Un/Comfortably Numb

The last week has been unbelieveably stinky. I feel like I'm stuck back in last october / november again, what with the unexpected arrival of bad news, and ... okay, actually, mostly just that. I'm not quite sure how to say these things, or what order to put them in, so I'm just going to type them in the order they happened:

1. J's father was diagnosed with colon c.ancer
2. Due to very recent changes in immigration law, it looks like our adoption might not be able to progress any further until I am granted citizenship. Which will take about 6 months. We found out on Friday.

Okay, so you can probably all imagine what a FANTASTIC weekend was had in the Chapman household. It. Was. Bad. However. The mitigating factors:

• Quite possibly, the c.ancer will be operable. It was found via a routing screening procedure, and there aren't any symptoms yet, so hopefully it is at an early stage. We'll find out early next week. Obviously, we're worried. But J's dad is remarkably calm and cheerful - his attitude has been a real encouragement.
  
• We were always planning for me to get citizenised (yep, that's a word), but as it wasn't required for the adoption (until about ten minutes ago) we were delaying doing the forms and so on until the bulk of the adoption assessment for panel was out of the way. In order to keep my passport, and not need to send it to the home office, I needed to book an appointment to have my documents officially checked and photocopied at a registry office. It takes about 2 months to get one of these appointments. And I happened to finally make mine about two months ago. Which means that my citizenship appointment was TODAY. I'm incredibly thankful for this - it would have been very, very, very hard to wait for this appointment, knowing that I couldn't join the citizenship queue until it was completed. Providentially, I only had to wait for one weekend with that knowledge, and now my forms are in the post, having been stamped by a lovely lady named Beverly.
• Even better, it's possible that my immigration status of 'indefinite leave to remain', which I got about three years ago, might just be enough to make our adoption possible without needing the citizenship. This is a bit fuzzy. Immigration law is... complicated. Obviously. But we're not having our papers pulled until we've at least found out whether this is an option.
• I get to add a new ticker - 'time spent waiting for citizenship'. Hurrah.
  
• Cindy got her referral - baby Olly's coming home
• I have a new name, which is a nice novelty - it's Claudia, by a whisker, and the cat is now Kevin (that was a landslide).
  
• As I had my appointment this morning, and it was in Oxford, I get to take the day off. So I'm going to spend the afternoon here:

and here:

Sadly, you have to pay extra for this:


so I'll have to content myself with the hydrotherapy jet pool, aromatherapy steam room and heated loungers. I think I'll manage.

• I had a very big slice of cake earlier, which made everything feel a lot better
  
• There's only so much of this stuff that can happen before it's almost - almost - funny. I think I'm pretty much there.
  

Anonymise me!

Okay, so, various factors have led me to realise that this blog is a lot, lot more google-able than I would like. And since I've been, errr, kinda open about some of my issues and struggles, I've decided that I don't like it being this way. If my friends and family want to know what I really think, they can wait to buy the book, darnit. So.... I'm going to get around the issue, I hope, by renaming myself. And yes, I know google caches things and so on, but anybody who can be bothered going through the google cache must have better ways to use their skills than in finding this blog.

So. I need your help. I've randomly (well, almost randomly - I avoided any names that are high on our list for an actual baby) chosen some potential names off the 'top 100 baby names in England' list, which is helpfully maintained by the office of national statistics. Who shall I be online from now on? There's a poll on the top right (if I can ever make it work) with the options: Chloe, Siena, Rose, Freya, Claudia. If it doesn't work, please leave me a comment instead (my blog gadget skills are not fantastic, and I keep getting a 404 error, so I'm a little worried. But I'm going to try again). Alternatively, if you've got any other great ideas for alter-ego names, please suggest them. I'm not totally in love with any of my ideas, to be honest. I'm also sort of considering Martha, because I really liked the German film 'Mostly Martha', but I'm not sure about that one either.

Oh, and the cat needs a new name too. His choices are Fluffy, Stripey, Ginger and Kevin. Or something else, obviously.

So! Vote!

And by the way, I've seen a few people say 'person x found my blog by searching xxxxxxxx on google'. HOW DO YOU KNOW?? Anyone who can tell me how to do this will be highly esteemed by me forever.

Who was I kidding?

When I said there was a chance that we might get through before the rainy season? There's no way.

