Our adoption assessment

We started our adoption journey in November 2017. After two years of infertility and one horrific appointment at a fertility clinic, we were done with trying to make a baby the old fashioned way. It wasn’t happening and no one could figure out why. For various reasons which I won’t go in to here, we had no desire to pursue fertility treatment and so on one rainy Wednesday evening, we made our way to the Virgin Money lounge in Glasgow, to an information evening which coincided with Scottish Adoption Week.

We had always been intrigued by adoption and had sent off for an information pack from our local authority years before. But we’d never quite been ready to take the leap. I’ve since realised that there is no perfect time to start a family and sometimes I wish we hadn’t thrown that information pack in the recycling all those years ago. Anyway, I digress…

We sat in the lounge surrounded by other awkward looking couples (and a few single people.) They had Tunnocks tea cakes – it was a good sign! There was a presentation from some staff at Scottish Adoption – a couple of whom we have gotten to know quite well – followed by the obligatory Q&A session. An adopter also told her story. She didn’t sugar coat it – as a single adopter, it had been hard for her. But when asked if she’d go through it again she said ‘I’d have another one in a heartbeat if I could afford it.’ We left feeling hopeful.

We deliberated for about a week and then sent off the registration of interest form. We were soon invited for a meeting at the agency’s office. In the meantime, we had also sent off for information packs from every other agency in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as our local authority and neighbouring local authority.  We were impressed by our agency’s after adoption support package and having read many horror stories about adoption breakdown online, I knew how important this was.

We went for our initial meeting in December 2017. I took a day’s annual leave and we wandered around the Christmas markets. We had pancakes from a van. It was a normal day in so many ways and yet it was the start of something that would change our lives forever. The meeting went well. It was a fact finding exercise and we liked what we heard. They seemed to like us too, although there were concerns about my mental health history (which I’d been completely honest about) and so I offered to do an early medical to clear up any issues right at the start. This is normally done much later as part of the home study process.

The medical is done at your own GP who goes through your whole medical history and completes an intimidatingly large questionnaire. Our GP was in full support of our application to adopt and yet the agency’s medical advisor – who has the ultimate say – was not in agreement at first. We were asked to go away for three months. For me to have more counselling and to reflect on how my own experiences might reflect my ability to parent. It was already March 2018 by the time we were told this. Three months had gone by and we had achieved nothing. I did what they asked and we met again with the agency in June who agreed we’d done enough to be able to continue and were booked in for the next available preparation group in September. 

The preparation group is a four day training course designed to prepare you for the adoption process and give you more information about the children. It covers trauma, loss, child development and attachment. I’m sure you can imagine how cheery that was! We’d already done quite a lot of research by this point so we probably didn’t get as much out of it as others would have, but we did meet several couples and it’s been great keeping in touch with them throughout the process. The course was over four Saturdays and at the end we were given an official application form – once we sent this back, we would be allocated a social worker and start our home study. We popped this in the post and set off on one final big holiday (or so we thought) to Mexico, ready to start a gruelling sixth month exploration in to every aspect of our lives when we returned.

We got home and checked the pile of post hoping for a big brown envelope amongst the bills and pizza menus. Nothing. We thought it was a bit odd but by this point we had come to realise that things don’t always run to plan and we gave them a few more days before chasing them up by phone. It was not good news. They had decided they still had concerns over my mental health and didn’t know whether we could proceed. I was asked if I would write a reflective piece about my background and mental health problems and how I’d overcome them. I did. It was 2000 words long. I sent it off and waited, knowing I couldn’t do anymore. It was a dark time. We complained to the agency’s chief exec and the day after sending in our complaint, we were finally allocated out home study social worker.

A couple of weeks later, we met with our allocated social worker for the first time. She seemed satisfied that what I’d done was going to be enough and she had chatted with the agency’s medical advisory who also now seemed prepared to write a medical report endorsing us to be adoptive parents. Things were finally looking up.

