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
and their parental rights revoked. I'm not aware that it's changed in the intervening time but I'm not certain. Once consent was final they would then begin the process of choosing a new family for their birth child. Some birth parents didn't exercise their right to do this but most were involved in choosing. The social worker handling their case presents them with profiles of prospective parents which contain non-identifying information about them and indicates their preferences on various things including ongoing contact. Adoption in Victoria is identified and open which means the birth families have the right to on going contact, that your family and friends know how you formed your family and that your child is told their birth story and understands how they became your child as they grow. It is not something that is allowed to be hidden or denied and you cannot pretend that you gave birth. These are things that were possible under the old methods of adoption and they caused much heartache and angst when the truth was discovered. Honesty is the best policy when it comes to adoption and part of being accepted into the program is being able to accept this and the preparedness to continue contact with people that you may have nothing in common with other than they enabled you to become a parent. It's not an easy thing to accept but it is essential. I can still see so many potential pitfalls but there is much that is positive and benefits your child.

After we were accepted into the program we told our families that, with luck, we would have a child sometime in the future. Most of our families expressed happiness for us but there were most likely some who felt less positive than we did. Our friends were much the same. I began a family forum to deflect the frequent questioning as to the progression of our application, asking my family to offer names for consideration, the sillier the better. Fortunately it worked and we didn't have to constantly update everyone on the lack of a phone call. About two months after being accepted into the program our social worker called and asked if there was any way she could speak to both dh and I at the same time. My heart thudded in my chest and my pulse raced, was this THE call? I told myself it couldn't be since we'd only been on the list for less than two months and typically couples could wait well over a year before a placement. I rang dh at work and arranged to go over there to use their conference room with it's speaker phone. As I drove I kept telling myself it could not possibly be good news, they were most likely ringing to tell us that we had to both give up smoking if we wanted to continue in the program.

Once I arrived at dh's work and we made our way to the conference room we called our social worker, K, and dh turned the speaker phone on. Only to have it not work. While dh held the phone at an angle we could both hear K she asked if we were both sitting down. I got a lump of excitement in my throat... this was THE call. As I literally jumped and down waving my hands in a flutter dh took down details of the child we had been selected to become parents to. A daughter, born in mid March. We were given brief information about her health (good), her birth (quite normal), her background (similar to our own), her birth name (we changed her name) and other small details that you would normally ask of any new parent. I could barely breath for excitement and all I wanted to do was go to Melbourne and pick up my daughter. No joy thought, that's not allowed.

Once we had been told about this child who may become our daughter we had to travel to Melbourne to be given information about her and the requirements of her adoption. You front up to see more social workers because you now have to deal with the ones dealing with the baby and the birth parents and your own are there as well. We were told more about J's birth, birth parents, circumstances and their reasons for relinquishing and we were shown photographs of J. Then we had to go home and think about whether this particular child and birth family set suited what we wanted from adoption. We weren't allowed to give an answer for a minimum of 48 hours. We had to wait extra because this all happened just before the June long weekend. This was not fair, does anyone really think there was a chance in hell we'd say no? So we went home and bided our time doing as instructed by our social worker. We weren't allowed to go buy anything for the baby, weren't allowed to tell anyone about our trip, we had to consider the information and make a decision.