A dear friend sent me an email asking about when we might be meeting our baby. I replied with a list of what we had to next (a long way of saying 'I don't know'). So here is our quick, off-the-top-of-my-head list of stuff that has to happen now. Some of this is the same as the US process, some of it is different. :

• Wait for our approval to be ratified (probably early Feb)
• Appoint a notary
• Wait for our local authority to send our ratified papers to the department of ch.ildren, scho.ols, and famili.es (D.CS.F) (Should be ~1 week after ratification)
• Wait for the D.CSF to certify us as 'eligible' adopters (could be 2 weeks, could be 6 months)
• Wait for the DC.SF to send our papers to our notary
• Get the rest of our dossier to the notary (really, there would be NO EXCUSE for not having all of this together after how long we've had to prepare): (bank reference, personal references, birth cert, marriage cert, post-placement obligation letter, why we want to adopt from ethiopia letter, photos, proof of life insurance, etc - y'all know the drill)
• Arrange for notary to photocopy and authenticate all the relevant papers, then send to Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Ethiopian Embassy (I'm not quite sure why this costs close to £1000. A mystery).
• Wait for Eth. embassy to legalise papers and send back to Notary (probably about 3 weeks - 1 month)
• Notary sends back to D.CSF
• Wait for DCS.F to send papers to Ethiopia (YAAAAAY!) (could be 1 week, could be 2 months - looking like 2 months at the moment. Another mystery. All they have to do is measure the parcel so we can call DHL and tell them to collect it).
  

....then......

• wait to be notified about a suitable child (unknown time frame - could be quite quick, could be a few months)
• Fly to Addis
• Officially 'identify' child recommended by orphanage and apply for a court date for an adoption hearing
  
• Ask british embassy to provide confirmation that child will be eligible for citizenship
• Wait for notification of court date
• Wait for actual court date (approx 2 months after application). I will possibly be in Addis for this time - J will probably have to come home. I'm hoping to volunteer at the orphanage for this stretch but I have NO idea whether I'll be allowed to or not. Not thinking about this yet. It's too early for me to be disappointed if the answer is no. I'd rather have hope.
  

....then......

• Fly back to Addis (if back in the UK) for a second, 3-4 week trip. Arrive a week before court
  
• Court date
  
• Apply for Ethiopian passport for baby
• Wait for British embassy to give us entry clearance for baby
• Fly home!
  

Notice a recurring verb?

So. I'm kind of getting used to the idea that our baby probably isn't born yet. But sometimes it hits me that maybe they aren't even conceived. J and I have regular, half-joking conversations about the fact that maybe, since it's going to take so long anyway, we should hang out for as long as it takes to get a twin referral. (Oooh, sorry, recommendation. Independent adopters must not use the term referral). But then sometimes I think 'but our friend K got her first set of papers through the D.CSF in a week! It could still happen!' until reality slaps me down again.

I love my country. I really do. But this adoption is messing with my brain enough, anyway, without all these UK-specific logistics to send me doubly crazy. I wish adoption was a bigger part of our culture. I wish there were enough adoptions each year for us to have an agency in Ethiopia. I wish I had some idea when I could be leaving work. I wish I knew who my baby was. I wish I could at least pray for him or her, knowing that they exist, already, whether inside or outside mother #1. I wish that I could communicate to some of my friends that okay, if they don't see ME as an expectant mother, could they please pray for / be thinking of mother #1? I wish I could explain that right now, mother # 1 feels more real to me - is more often in my thoughts - than Hypothetical Future Baby, who, contrary to what I expected, feels more shadowy than ever. I wish I could explain that I'm not adopting to avoid morning sickness.

Okay, I'm a little off the topic now. Sorry. Normal service will resume soon.

Overwhelmed

It's been a week since I posted, because my head has been swirlingly full of all kinds of craziness. After the elation of Wednesday, I feel like the rest of the week totally spiralled out of control. To illustrate: normally, I like to cook a 'proper' dinner for us. The idea is that it's ready so that we can eat together as soon as J gets home and I feel like I'm contributing something other than my pathological mood swings to our marriage. However. This week we ate:

1 x shop-bought pizza

1 x meal out (that was Wednesday)

1 x home made soup (only 5 ingredients and I FORGOT TO ADD TWO OF THEM)

1 x shop-bought soup (learning from above)

1 x macaroni and cheese

1 x dinner at friends' house

1 x leftover macaroni and cheese

Yes, I was overwhelmed enough that I paid good money for pre-made SOUP.

Why so overwhelmed?