We met with our social worker regularly from November to February, usually for a couple of hours at a time, but sometimes longer. I managed to schedule these meetings mostly on my allocated working from home day and could make up the time in the evenings. I’m really lucky to work for such a supportive employer who has moved heaven and earth for me throughout this process.

The home study sessions were tough, although not as tough as I had expected (little did we know there was a reason for this, but more on that later.) You speak about every aspect of your lives, from your childhood to your education, work history, health, support network and motivation to adopt. After most sessions, we would also write up answers to questions which would form part of our ‘Form F.’

Towards the end of the home study, we started to think about the type of child we would be willing to adopt. And this is when you feel like a piece of shit. Because there are certain conditions that we knew we wouldn’t be able to cope with. You know that you would be doing a child a disservice by becoming their parents when you can’t meet their needs properly, but still, when faced with that dreaded tick list, you do feel like a horrible person when you have to say no.

During this time, our social worker also met our referees. We are very lucky to have an amazing support network and were spoiled for choice when it came to choosing who to ask. In the end, I think we choose the perfect people to really bring our report to life.

Once the meetings were done and references collected, our social worker began to put together our form, which would be presented to the adoption panel. The form must be with the panel two weeks before and unfortunately, this coincided with the start of the Easter holidays. It meant that our social worker was going to be off for the two weeks immediately preceding our panel date. Because of this, we had very limited time to review the draft document and make changes. In fact, it wasn’t even completely finished by the time our social worker went off on leave, meaning the only opportunity we got to see parts of it were after it was too late to change. Upon reading the final version, we realised that the section on our childcare experience seemed particularly weak. At this point, we couldn’t change the form, but we could add our comments to the end, where an addendum is included for this purpose. We added in a few paragraphs and off it went to the panel.

On 24 April 2019, we turned up at our agency’s offices for our approval panel. Our panel was at 3pm and we had went out for lunch before it to try and calm our nerves. The panel were running late and so it wasn’t until 3:20ish before our social worker was called in (she goes in first and then we are called in afterwards.) We were called in after about 25 minutes and were asked a few questions which were extremely generic, such as how we had found the process, what we had learned along the way etc. I was really nervous but it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. The panel were lovely and seemed to be really rooting for us. Even the medical advisor (who had had concerns originally) seemed supportive. After the questioning we were sent away while the panel delivered their verdict to our social worker. It’s all a bit like the apprentice and quite a strange experience. Our social worker appeared about five minutes later to tell us we had received a unanimous yes from all members of the panel. Yay! Happy days. (Well, it was, for 13 days.)

We were given access to Linkmaker the very next day. This is a national database of children waiting to be adopted. We created a profile and by midday, it was live. Seeing the children started to make it feel more real, but I must admit it is very strange, and I can see why some people are uncomfortable with this method of family finding. We decided we would be proactive in our search but wanted to have the weekend to decompress so we went off to Belfast for the weekend and started to look at profiles on the Sunday night. Shit was getting real!

I should point out that although we received an approval at panel, panel can only actually make a recommendation. The final decision is made by the agency decision maker, who has 14 days after panel to ratify the decision. We received a call at 7:30pm on day thirteen from our social worker asking if she could come and see us that night. Immediately, I knew it was bad news, and I was right. She told us that the ADM did not agree with the panel’s recommendation and would not be approving us as adopters. There were some gaps in our form that she had questions about and needed further work done from us before we could progress. This would mean parts of our form being rewritten which would result in us going back to panel a second time.

And that takes us up to where we are now. We were given very specific feedback from the ADM and have had some further sessions with our social worker. With hindsight, it is now clear that our social worker didn’t probe us enough during our home study sessions and so there were some areas that had not been fully explored. Of course, we didn’t realise this, having never seen another Form F before. We thought it was great! Our form is now in the process of being rewritten and at the end of this month we will go back to the same panel and wait an agonising fourteen days after that to find out if we’ve done enough.

