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.