‘So why are you spending all this time on this?’ asked G-.
It’s a good question. Why have I spent hours trawling though our old files to find a few dates and then stick them together in a very rough roadmap?
I suppose I believe that a timeline [see the thumbnail below] for adopting S- that also illustrates, however crudely, the process G- and I went through might be interesting and/or helpful to other people, as well as to ourselves.
The timeline shows how things worked for us, but we’re just one family in one particular region of one small country. Other people will have different experiences and other places different procedures.
I think what the timeline most obviously shows is how long adoption can take. We were lucky in that we were matched with S- almost immediately after we were formally approved to adopt. Yet we still spent almost 48 months travelling this road – and that doesn’t include all the years we spent thinking, talking and, yes, arguing before we even decided to apply.
Other people we know have waited much longer – in some cases years longer – for kids. Some are still waiting.
The other thing I take from the timeline is that for much of the time we weren’t sure that we were going to be successful. It’s odd to remember now that there were periods, especially after our second refusal, when the temptation to forget about it all and just get on with being a childless couple was strong.
We were if you like perpetually at a crossroads – or more precisely a T-junction.
But it was important to have a life to go back to if we did fail the application procedure: we really needed to invest in an alternative future, too.
Click on the thumbnail to see the pathway.