The last few weeks have been by far the toughest part of the process. Everyone in our preparation group has now been approved and three of those couples have been matched with children. It feels like the pain of infertility all over again. Another loss we need to process. I try not to compare our journey to others – I tell myself that there must be a reason for this – but it’s hard not to when we know we could have been parents by now had we been approved in the recommended six month timescale. We have tried to be rational and work with the agency to get this resolved, but some days I just feel so sad. Sad for us but also for my child to be, who might be in foster care right now when they could be at home with their forever family. Hopefully this is just a blip. A temporary bump in the road. But we’ve had so many of those and it’s becoming harder and harder to believe that this will ever happen for us. We so desperately want to become parents and we know we are up to the job. We now just have to hope that we have done enough to convince the one person that has the power to agree with us. I’ll keep you posted. 

Update 4.7.19

So we went back to panel last week and received another unanimous approval. The panel seemed impressed by our resilience and all the additional work we had done. I think they had been half expecting us to just walk away! We were told it could be 14 days before we heard the ADM’s verdict, but luckily we were told 6 days later that we had been ratified and were now officially approved adopters! (It was still the longest 6 days of my life.) It’s taken a bit of time to sink in. We were scared to feel happy in case it was taken away from us again. But we’re now starting to get excited about the future. Exciting times lie ahead…

Feeling the fear

I’m just back from a fabulous holiday to Mexico. During our trip, we took a catamaran from Cancun over to Isla Mujeres and had the opportunity to snorkel in the ocean half way over. I was dying to do this and was so excited but when it came down to putting the mask on and jumping in, I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t realise the mask would cover my nose and panicked that I wouldn’t be able to breath. So I watched my husband swim off with the rest of the group, while I sat on the boat drinking lukewarm sex on the beach wishing I wasn’t such a shitbag. I’m so pissed off at myself for not taking that leap, as it’s a chance I probably won’t have again, and it’s made me really think about fear and the opportunities it steals from us.

The truth is, I’m scared of a lot of things. Although I try not to let fear rule my life, I worry all the time. I worry about work and not being good enough (appraisal time sets off my anxiety in a big way.) I worry about family and friends (dying/leaving/drifting apart/being alone.) I worry about how I appear to other people online. I worry that the cat being sick is not actually due to hairballs, but some ghastly disease. I worry I'll never taste original Irn Bru again. I worry that if I finally get to be a Mum, I’ll just be shit at it and my child will hate me. You get the gist – constant worries.

I’m much better than I used to be and sometimes I’m able to use mindfulness to stop negative thoughts. But it’s so hard sometimes, to just live in the moment, and I can’t deny I spent a lot of time thinking about the past (guilt) and speculating about the future (anxiety.) It’s not that worrying is taking over my life or anything. I’m happy most of the time. But I do waste so much time on worrying that I wonder, how much more could I achieve if I weren’t so afraid?

I stand with all women

I wasn’t sure whether to write this. Firstly, through fear of it being a tad too ‘topical’ and secondly, because I don’t consider myself to be a blogger or Instagrammer, and therefore maybe, I thought, I don’t have a right to an opinion? After mulling it over for a couple of days, I decided that although I may not be an ‘influencer’ (I bloody hate that term), I do write a blog and I do have an Instagram account, so by definition I guess, I am both a blogger and am Instagrammer. Sadly, both are getting a bit of a bad press at the moment, for all the wrong reasons.

As with a lot of online drama these days, it started off with some trolling on Mumsnet. Someone wrote some terrible things about someone else and that someone then went off on one on their Instagram stories. Within 24 hours, Instagram had blew up.

I want to start by saying that it’s never okay to troll or bully someone online (or ever, actually.) Especially on a site where you can remain anonymous. We all know that things are said behind the mask of a username that would never be said in person. Singling out someone, a Mother, and then questioning their parenting, is a beyond shitty thing to do.  It’s pretty disgusting and I don’t think anyone would deny that.

But that’s where my sympathies end, and I’ll tell you why.

1)      When you spend your days voicing your political biases on Instagram, you have to then be accepting of others. You can’t just call then a c*nt for having different political beliefs. When you alienate a whole section of society, you undermine the message you are trying to put across. 

