Well, the adoption saga creaks on. Apparently wheels move very slowly in the Social Work Department so we didn't manage to get a date for matching panel until the end of September. To say we were disappointed was an understatement!!! However, we were looking forward to the panel and we were 99% sure that panel would recommend the match. The rooms were all ready for the boys, the health ad safey fairy had been and conjured up a lockable medicine cabinet, a fire guard, several fences in the garden to keep everyone away from the road and we had managed to produce a family book for each of the boys. Even our usually reticent Worker was speaking about when the boys came to stay. We were all prepared when she came round the night before panel, thinking she was coming to give us a bit of encouragement and answer any questions we might have for the next day. Boy, were we wrong.....! She sat down and said "there's a problem...". It turned out that a birth relative of the boys had sent in a letter earlier that week to say she was now willing to take them and wanted to be considered!!!!! We were shocked, stunned, devastated!! Our worker said that meant there could be no matching panel the next day as the relative will have to be assessed for suitability which could, and probably will, take months. We were both in tears, to have been SO close to the boys and to have them snatched away at the 11th hour was cruel indeed. I know we hadn't even met them but we knew all about them, every detail of their lives, we had seen pictures, we had imagined them in their bedrooms in our house, we had encouraged our family to expect them....we just never imagined this scenario...ever!!
Over the next few days we both moped around the house, it felt like someone had died, a bereavement. We had to tell my Dad he wouldn't be a Grandad...yet, our nephews that they won't be getting their new cousins...yet, our close friends had to be told and it didn't get any easier as we told the story over and over again.
On the bright side (for us) there is a possibility that we may still have the chance to have the boys but now we have to consider how long we wait before we ask to be considered for other children. Do we wait for the original two? What happens the day we're told we definitely can't have them? What do we do in the meantime?
We definitely want these two, we are attached to them, but we have to be practical at the same time. We have decided to revisit the decision in January, see what happens between now and then. Hopefully the relative will decide she can't take them or she won't be approved to adopt - see how quickly you clutch at straws!! You have all of the scenarios in you head, you decide this relative is only in it for the tax credits, she lives in an unsuitable area, she has unsuitable friends, she's a horrible person...! I'm sure it's not true but....we live in hope.
