unnatural. Not staggering.

We should not forget this difference. It affects how we think about the worth of our children.

2) When God adopted me, my adoption was a totally good thing.

No grief, no pain, just rejoicing. Out of darkness, into light. How could I not be grateful and glad?

I'm hoping that I don't need to explain how this is different from our children's human experience of adoption. They gain a new family, but this is coupled with huge losses. Our children have birthfamilies, whether living or dead. In even the very best adoptions, our children will need to face the sadness that comes from knowing that their birthparents were unable to raise them.

There will be hard days, maybe years, maybe a lifetime, when their adoption does not seem to them to be a good thing. And, hardest of all, some of them will be right.

We should not forget this difference. It affects how we think about the realities of adoption for our children.

3) When God adopted me, I needed to be adopted because of my own sin.

All too often, adoption is surrounded by human sin. Sometimes, children need adoption because of the sins of their birthparents - such as rape, abuse or neglect. Sometimes, children need adoption because of the sins of others - such as greed and exploitation, leading to overwhelming poverty. Sometimes, there is no sin at all, just tragedy. But it's pretty much never because of anything the child themselves has done.

Not so for me. I needed adoption into God's family because of what I, myself had done. I was no victim of circumstance. I needed him to show mercy, and he did. He really did save me, which is just as well, because I really needed saving.

Let's not forget this difference. It affects how we think about the dignity of our children.

4) When God adopted me, there was no other way that I could have been saved.

In order to bring me into God's family, Jesus had to die. It couldn't happen any other way. God takes my sin that seriously. That fact takes some pondering.

And of course, I baulk at using the word 'saved' to describe the adoption of a child. And maybe this point should end exactly there - at our best, we take children with no home and joyfully become a family together. And orphanages are bad, obviously, and I've fed two badly malnourished children back to health so I know what I'm talking about here but I didn't actually save my children. But even if adopting them did save their lives, we were not their only option. If we had not adopted our children, they would still have a home. In fact, we know the people who would have adopted them, the people who were next on the list, and they are a delightful family.

These is true for any of us adopting from anywhere where there is a waiting list. Once there is a queue, it's important that we realise that we aren't doing anybody any favours by adding our names to that queue.

Let's not forget this difference. It should stop us getting a saviour complex.

5) When God adopted me, I was also born again.

We need to remember that adoption is not the only description used for the way we join God's family. The themes of adoption and the new birth twine together through the New Testament, and both are equally important (and equally true). I don't think the new birth is a command to make babies. Similiarly, I don't think that our adoption by God is primarily a command to adopt children. I think that mostly, it should be a reason to worship.

Since he uses both of these to explain how we came to be his children, I think we can safely say that God approves of both adoption and birth. I think that as adopters, we can be in danger of assuming that our families have some kind of spiritual 'edge' because of how they are formed, or worse, that we (the adoptive parents) are somehow more holy than parents who add to their families the usual way. I'm convinced that, to God, it just doesn't matter whether we form our families by birth, adoption, or both. Birth families are no more 'real', and adoptive families are no more Godlike.

Let's not forget this difference. It should stop us from having either an inferiority or a superiority complex about our families.

So, those are five differences that I see. Please don't misunderstand me - in a world where adoption is undervalued as a way to make a real family, I draw great encouragment from the fact that God adopted me. The fact that God adopted me, long before I adopted anyone, does help make me feel good about the way we formed our family. And there are so many similarities between God's adoption of us, and our adoption of children. We were strangers, and then we became a family. A proper family. We are are joined by permanent, legal bonds. We are joined by love. And out of ashes, comes deep joy.

These truths are wonderful. But I think that it's tempting for Christians thinking about adoption to stop at this point. I fear that, for those of us in the Christian adoption community, it's too easy just to let ourselves melt into sentimentality when we talk about these things, and not go any further. Let's challenge ourselves - as Christian individuals, and as a Christian adoption community, to think hard about the way we talk about adoption. Let's never use Christian adoption as an excuse to be lazy about adoption ethics. Let's celebrate our families, but not confuse ourselves with God.

Monday Morning

I've been away. We've been on holiday in Cornwall for a week (it's nice, you should go) and I'm facing that back-from-holiday horror.

I've come back to find over two HUNDRED things in my google reader, which sort of makes my head spin. Apologies for not commenting. Also messages on my phone asking me to do things that I'm already too late to do. Realisations that I was supposed to do some stuff before I went away that I totally forgot about. And a message from our social worker saying that she can't make our scheduled appointment so can she come at ten on monday instead? That's ten AM, folks. Today.