2)      Women should champion other women. When I see someone who’s made a success of their lives, I want to high five them, not upload a series of stories mocking them for ‘working bloody hard.’ There is nothing wrong with working hard and reaping the rewards that hard work brings. I appreciate that working hard in itself does not always result in a nice life, but if it does, then you shouldn’t be ashamed of that or mocked for it.

3)      Women can be successful in their own right and no one should ever infer otherwise. I read a very sad comment on an Instagram post that said 99% of ‘mummy bloggers’ were one divorce away from living in poverty. And that’s both insulting and not true. I’m sure many of the women who make a living from social media earn more than their husbands/partners and would manage just fine without their salaries. We no longer live in a society (thank goodness) where men are always the primary earners.  And regardless of their household finances, it’s not okay to meet sweeping assumptions about people.

4)      You can’t just scream ‘classism’ every time you hear something online that you don’t like. Without knowing people ‘in the real world’ and knowing them well, you have no idea about their background. My Instagram feed would probably suggest I come from a middle class family, but I was raised by a single Mum, and laterally a grandparent. My feed only shows you what I want you to see. They'e just squares with pretty pictures. Anyway, not all middle class people are bad people.

5)      You can shout ‘cuts’ and ‘social cleansing’ from the rooftops, but if you have a platform, I believe you have a duty to use that platform for good, and this sort of vague political rhetoric that I hear does nothing to highlight the real issues. All it does is encourage a culture of hate, with women pitting against other women. This must stop.

I did work bloody hard. I paid my way through University, working every hour I could from the age of 16 to support myself. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. It was only a few years ago that I started earning a decent wage (not a large wage) after years of studying and exams. And I’m proud of that. I won’t let anyone make me feel like shit for making a success of my life. In the same way that I would never judge anyone that's struggling. We all take different paths in live. We all make different choices. We all have different luck. Let’s celebrate our differences, champion our successes and be there for one another when the shit hits. I stand with all women. Enough of the hate.

Coming off medication and setting fire to the safety blanket

I have been on and off antidepressants for a large proportion of my adult life, to combat both depression and anxiety, but mostly anxiety. I must admit that for a time in my twenties when I was plagued with panic so crippling, I couldn’t leave the house, I relied on those drugs to function. They were my safety blanket. But depending on medication left me in a bit of a rut, as it meant I didn’t have to think about the reasons why I was suffering in the first place.

Not that there’s anything wrong with having to rely on antidepressants, of course. They got me through some dark days. I am not at all anti-anti-depressants.But I do think doctors are very quick to dish these tablets out to people without trying to get to the bottom of the root cause of their illness. Prescribing drugs alone without any sort of talking therapy will only ever act as a plaster that’s just waiting to be ripped off at the first sign of trouble.

Over the last few years, I have made a real effort to get on top of my anxiety. I’ve had talking therapy and CBT, regularly attended mindfulness classes, and lately I’ve even taken up running again. It’s only in the past year or so that I’ve begun to really understand the triggers for my anxiety, and what I can do to manage it, without relying on drugs. For a long time, I thought that it was just a chemical imbalance, that I was anxious for no reason, but of course, there were reasons. They just weren’t obvious. This realisation gave me the freedom to start thinking about whether medication was really necessary.

Although I’ve tried pretty much every kind of antidepressant medication you could name, they’ve never really agreed with me. Yes, they reduced my anxiety, but for every panic attack I didn’t have, I developed five different side-effects that weren’t there before. Sickness, headaches, dizziness, weight gain, insomnia. If it’s listed on the small print of a leaflet, I’ve probably suffered from it. And so I began to wonder a few weeks ago, after a particularly bad week of nausea and lightheadedness, if these drugs were doing me more harm than good.

A few days ago, I made a decision. To stop taking any more medication. (I should mention that I did this safely, under the supervision and advice of my GP, after gradually reducing my dosage. It is highly inadvisable to go cold turkey.) I am pretty confident that I will feel better without it. Medication is not for everyone, and maybe it’s just not for me.

