Feeling our way

The early days of bringing our daughter home were wonderful yet stress filled at the same time. My fear of not being able to cope after so many years of being childless loomed large at this point. I had spent years bemoaning my lack of children yet that very lack afforded me the ability to do pretty much as I pleased without thought to the logistics of a child. Would I cope with being responsible for a small person, for being their constant, basically their whole world. In the main I found being a Mum really easy but there were small things that upset the proverbial apple cart.

Waiting...

Once you're accepted into the Adoption program there is no way of knowing how long you will wait to be selected as the new parents of a child or even if you will be selected.

At that time in Victoria the process from the other side of the adoption was that a birth parent can indicate their interest in relinquishing their child but could not sign any consent forms for a period of two weeks after the birth. They then had a grace period of 28 days which could be extended before final consent was given

Where do you go from here? (edited)

Twenty years old and more completely out of step with everyone I knew than you could imagine. What few friends we had still had no idea how to deal with the tragedy in our lives. Some simply said nothing, others disappeared. People have little ability to cope with death especially when the death is that of a child. We were left with no formal support - the hospital pretty much just said "Goodbye, we're sorry". There were no services dealing with this type of thing, Bonnie babes was established but dealt with babies (still births, SIDS deaths and the like), there was another group but they were focused on teen and young adult deaths. For the families of young children there was nothing that we could find. DH(my husband) retreated into his pain and

Now for the sad stuff

JC was such a joy to be with. We had our moments where we weren't friends but they were few and far between. Overall he did as he was asked, he was cheeky but not naughty and it was rare I had to reprimand him. We went to playgroups, toy library, visited people we'd met who had children and generally filled our days together. Only on Saturday mornings did I work at my father's business so JC was pretty much my world. His father, my husband worked all week and played sport most weekends. He had a side job gardening on Sundays so it was mostly just JC and I. We were content with that.