Well, apart from a very small number of people who said 'that's really... great!' in a way that made it clear that what they meant was 'actually, I'm a little freaked out by this!' I've been overwhelmed by people's joy for us. Two different people at work have given me champagne, and even a few people I was a bit nervous about telling have obviously been thrilled for us. I've been so touched by people's kindness. I should stop underestimating my friends.

I've been overwhelmed by how many of you left us congratulatory comments! Thank you so much. Nobody else knows like all of you do just what a big milestone this is for us.

I've been overwhelmed by a few very emotional conversations. Top of the list was talking to my maternal grandmother on Wednesday night. She's been very sick for over a year and I'm more glad than I can say that she lived for long enough for us to tell her about Hypothetical Future Baby. Talking to her was especially sweet because she is an adoptive mother herself- my youngest uncle was domestically adopted as a baby- and she said this was the best news that she has had in years (sorry, L, I think she was even more excited by this than she would have been by the idea of another bio great-grandbaby). She said every possible right thing that anybody could have said, finishing with 'I just can't wait to see you walk in here holding your own baby'. Considering how ill she is, and the unknown factors in our timescale, I have to accept that she might not see this. But I'll never forget how happy it made me just to hear her say it. And - ummm, oookay, actually, I'm going to have to move on because I'm totally tearing up as I'm typing and I'm doing it in my lunchbreak at work.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. I've been overwhelmed by just how silly some people are. By those who have never learned the 'if you don't know what to say, dont' say anything at all' rule. And yes, I'm thinking of you, person who told me that you knew someone who adopted from country xxxxx, and their child was 'a bit, simple, but otherwise it was very much like she was their daughter'. I'm not going to give that one any more space.

I've been overwhelmed by baby pictures. We emailed a lot of our friends with our news, so that we could tell them all at once. Anyone else find that you can't email a friend with kids without getting baby photos attached to the reply? Often with absolutely no relevance at all to the content of the email? It seems to be a a completely uncontrollable compulsion - I've begun to think of it as parental-baby-photo-attachment-tourettes. So this week, I've lost count of how many emails I got saying 'That's great news! Here is a photo of baby Archibald eating cheese'.

Most of all, though, I've been overwhelmed by general overwhelmingness. I couldn't possibly express this any better than Julie already has. (Thanks for the timing, Julie!) My head is spinning with a thousand different fears and hopes and distractions, from money to discipline to inadequacy to boredom to joy to sleep to distance from family to skin colour to the thought of several months in Ethiopia on my own to timescales.

Oh, yes, timescales. Tantalisingly, there's a slim possibility that,if every single step of our process went quickly from here on, we could possibly, POSSIBLY, get through court before it closes for the rainy season this year. I know it's not likely to happen - not really likely at all - but I can't help hoping. I almost wish that we were a month or two later, so there would be no chance and I would't be disappointed. But no matter how much I tell myself not to hope, I am hoping. This means that I've suddenly gone into hyperdrive with trying to sort out the paperwork (yep - it's all very different from the US process - once I've sorted out what I actually need to do, I'll try to put up a post about the UK procedure). I don't want to waste a single day, because that day could be the difference between BEFORE the closure or AFTER the closure and AGGGHHHH, my brain fries just thinking about it.

Looks like this is going to be another opportunity to deal with those control issues.

Amongst all the overwhelmedness, though, I am so so grateful that wehave reached this stage. Grateful that we've been approved. Grateful that we have finally been able to share good news with our family and friends. And most of all, grateful that finally, Hypothetical Future Baby just might not be so hypothetical after all.

Kevin has some good news to share

Oh yes - he's going to have a little sibling from Ethiopia because we GOT OUR UK PANEL APPROVAL!

As you can see, he's thrilled:
and so are we!! So thrilled that we went home via a baby shop and paid £6 for a Tshirt. And then wrestled it onto our cat. It was a beautiful day.

Banging at the closet door

We have our panel date tomorrow. Yes, really, tomorrow.