Some days, I feel like I'm just going to crumple. It's not really the parenting so much as all the other obligations. It's not like they're at all unpleasant. Many of them involve coffee, and I really like coffee. But I constantly feel like I'm on a social hamster wheel - never doing enough, never returning enough phone calls or writing enough emails, never inviting enough people over or going to enough people's houses. Saying a lot of 'oh yes we must' and not a lot of 'so next tuesday is free for me, how about you?' The thought of adding a social worker to the mix, first thing on a monday, pretty much tips me over the edge.

My parents have beeen here for weeks, and were due to go home Wednesday but have been caught in the cloud of volcanic ash, which sounds excitingly apocalyptic but mostly turns out just to be extremely tedious. It's been great having them around but I have cancelled pretty much EVERYTHING else while they've been here to maximise nanna-grandpa baby face-time, so there are a lot of catch-up things planned for next week after they've gone. But now they're still going to be here then, and I should probably cancel everything again and rebook it a week later but the thought overwhelms me. I just can't think about it. And now the social worker is due in 49 minutes.

I'm trying to think about how to maximise my productive time in the 48 minutes remaining. What really, REALLY needs to be cleaned? I get an unexpected answer when L vomits all over me. It's not baby spit-up any more, it's proper vomit with a smell to match. I put her down, wipe her off and go into the hallway to breathe.

This weekend, my father told my mother that holding baby L reminds him of holding me when I was a baby. I think it's mostly the tininess, and the predisposition towards facial eczema that's doing it, but this gave me a real rush of emotion. I'm thrilled, because my Dad does not make stuff up just to make people feel good, and this does make me feel good. It makes me feel, illogically, that we really were meant to be together because look! She's just like me! And then later the same day I overhear a friend telling someone else that his daughter has his wife's eyes, which is innocuous enough but it hits me again that whatever my children have that might be like me, didn't actually come from me. And I'm well past the stage of wanting a different child, one that does inherit my genes, but it still hurts me that I don't have that connection to these children.

And now, I'm still thinking about it and it all feels like too much. I want some quiet. I don't want to have to unpack in the 33 minutes remaining before I have to account for our family to a stranger with a clipboard.

I want out of this day.

I sigh, pick myself up and go in to check on them. Their faces light up. They grin at me, and make excited hyperventilating noises like nothing could ever have made them so happy as to see me walk into their room. I look at them, my roly poly wonder boy, and my fine boned wood-sprite of a girl, and finally my face lights up too. They make singing noises. I sing back. I cuddle them both, and they nuzzle my neck. And I realise: oh babies, my babies - I'm the luckiest woman alive. I would see a thousand social workers for you.

Obviously, I lied

Okay, so I lied about never waiting a long time between posting photos ever again. Here's the next batch - and I'm already behind again since I uploaded these. This photo a day thing is taking over my life! Starting at March 13...

Finally got it... the big smile when J walks through the door after work.

Urghhhh... if you look closely here (don't!) you can see L's streaming nose, in full flow again only 30s after exiting the bath. Not a very good day.

She LOVES the cat. LOVES him. Having her in the house is like having a geiger counter, but for felines - she can always sense when he's getting close and goes crazy with joy. Which isn't very often, because he's terrified of her. This is the closest they've ever been - she can't believe her luck.

I guess we have to wait for the scan to be sure... but twins DO run in the family.

You got any idea what this photo is supposed to be about? Are we supposed to be scientists or something? Is this an atom? Why are we dressed in matching clothes?

It's the middle of March, and the crocuses are FINALLY out. It was a long, long, long winter.

I guess this explains why that modelling contract never quite came through.

The grandparents are here, and they are a HIT. L has a huge, giant crush on her grandpa.

This boy is so proud of himself. He's been sitting up for weeks, but still thinks he's King Kong every time he does it. I love it.


A flower. Purchased by J. For me. Ahhhhh.

She's wearing the only outfit that I have ever sewn for her (so far). She's really too big for it here, but I wanted a record so that when she's older, I can prove that I did make her something.... once.


Baby I has developed a MANIA for being upside down. It's hilarious. I guess all the blood is good for his brain. I hope so.

I LOVE this photo. I have to admit that I don't think I took it - mum and I were sharing the camera, and I'm pretty sure this is hers. My memory card, though, so it's going in my pile. Ha.


New bag, which I love beyond all reason.

Outside! On the deck!


No, really, he asked ME on the date. Honestly.

Prozac is good for them, yes?

Focusing without using the viewfinder = very glad I'm not shooting on expensive film.

Most frequent view of the boy

Last year sometime, Kate Moss got herself in trouble again for quoting the old line 'nothing tastes as good as thin feels'. Well, all I can say is that it's clear Kate Moss has never tasted these cookies.


How does so much cute fit in such a tiny package, miss L?


Whew! Over and out.

I wish I knew

Since we started solids, the babies have been pooping like crazy. They used to be once-a-day, nice and regular, but now our house is a bowel movement free-for-all.

