Perhaps it’s the re-emergence of X- and Y- that’s making me question things a little more than usual. Out at a restaurant last night S- and two girls of around 4 and 5 years had a riot, running around a table, shrieking and laughing and hugging each other while we waited for our banoffee pie.

Was it my imagination or could I see the question in the girls’ parents’ eyes? Were they looking at S- and comparing her big blue eyes and light features with my own green eyes and G-’s brown hair?

To be different in some way is to feel exposed, at least sometimes. It’s how you deal with it that’s important. When S- evaded the excited 5-year-old’s grip and hightailed it for the open front door, I was up and out of my seat and legging it after her as quick as any biological dad.

I am her dad, and G- is her mother. This may sound obvious but sometimes obvious facts need repeating.

An article in a recent issue of Eve magazine explained how a mum by adoption did not and could not love her child for a year after bringing her home. It’s a decent, honest article – though it rather skips over the difficulties of the adoption process and the emotional problems that can occur soon after you adopt a child. I guess it was commissioned to tie in with the recent mini-controversy over claims that adoptive and biological parents love their children differently.

Reading between the lines of the article it seems to me that the woman in question did love her new child, but she couldn’t feel the bond. The trauma of IVF and the loss of fertility instill a certain numbness – at least, that’s my perspective. And there’s a natural tendency to protect yourself against being hurt.

It takes some time for an attachment to become secure. It took the best part of a year before S- was completely secure with G- and I, and therefore I guess G- and I with S-. During that time some things that social workers suggested might take some getting used to happened, and some didn’t. For a while I found myself worrying away at the feeling that S-’s smell was wierd, among other slightly incongruent .. not exactly events but ‘happenings’.

This doesn’t mean that we didn’t love S-. We loved her more than anything – we still love her more than anything. It’s just that the bond between us was formed slightly differently than the attachment that usually occurs between biological parents and their children.

Whatever that means. All I can say is we have never tried to protect ourselves from loving S-.

So anyway – getting back to the here and now – X- and Y- are on the scene again and seem to have a degree of willingness to engage with us. We’ve arranged to meet with them in early July. G- and I are both apprehensive about this – of course we are. But we’re not doing it for ourselves. (We’re certainly not doing it for X- and Y-.) We doing it for S-: in the long term so that we can tell her a little about the man and woman who conceived her, and in the short term so we can decide whether we think S- should meet them.

That’s the most important thing. Forget the fact that the social workers are telling us that we should meet with X- and Y-. Forget the fact that S-’s adoption order suggests that we should consider contact with X- and Y-. We need to look X- and Y- in the eye and think about it and then do what’s best for S-.

Because that’s what parents do.

The paradoxical thing about the love you have for your children is that part of you wants them to stay the same and the other takes such joy in their growing up and all their achievements.

S-’s favourite word of the moment is ‘bubble’. She says it perfectly and knows exactly what it means.

She’s still struggling with some of the more basic words. Like ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ and – as G- mock seriously keeps trying to get her to say – ‘Yes, mother, I love you lots and lots’.

But that’s not to say she doesn’t give it her best shot. We were bowling along in the car [dad was going a a bit too quickly, admittedly: we were late for a playgroup, again!]. S was lifting up the window shade and peering out, alternately chuckling and cooing, and kicking her legs, when she started practising.

There came a few indistinguishable noises and then she went for the biggie:

‘Ah yeh… yeye ….ye….zzz [splutter], ah yehyehye, ye, AH ye ye ye yeee ye ah [kick, kick, splutter] yeyeyeyeyeYeeeYEEEYEYEYEYE… [giggle, kick and then finally a shout of pure, unadulterated joy] AH YESSSSSS!’