I mostly feel quite calm, and then huge waves of nauseous panic overtake me. I don't even really know what I'm panicked about, just that it feels like a weird combination of nerves and excitement. I'm excited because this time tomorrow we might be APPROVED - finally - but the nerves? I don't think they are just because I'm worried we might not be approved (though of course I am worried about that). It's also because if we are approved, we then have to do all the 'telling', and to be honest, I'm nervous. I'm nervous that people will ask really nosy questions about all the 'whys' that I won't know how to answer, or that they won't be interested at all, or that they'll think it's not a big deal, when it feels like a HUGE BIG ENORMOUS DEAL to me, or someone will say the a sentence with the words 'Angelina Jolie' in it, or people will think that we're trying to save a child, or not realise how much of my heart I have poured into this process (and how could they realise?), or make jokes about how all their husband has to do is LOOK at them and they get pregnant, as if that's somehow relevant, or not mention our news at all as if adoption is something to be ashamed of, or tell us not to worry because we'll have 'one of our own' as soon as we adopt or be offended that we didn't tell them sooner or any of the other things that are multiplying like rabbits in my fevered imagination.

And suddenly, if all goes well, it will be REAL. In this stage, now, we still might not be approved and it's all 'if'. But if tomorrow is successful I get to start saying 'WHEN we adopt' without loading the sentence with eighty-four qualifiers, and it will mostly be a matter of waiting for bureaucracy rather than being personally judged and then at the end of it someone is going to be expecting me to LOOK AFTER A BABY and is it too late to withdraw our application?

If that all seems confused, imagine what it's like being inside my head right now. Please think of me at 11.45 am Greenwich Mean Time tomorrow!!

Episode 63: In which Claudia does some sharing

Well, it's New Year's Eve. This year it's on a wednesday (for those of you who are either unable to read a calendar, or reading this so far in the future that you've forgotten when NYE 2008 fell) which coincides with our church's regular wednesday night bible studies. Sooooo, tonight we're combining the regular wednesday night thing with a NYE dessert party (and I can hear all of you who are shaking your heads and saying 'this is why I don't go to church' - on this occasion, I totally know where you're coming from). Unfortunately, because it's NYE, it's going to incorporate a time of sharing about the year that's gone and our challenges for the new year.

Well. This year certainly has been an eventful one. And the year ahead is certainly likely to have its fair share of challenges. But we've been sticking to our 'no general sharing about the adoption until we've actually been approved' rule, and now isn't the time to break that, with only a week to go until the panel makes their decision. Also, to be honest, I am not really in the sharingest of moods, especially after all the stress of Christmas. Probably I'll do what I've been doing this whole year and just talk about work. Work has been pretty intense this year, but it's also been a convenient excuse for my sky-high levels of stress. If I was being honest, I think I would say that in 2008 I:

• started a blog
• lost a stone, and thus freed myself from the tyranny of constantly needing to wear high heels
• applied to adopt a baby
• thought things would get easier from there
• found that they didn't
• learned to doubt every good thing about myself
• tried to remember that actually, it's very rarely about me
• walked out of a church service for the first and hopefully only time in my life
• realised that, no matter how hard the road, Romans 8:28-31 is always true
• spent most saturdays in the second half of the year meeting with a social worker
• was forced to admit to myself that not all social workers are ogres, and that actually we quite like ours
• grieved a lot
• despised myself for grieving so much
• got promoted
• found myself re-assessing my life in light of where my baby is going to come from
• swore to change
  
• felt like a hypocrite for still enjoying shopping
• remembered how to knit
• got a cat
• found that trouble doesn't always make you stronger
• was not the same person at the end as I was at the beginning.

Hmmmm. Think I'll stick to talking about work. Happy New Year, everyone!

Christmas 2008

Is finally over.

And that is the best thing I can say about Christmas 2008.

All I Want for Christmas Is..... Milk

A few weeks ago, we had a really worrying email from a woman on the (wonderful) yah.oo email list for UK Ethiopia adopters. The foster home that most of us here work with is rapidly running out of infant milk for the babies.

Oh no! Well, obviously we'll get together and donate some money so she can buy some. Except that... there isn't any to buy.

Is anybody travelling in the next few weeks? No. Right, so nobody can take any.

Okay, then, we'll SEND it. Buy it here, send it by DHL, sorted.

No, Ethiopia won't accept any milk imports from the UK (even if the milk was manufactured elsewhere).

Alright, we'll send it from somewhere else. A very resourceful PAP found out that Ethiopia is in the region controlled by Nestle Egypt.

Who, it seems, can't really help us.

