Wednesday 1 October 2014

I'll never forget the day you were born.

I find it intriguing to ponder on where I was and what I was doing when my children were born, clearly I wasn't there.
I was just going about my life unaware of the strange journey I was on that would intersect with them in the future. Oblivious to the life changing events that were happening with different players miles away.


The day Sarah was born I was thoroughly unemployed/unemployable rather disinterested in getting a ‘proper’ job. I was living at home with my parents bumming around trying to earn a few quid while I waited to go off and spend a few years working for a youth charity. I’d not even met that vision of loveliness, Mrs C.
When Gracie popped out I was unemployed, I’d finished my couple of years travelling around the country and was trying to find a viable way of making money doing as little as possible. I was in the throws of an (over) emotional breakup with my girlfriend. Mrs C was a friend but no more and I only had three guitars and a CD collection to my name.

Ginger's arrival into the world coincides with Mrs C and my holiday together celebrating our first year of marriage. So, as he entered into the world we were sat in the Pyrenees Mountains enjoying ourselves considering our future together.

It would be another 20 months before I would meet my children. Good luck, chance and happenstance conspired that we would come together. Their journey was a little more ‘interesting’ than ours and without doubt more challenging. Never the less we met.

Flossy exploded into the world six years later. I was an established dad by now, I had a job and was quite respectable. We hadn’t even thought about being foster carers but by the time her little sister, Lotty, arrived a year later we were almost approved foster carers and we were awaiting our panel day. In fact the day Lotty arrived was our 9th wedding anniversary.

We met these two fireballs three months later and things have never been dull since. But like the big three their journey to us was tricky and the path to the Adoption Order was laid with many dangers, toils and snares, but we got there.

We knew Peanut was coming, but we weren’t meant to, a birth family member had tipped us off. The day she arrived we sat in our garden with a hundred or so friends, family and acquaintances holding our own Fostering and Adoption hoo ha.
We knew, everybody knew, that she was coming our way but caution and bureaucracy conspired and we waited 21 months, long months, before we met.  

And that makes six.

I have only cried once in relation to my lack of genetic offspring and I cried like I’ve never cried before or since.
It came out of the blue with no warning. The day after the birth of my friend’s child the new father told me of the trials, tribulations and joy of the birth. I had to leave and I sobbed and sobbed.
At the time I couldn’t understand why I was so upset at that point, 10 years into our adoption journey. I'd never felt such feelings before.

Now, reflecting on it, I think I was upset for Sarah, Gracie, Ginger, Flossy, Lotty, Peanut, Mrs C and Me. That we didn’t share the most important days of all our lives. 

I have to ask, where were you?

18 comments:

  1. Hmmm - it was a Monday, so I was probably at work at my boring, temporary desk job (never again!!) trying to work out how to fill another long day with too little work. Three days later my social worker came to assess me with my friends' children as part of my fostering assessment. 18 weeks after that, I was sweeping rubble off the stairs of my new home (the landing ceiling had been taken down!) when I got the phone call to go and pick up my first foster child. Even then, I didn't know I was going to get my future son!

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  2. You've painted a picture of a life in total oblivion to the future events.
    Thank you.

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  3. I wonder this often! I've figured that when my son was born I was off sitting on one of my freshmen college courses! When my daughter was born I was likely on Christmas holiday and visiting my mother. Such a great post and definitely something I often consider. I also wonder where I was for big milestones. Where was I when my son broke his leg, or my daughter took her first steps? It is a strange feeling to know they had such a life before us.

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  4. Thank you for your kind words. I've clearly got too much time on my hands.

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  5. I would have been at work in my job as a Connexions Personal Adviser either teaching sex ed or helping a young person with emergency housing etc when Katie was born. it was a full on job. We would have just had another miscarriage but already planning to adopt because we were literally just ticking the last medical boxes re starting a family naturally (we'd been trying for 14 years at that point). There was sadness at our loss but a glimmer of hope at our decision to start the adoption process. When Pip was born we were well into our second adoption process and knew he was imminent and probably coming to us. Having Pip at 7 months old has made me realise just how much of Katie's early life we missed. I'd suppressed that up until that point. I had to do a lot of grieving then.

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    1. It sounds like a difficult time on a challenging journey! Thank you for being so honest.

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  6. You've got me thinking as weirdly I've not actually contemplated this before. Is that odd? Maybe I've not wanted to contemplate too much about not having been there as I might find it upsetting. Oh well I will think it out and come back to you. Thanks for linking up with #WASO

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  7. I await your results.
    Thank you for having a #waso to post upon.

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  8. Thanks to Google calendar I know I was doing graduation things on day. Blipfoto has a photo of my gown hung in my office as ceremony was late afternoon so had stuff with students before it. Hot day as I was complaining about heat in my outfit.

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  9. Looking back, it is surreal to consider such significant events were unloading in the mixture of your normal.
    Thank you for your comment.

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  10. My best guess is I was either studying for or taking an exam for my final year of university when my son entered the world. Really interesting post, we are so lucky to know what time he was born, but I have never thought about where I was!

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  11. Great post. Although I only know about the world of adoptions through family friends I had never considered the where was I when the kids were born. Really enjoyed reading this and will be cak to read more :-)
    Tom
    www.ideas4dads.net

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  12. Thanks for posing the question. I've just checked my calendar and I was waiting at home for my replacement toilet to be delivered at the time my now son was born! On the day he left hospital to go to his foster carers I was insulating the wall of his bedroom loft conversion. I'm glad I was doing something connected to his life with me now, at some point in his first few days of life out of the womb.

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    1. It all seems quite appropriate in light of him coming to you!
      Thanks for the comment.

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