I’m not naive and I know that I’ll still have anxious times. But I’m self aware enough now to recognise the signs and use the tools that I’ve picked up over the years to manage them. There is no shame in asking for help. It’s always okay not to be okay. It’s fine to rely on medication if you need it. But it’s also okay to say ‘do you know what, I think i’m doing alright.’ So let’s set fire to the safety blanket and give this a try...

What to expect when they're not expecting

It’s National Infertility Awareness week, and I’ve thought long and hard about writing a blog about this. It’s not an easy subject for me to write about and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to say. So in the end, I just decided to write something that might be useful for anyone trying to support a friend or family member who’s suffering from infertility. Here it is…

Things not to say to someone struggling with infertility:

1.      “Relax and it will happen”

I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that these are the most hated words you can hear. I know that people mean well and especially when the infertility is unexplained (i.e. no medical reason diagnosed) it might seem like a piece of sensible advice. But really, if it were that easy, I’d be at a spa every weekend or meditating on my lunch break. While there may be some truth in these words – stress can impact on fertility – it’s not what anyone wants to hear and the chances are, some yoga is not going to fix the problem!

2.      “There’s a plan for you / if it’s meant to be it will be / everything happens for a reason”

I’ll admit I am a believer in fate. I do try to tell myself that everything happens for a reason. The problem is, when you don’t know what that reason is, it’s incredibly frustrating. And to be honest, knowing that there might well be a plan for me, and that plan may not involve children, is frankly, fucking depressing. And certainly not something I want to be reminded of.  

3.      “There’s always IVF”

Ah, the good old IVF back up. Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s no-one’s first choice to inject themselves with hormones and grow their potential first born in a petri dish. Yes, in theory, we could have IVF. But we don’t want to. I won’t judge anyone that chooses to go down this road, but people need to understand that it’s not for everyone. After years of heartbreak, not everyone has the strength or desire to go through the emotional trauma of a failed IVF cycle (or five!)

4.      “I know how you feel” (when you really don’t)

I’ll let you in on a secret. Trying to conceive is not nearly as much fun it’s made out to be. In fact, it’s pretty bloody stressful. So if it’s taken you a year to get pregnant, I completely understand the strain that will have put on every part of your life.  But it’s just not the same as being infertile. If you ended up with a baby at the end of trying, then you don’t know how I feel. And you never will (unless of course, you are unlucky enough to struggle with secondary infertility later down the line.)

5.        “Think of all the things you can do without kids”

Yes, I have a pretty great life. I go on lots of holidays, minibreaks, trips away etc, and that’s all great fun. But it’s not how I pictured life would be at 31 and certainly not what I want forever to look like. If you moan about not having enough ‘me time,’ sleep, or dates with your husband, then I’m probably going to find it pretty hard to sympathise with that. People who have kids are lucky. I get that being a parent is incredibly hard and you need a break from them sometimes. But a life without children when you really want them is quite different and these small concessions – like sleeping for eight hours or having the money to get your hair done – doesn’t  really make up for that.

So, what should you say?

I don’t mean to come across as bitter, I really don’t. If you have said any of the above things to me at some point, I don’t hate you. I know it’s hard to find the right words and it’s so personal to whoever’s on the receiving end. I’ve come to terms with our infertility now, so am not so sensitive, but someone at the start of their journey might well be. My advice would be to just say ‘that’s really shit, I’m here if you want to talk about it,’ and really mean it. Sometimes I want to talk about it, sometimes I don’t. But if I know you’re here for me no matter what, well, those are the only words I really need to hear.

Dealing with Impostor Syndrome

The last week or so, I’ve been having a serious case of impostor syndrome. You know, when you feel like you’re winging your way through life? I haven’t felt out of my depth exactly, but I have had a lot of self-doubt about my abilities. This probably came about because I started lecturing again last week, something I have been doing periodically for a few years now through my job. This doesn’t come naturally to me, but I force myself to do it because I’ve always been determined that my anxiety will not hold me back in life.