At this point, my head really starts to spin. It suddenly comes home to me that this is where my baby is going to be living, at some point, and there isn't enough food. This is the point at which my head and my heart start having a fistfight:

heart - These poor babies. I can't believe this is happening.

head - but you KNOW there are food shortages in Ethiopia.

heart- yes.

head- you KNOW there is grinding poverty.

heart - yes.

head - you KNOW that lots of people can't afford to buy food.

heart - yes.

head - you must know that these sort of circumstances are the context, and possibly part of the reason for your own adoption. Why are you so surprised all of a sudden?

heart - I didn't know it was the kind of food shortages that meant babies could go hungry!

head - excuse me while i roll my eyes at your stupidity.

**heart runs out of the room, crying**

head - I swear, she causes me nothing but trouble.

**********************************************

I think part of what is difficult in this situation is that we, in the West, are used to being able to fix things. No food in my house? Go to the supermarket! No food in another country? Donate a whole heap of money! The only limit to our fixing power is the amount of our money. Even think of (fantastic) organisations like charity: water - the whole premise is that we, in the West, have the *power* to change other peoples lives by giving money. (I think a lot of charities are very adept at this kind of marketing, and a lot of them seem to do it very consciously). Obviously these organisations DO need our money, and we SHOULD donate where we can, but we should also be aware of the power buzz we get by doing it.

I think a lot of us are getting pretty good at being generous, but a situation like this reminds me that we (okay I) are not very good at being impotent. I have the will to change this situation, and I even have the money to change this situation, but I don't have the power to change this situation. And that really stinks.

With this kind of context, you can probably all imagine exactly how much I'm looking forward to Christmas. I think I'm currently in the running for some kind of 'worst person imaginable' award, based on my attitude towards the festive season. The feasting upsets me, because we all basically feast every day so I'm not quite sure what the point is. The emphasis on family togetherness upsets me, because I keep on seeing an empty space where I want Hypothetical Future Baby to be. Also, I keep remembering that HFB is probably spending this Christmas inside their first mother, and for our family to come together another will have to be separated. The consumer waste and unwanted presents really really upset me. The fact that everyone (with one noble exception, thank you mum and dad) seems to have ignored my request for Kiva loans or something similar, rather than yet more consumer goods, upsets me, because it makes me feel like nobody is even interested in acknowledging the fact that we're going to be forever linked to a part of the world that doesn't share our plenty. The way that Christmas feels like yet another milestone upsets me, when my life feels completely up in the air. Here's the clincher, though - even watching the wide eyed wonder of small children opening their presents irritates me, because I'm thinking that if Christmas celebrations are mainly for children, as so many people seem to think, it shouldn't just be about well fed white children getting YET MORE STUFF.

So I'll have my award now, please.

I guess you want to know how the milk story ends, and here it is: Someone managed to find some formula, at EXTORTIONATE prices, somewhere insanely decadent like the Sheraton, and we (the group of UK adopters) bought it. All of it, I think. So yay, westerners, we did manage to throw enough money at the problem to make it go away, at least temporarily. And while I'm really, really glad that 'our' babies have milk, I'm consumed with guilt that lots of other babies still don't. And I keep wondering how I'll feel about all this festive madness in a year's time, if HFB is home by then. (I think I have a pretty good guess about how I'll feel if he / she is NOT home). Will these feelings of cultural resentment fade? Should they fade? I don't even know. Whatever happens, I don't want to slip so deeply into a loved-up family coocoon that I refuse to remember a time when these things were piercingly clear.

Three Quick Points

There are three things I should probably have said in my last post.
1) I know that not everybody shares my pro-life views, or my faith.
2) The article I linked to was published a few months ago - the reason this was back in the news was because the woman involved is due to give birth next week. I linked to this article because it was just a bit less sensational and tabloidy than those published this week (worst headline: 'A cancer-free baby for Christmas'. WHAT???)
3) There is brand-spanking-new treatment available that tests eggs rather than embryos, and is therefore 100% ethical, which we would probably have wanted to consider. But it's not available in the UK now, and probably won't be in my reproductive lifetime.
4) I do realise that it is just as possible to make unethical decisions when adopting as when pursuing fertility treatment. I need to remind myself daily of this - deciding to adopt does not give me the moral high ground!
5) I do not want to minimise the struggles of those going through reproductive interventions in order to conceive. I've read enough infertility / IVF blogs to have some idea of how hard it is, and I totally understand the intense desire to do things this way. I know adoption isn't a magic bullet, and I don't want to be implying that.

Okay, enough there Claudia! Three has already become five! How do you spell o-v-e-r-t-h-i-n-k-i-n-g?????