I was back out at The Great Inconvenience today…after four days away the constant frisking is more irksome than ever! I was filling out the adoption form this evening. We’ve got two referees agreed but if they’re not going to do anything about the form for at least 22 months they might have difficulty finding one of them.

Putting down stuff like income and address when you know your situation could be anything in four years seems ridiculous. At the meeting last Friday they described the long wait as a cooling off period but did admit that in reality it’s down to staff shortages. I shouldn’t really worry about it because we’re pretty stable in reality but two years still seems a long time to have things written in stone.

I’m planning on still working where I’m working in two years, more for that matter but anything can happen. A miracle might even happen where Book 1 is picked up and the literary world goes crazy about it and I’m suddenly projected into full time writership (ok so pretty pie in the sky stuff but you never know).

I know that they need to check we’ll be suitable parents but I just wish they did these kind of checks on anyone who became a parents – even those who did it the traditional way.

I rang a good friend this evening to ask if she and her partner would be referees. She’s a full time mum of three and has some pretty old fashioned notions of child rearing. When I was talking to her about being referees she was asking what they’d be asked.

I told it was just to see would we be good parents and she was totally enthusiastic about what she’d say. But later in the conversation we were talking about kids and she commented that I wouldn’t understand how kids would react because I’m not a mother. Now I love her to bits, I do, but oh she drives me mad sometimes.

I’ve looked after her kids after all. I may not spend 24 hours a day at their beck and call but to be honest I was never going to be that kind of mum anyway. It just annoys me that parents assume you are incapable of understanding children if you haven’t given birth.

We’re only five days into the adoption process and already I’m finding attitudes I didn’t expect. I think with my friend it’s partly because she can’t quite understand why I would, as a woman, opt to adopt rather than give birth.

I can understand that this could seem like a rather selfish choice but it’s the right one for us. Where writing is concerned I’m totally dedicated, I want to raise children, and know we’d be good parents but when the biological option would mean even more time away from the writing than the understandable actual raising the child bits.

I know some people will find our (especially my) reasoning a bit odd but it’s what’s right for us. I want to be the best mother I can be and give our children the best possible life but I’m also a writer and for me that means making this sacrifice.

I know I’ll never have a bump, feel the baby kick or see it moving on a scan and it’ll take a while to get used to that loss but we’ll feel the same love for this child as any other that came into our family and care and protect from the child the same way as we would any other child.

I’m not putting this very well. It’s just such a huge thing and it’s only now occuring to me that even if nothing’s going to move for the next two years, we’re going to spend a lot of that time talking about it. This is part of our life now.

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