Despite the fact that people tell me I’m doing a good job, I always struggle to believe it. I was terrified that the students would ask me questions I wouldn’t be able to answer. And yet, when the time came, I spoke to them confidently and they seemed satisfied with my answers. It doesn’t feel like that long ago that I was them, and it’s odd to think that they might now be looking up to me. That sort of responsibility is a bit scary if I’m honest.

I’ve always felt this way, but when I was in a more junior position, I believed more experience would improve my confidence. Sadly, the more responsibility I’m given, the less I seem to believe in myself. The more I push myself, the less worthy I feel. The route of my flailing self-perception is complicated but suffering from anxiety certainly doesn’t help.

The sad reality is, suffering from any mental health problem does knock your confidence. Low self-belief is a common symptom of both anxiety and depression. It’s incredibly hard to ignore those voices inside which constantly nag at you, telling you you are not good enough. If you are the kind of person who’s prone to this type of negative thinking, I’m not sure there’s a way to completely change your ways, but I do find that mindfulness has at least helped me notice what a negative thinker I am and try and stop the thoughts in their tracks.

My advice is, when you find the impostor syndrome creeping in, try and focus on your achievements and what you do well. You might need some reassurance from other people, and that’s okay. Look for evidence to dispute your negative thoughts (mine is usually ‘if you were actually shit at your job, you would have been sacked by now!’) You can do anything you want to, but maybe not everything…

How to stay well when you’re stressed (from someone who’s really bad at it!)

I am writing this blog today for two reasons. Reason 1: it’s ‘time to talk’ day tomorrow. This day encourages us to take the opportunity to be more open about our mental health and open up the conversation. Reason 2: As a reminder to myself so I can look back on this when I’m struggling.

Anyone that knows me well will know that January is a difficult month for me. On top of the usual feelings of ‘meh’ that we all feel after the festive period, I also work in a very seasonal industry and January happens to be my busiest month of the year. Usually I thrive on the pressure and it keeps me going (in fact, the two periods of severe anxiety I’ve suffered with in previous years have been in my ‘quiet period’ at work.) But this January, I’ve found myself getting really stressed and it’s been quite difficult to pull myself out of that state at times. Here are some things that you absolutely should do if you’re struggling to cope with stress:

1)      Make time for self-care. I will freely admit I’m terrible at this. (I haven’t shaved my legs in so long, that I could probably pass for a yeti.) Self-care is one of these buzzwords that is thrown around quite a lot these days and I think is often misinterpreted. It doesn’t necessarily mean lying in a candlelit bath for an hour with a glass of wine, although that is a lovely way to spend an evening. It just means managing the little run of the mill tasks like taking your make up off before bed, making sure you have clean clothes and sitting down to a decent meal.

2)      Don’t under estimate the power of exercise. Another piece of advice that I’m useless at following. If the gym is your thing, then great, but I mean just getting out in the fresh air and going for a walk. At the end of a long day at work, most people – me included – just want to get in their pyjamas, crawl in to bed and watch the Crown. But going for just a 20minute stroll always helps me to clear my head and feel a lot more mindful.

3)      Try to remember, that your mental health is the most important thing. I know first-hand that it’s human nature to compare yourself to others. When you’re busy at work, you’re probably looking around at everyone else thinking, ‘am I doing enough?’ But don’t feel guilty about leaving at 5pm. It doesn’t really matter what others are doing – they are not you. You will know your own limits and you have to try and work within those limits to avoid getting ill. You can do anything if you put your mind to it, but not everything!

4)      Know that no matter how shit you are feeling, or how hard you are working, it will pass. Whatever you are stressed about today will probably not be relevant in a week’s time. Most things in life are temporary so know that when you’re having a hard time, it won’t last forever.

I hope future me actually manages to listen to the above advice! I’ll be taking some time with my colleagues tomorrow to get away from my desk and chat about mental health. I hope you all manage to make the time to do the same. To find out more about ‘time to talk day’ and how to get involved, go to https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/get-involved/time-talk-day-2018