Dave was at the end of the children's holiday Bible club at church and we were getting ready to have a holiday starting on the Sunday night. That holiday would end up being a crazy whirl of DIY and nesting, trying to get the house ready. Until you have an idea of the age and needs of the child you're going to adopt you can't really decorate or buy anything, so the preparation was crammed into a short space of time!
We spent that evening wondering. Wondering what his name was, wondering why he was up for adoption, wondering if we would say yes, wondering how soon we could meet him. The big thing we both knew and agreed was that we trusted God, he'd been in charge of the process right from the start - unless there was a really clear, obvious reason why we should say no to this child we would pursue meeting him. We were almost certain this would be the boy for us.
When Paul arrived the next day he gave us Mikey's form - a lot like our form F, all about him and his background. Paul stayed quiet while we read through it. Things that stand out in my memory are: the black and white photocopied picture of him was blotchy and horrible - nothing like the lovely, gorgeous boy we eventually met! He was described as a happy baby who slept well. He was healthy and he came from a busy foster home. He had moved in with the foster carers at 3 days old, coming from the hospital he was born in. The form also included pictures and information about Mikey's birth family and contained really helpful explanations in their own words of how they felt about the situation and their hopes for Mikey's future.
There were things we wanted to find out more about and things we wanted to negotiate (like the level of contact Mikey's birth mother was hoping to have), but we knew without having to consult that we would say yes! Plans were made for us to meet with Mikey's foster carers and social worker.
The system with
our agency (and I
think the rest of the UK!) means that you're not offered a selection of children and asked to pick one. Your social worker should know you well enough to make clear choices on your behalf and so adopters are shown one child, believed to be the best match. If that doesn't work out, the social worker searches again. You're also expected to have made a pretty much 100% decision before you actually meet the child so that a vulnerable child isn't messed around by people meeting them to size them up - they've experienced enough confusion and loss already. Although of course, if at any point you're not happy or you feel it's not going to work out, you are absolutely encouraged to say and stop the process before it goes too far.
Meeting the social worker and the female foster carer from the couple caring for Mikey was scary - I really hoped they would like us - I felt very anxious that his foster carer might say "no way, I'm not letting him move in with you"! The ice was broken pretty fast though - the foster carer had brought a DVD of Mikey and our only working player was in our bedroom. Up we all trooped - me, Dave, foster carer and our social worker Kath (who had taken over from Paul after his placement finished and continues as our support to this day) and we all sat on our bed and watched this amazing DVD! I remember feeling giggly at the crazy dance music in the soundtrack and noticing Mikey's
nystagmus and already feeling proud of him showing moments of physical strength and loving his gorgeous, croaky groans and babbles! I remember telling myself "this is your son, Alice" but my brain didn't know how to respond to that - all too weird and hard to imagine!
I really can't remember a thing that we talked about! I do remember his foster carer being kind and really positive towards us and his social worker being very honest and also giving us reason to hope and feel optimistic that it could all work out. We made plans to meet Mikey at the start of October. It felt like a million years away!
I still watch that DVD sometimes. I watched it so often between that meeting and seeing Mikey for the first time. We showed it to close friends, we showed the pictures on the cover to our youth group, we took it to my sister's wedding and sat and showed it to my immediate family (including a tiny, days old Iris). It's hard to see that 6 month old baby as our tall and feisty Mikey, but I love the moments in the video where you see a flash of the boy the baby would become. I can't wait till Mikey's able to understand that it's
HIM on the screen and to tell him about the day we first saw it and first knew we would love him.
The picture shows one of the photos Mikey's foster carer emailed us to keep us going in that long wait before we met him. Those pictures were as precious as jewels to us.