Bear with me, there is a point to this scatology. I'm not inflicting it on you for no reason.

Poos can come at any time, and any place. I'm sure this will all calm down once their little guts start to cope with all the new food, but for now? Like I said: free-for-all. There's only one exception to the unpredictability - baby L always feels the call of nature during her midday nap.

Ah, the delights of a midday nap. I'm aware that I posted about sleep a few months ago, promised a follow up, and never did it. Well, here's the quick version - after doing sleep training for just a few days (cry it out, with check and console) their sleep changed utterly and they turned into magnificent, calm, happy sleepers. And yet - I guess part of the reason that I never posted an update is that I still feel a bit conflicted about the whole issue of sleep training an adopted baby. And I feel kind of bad talking about the fact that we did it, because hey, I know it's a bit controversial and I want people to like me.

But this was my thought process. Somehow, through my brain fog, I managed to read 'healthy sleep habits happy child'. This book is written by a guy who knows a LOT of things. Unfortunately, how to write well is not one of them, so getting through this book is a bit like picking jewels out of a big pile of dung. It's not my intention to review this book in detail, because I can't be bothered. But I compared his views (a man who knows pretty much everything about sleep) with those of people who know a lot of about adoption, and I realised that there is no concensus on sleep, just like there is no concensus on any other area of parenting. There are experts, but they don't necessarily agree. And putting something in bold type, or in a little box, doesn't necessarily make it true. At least I hope so, because reconciling all the little boxes and bold type in all my different 'definitive' books was making me crazy.

I was terrified about the interactions between sleep and attachment. I knew that attachment is really important because attachment experiences affect a child's brain chemistry. This freaked me out when I first found out about it, in books like this, and one of the monster bad nasty chemicals I've been totally phobic about ever since is cortisol, the evil brain chemical of stress. And yes, I know I shouldn't be getting my information on neurochemistry from a book with a picture of a dancing child on the cover, but to be honest, I don't have enough knowledge of biology to get my information on neurochemistry from anywhere else. So anyway, lots of my thinking about parenting styles (including sleep) had revolved around trying to make sure that our babies got a nice flow of happy, bonding chemicals in their brains, and not too many of the evil stress chemicals. One of the reasons I originally wanted to always respond and soothe during the night was to reduce the evil stress chemicals. And then I found out that: sleep deprivation also causes the brain to release cortisol. [in bold type, so it must be true]. Cue major freakout from me. Obviously this wasn't our intention, but the way we were approaching sleep (always being there, always soothing) meant that the babies were probably getting about 11 hours total, when babies their age should have been getting 14-16 hours. And as time went on it was getting, not better, but much much worse. Arrgghhhh! The cortisol!!!

It's absolutely not my intention to try to convince anybody else that they need to try our sleep methods with their children (also, I'm really hungry, AGAIN) so I'm going to skip any kind of long defence of what we did and why. I guess what I'm really writing about is the fact that I feel defensive in the first place.

I know that sleep can be a really big issue for adopted children. But I think that it might be an even bigger issue for adoptive parents. I think that the dark, silent unknowableness of sleep plays into so many of our insecurities. And know all parents have insecurities, but I'm sure that adoption is a good way to multiply them. And I feel like this: my child had to go through so much trauma before joining our family - now that they are in it, I want everything to be perfect. (Not physically perfect - I'm really quite remakably laid back about things like what they eat, and clothes from ebay, and cat hair, and so on - but emotionally perfect). And most of this desire is good. But when I look down into the deepest, worst recesses of my soul, I think there's a tiny bit of me saying 'because if you are super perfecto attachment parento, then, if they grow into messed up adults, it's not your fault'.

And the problem with me being issued my super-parent cape is this. I would do anything for them, but often I don't really know what that is. As time goes on, I'm pretty sure that we did the right thing (or at least, not the wrong thing) by sleep training them. Once they were sleeping more, their energy levels increased, they are able to sleep solidly for hours at a time (because sleep begets sleep - probably the most annoying thing a sleep deprived parent can hear) and their feeding improved hugely. It used to be the case that baby L would start to drift off to sleep as soon as she got a bottle in her mouth, because she was living in a constant state of chronic sleep deprivation and the relaxation from the milk was enough to tip her over the edge. But remove the bottle from her mouth and wham - she would wake straight up again and howl. Bottle in again, drifting off again, snoring, bottle out - more howling. Now that she is properly awake, she can drink a whole bottle wide eyed, and it's only when she's had a really disturbed day (eg, hospital trips during naptime) that I see the old milk-sleeping thing happen again and think 'oh yeah, every day used to be like this'. And I feel pleased with our choices. But then sometimes other things happen - like when L starts screaming in the middle of the nap for the first time in months and I think it's the pooping but I just don't know - and yes of course I'm changing her if she poops during her nap, I'm not a monster- and I think 'oh no, they aren't attached to me at ALL' and I'm gripped by The Fear. 'They don't trust me. It's because I'm not cuddling them immediately when they wake up. They feel abandoned. All their loss issues are surfacing and I'm not supporting them'.

