Two years (and two 'babies') later...

Well it's been 2 years since I started this blog. I would apologize for not writing sooner but I don't think I have any readers. Awkward. So 587 days and 11 hours ago we picked up our two new baby boys (not legally babies but close enough - 8m and 2 yo brothers). In January 2011 almost one year after our training (and about 52 nagging/stalking phone calls/emails to my beautiful and patient case worker) we got the phone call. I nearly vomited with excitement. Only a day before I'd been told that nothing would be happening over the Christmas holidays. And then she tells me there are two. TWO. So if you recall how I became rather obsessed with the little boy in foster care that was casually mentioned before we did our training, that was like normal behavior compared to what happened when we were given photos and written descriptions about these precious little brothers. I was beside myself. Even Simon who is the calm, responsible one was really, really, really excited! It makes me emotional remembering it. There were further time/information discrepancies from DHS that are too annoying to go into, but about 6 weeks after finding out about them and getting to know them, we brought them home.

Doubts...

I had many, many doubts about doing it. I felt really nervous about getting a child this way. Very scared and still possibly a bit sad. I caught up with a girl I went to school with and she randomly (had no idea we were looking into permanent care) mentioned this beautiful boy she knew of who was about 3 and who was looking for a permanent family. He had basically been raised by one foster mum and was a lovely little boy. So, like a crazy lady I started to get obsessed with him. I thought I wanted a baby, but soon realized I just wanted another child and I didn't really care how old they were. I called DHS and found out that the next training for pc wasn't until February, 3 months away. I called all of the training places in Victoria, but there weren't any sooner. They also told me that we probably wouldn't be matched up with this little boy. They would try to make it like a natural family order, so they would need to be younger than Hugo, who was only 2. It was frustrating. We were able to arrange a meeting with this boy through friends, because apparently they give priority if there is a relationship established, but a few days before we decided that maybe we should just wait to do the training and see who they would match us up with. It turned out that the boy was only a little younger than Kitty, so it really might not have been fair to bring him in. DHS said we would do the training in Feb and probably have a child by April, shorter than a pregnancy. Finally we started training. *It's possible DHS have very different time measurements to the rest of us.

The beginning...

I had never heard of permanent care until November 2009. It's been 12 months, which I know isn't long in adoption time. Some days I feel fine waiting, other days I feel like I'm going crazy, knowing that somewhere our new baby is in foster care and is missing out on our simple, special times at home. Since deciding to do this, it's hard to think about anything else. I am so grateful to already have three biological children. I can't imagine how hard it must be for people going through this long process without the lovely distraction of children. I often remind myself of this when I'm feeling sorry for myself or frustrated with the wait. I have watched every adoption story on the hallmark channel several times each and have been looking for blogs from people going through the same process, permanent care in Australia. I haven't found many, so I thought maybe I could do one and hopefully people who think it seems too scary and hard (which I felt when I read the information on the government website) might see a better side to it. Let me tell you how I got here. Simon and I have three children, Daisy -7, Kitty -6 and Hugo -3. Only Kitty was planned. We have always said we wanted between four and six children, and had thought we would do international adoption after the first four. Then in December 2007 Simon was diagnosed with osteosarcoma - rare and aggressive form of bone cancer (see my previous blog nicfrench.blogspot.com if you want). Only a week before Simon was due to start nine months of chemo, we were told the treatment would cause infertility. So we quickly tried to get pregnant. I thought given our track record it would be easy, but it didn't happen. After he finished chemo we looked into fertility treatment options, but it didn't seem like something we wanted to do. I REALLY don't like needles. I felt a bit sad at first that I wouldn't get to experience pregnancy again, there is nothing like it, but I had been so blessed to already have had three beautiful babies, I realized I needed to get over it. So I did. We kept trying for a while but nothing was happening, so In November last year I googled international adoption and the government website recommended permanent care. We looked into it. It seemed scary to me. Getting someone else's child that has been taken from them isn't exactly ideal. I thought they would just want to come and get/kill us, that's what I would want to do. I felt pretty sad and discouraged, trying to convince myself that our family could be complete with the five of us. But I couldn't.