And I suspect you're thinking 'lighten up!' but it's hard to realise that I'm never, really, going to know whether or not we made the best choice regarding their sleep. Or anything else. And even if we found out, we couldn't go back in time and change it. And it seems that this is the case for pretty much every parenting decision I make - there is no feedback form. There are no grades. I'm flying blind, here.

And of course, I already knew this going in. Obviously. This is not exactly a news story. Time magazine will not be paying me for my insights about this. And yet, I do wish I knew. I wish I knew what to do with them all the time. I wish there was some kind of light up display on their foreheads that would indicate, at any given moment, whether I was providing adequate love and stimulation or scarring them for life. I can pretty much tell the cries that mean 'hungry!' 'bored!' 'annoyed!' 'stinky!' or 'my brother is chewing my ear!' and I'm really pleased that we have come this far. It means so much that I am beginning to understand them, on some level. But I do wish there was a way to decode what would mean 'attachment disorder!' 'trauma flashback!' 'I'm processing intense grief!' 'I'm feeling my primal wound!' and how that would differ from 'oooooh, that sweet potato made me a little bit constipated'.

Sometimes it's simple. You want to play, kiddo, but you need to sleep and we'll have hours to play when you wake up (refreshed and happy) after a nap. So down in your cot you go, my little friend. And in thirty seconds you're asleep, and I know I did the right thing.

But other times? It's not that I'm lazy. (Okay, sometimes I am lazy, but mostly it's not that). It's not that I don't care. It's that I really don't have any idea what I need to do for you right now. There have been multiple cases of me holding a crying baby and sobbing a little myself and saying 'honey, mummy wants to help you but she doesn't know what to do!' And the thing that is freaking me out is that I realise that nobody has the answers. With most things I have done in my life, I may have messed up, but at least I knew what I had done wrong. I didn't deal very well with a lot of my issues surrounding childlessness (of which more, I think, another day) but at least I knew what I should have been doing. But now? Yeah, not so much.

Which brings me back to sleep. I don't want to give the wrong impression here - this isn't something that is eating me alive. But sometimes I do wonder. What if we did make the wrong decision on sleep? What then? What does it mean?

Mostly, I'm really enjoying all of this, and mostly, I think I was pretty well prepared. But sometimes, this parenting stuff messes with my head way more than I expected.

Our Day in Court

I've been meaning to write about this since it happened, back in October, and for obvious reasons, now seems like the right time.

Back in late 2008, we found out that the rules had changed for people adopting from where we live, and we were going to have to make two trips to Ethiopia. We were also going to have to appear in Court in person. What can I say? We were incredibly upset. All that extra time and money, not to mention the thought of having to meet a baby and then leave it behind. We got the news a long time ago, and a lot has happened since, but I do remember how awful it made me feel, especially when it came totally out of the blue.

I do remember that. But we did end up going to court, and here is something that I will never forget: A tall, older man, probably a grandfather, leading a tiny girl by the hand through the doors of the adoption court. Her, scurrying to keep up, chattering away to him and tugging on his clothes. Him, reaching down to touch her head. The love between them was palpable. I didn't see what happened to her, but I think I can guess.

Something else I will never forget: the sharp and obvious divide between those who seemed to be there to represent adoption agencies, and those who must have been there to formally relinquish their children. For one group of people, laughing and chatting to each other and a chance to catch up. Another day at work. For so many of the others, a quiet murmuring, or silence, and eyes cast down. A sense of disenfranchisement so intense you could taste it.

And something else: We were one of only three white couples there, and I think we three couples were the only PAPs in court that day. I know one other couple was also British, and the third seemed to be speaking Spanish. And that was it. And I knew we were only there because we absolutely had to be - I'm not claiming any kind of moral superiority, because we didn't make a choice, just did what we were told. But I did wonder. Why is it that birthfamilies have to be there, and on the whole, we do not? They are ushered into a room with a judge and make some kind of declaration, and relinquish their child - to whom? Where are these new parents? Why aren't we all here to promise these children a lifetime of love?

So. There are definite upsides to taking two trips. And I'll post more about those personal upsides another day. But appearing in court? Well, I think these new rules are right. Not because it benefits us, but because I feel we should be there, and be there humbly. It is an inconvenient journey. It is definitely expensive. It is, in so many ways, heart-wrenching. But not, surely, in comparison to the journey taken by these other mothers who are also there, the journey that ends with empty arms.

This is a very serious thing we do, taking somebody else's child. I think I'm only really realising how serious now. And if relinquishing parents have to be there? Well, I think we should be there too.