Hello all. This is the first entry of my blog to chronicle the ongoing saga of the attempt my wife and I are making to adopt a child. Let me explain something first. I initially wanted to write this blog to our incoming child, but decided it was way too twee, like that awful sodding Google advert with the guy typing stuff to his new-born daughter. So, I'm writing it in this way
I chose the name, 21st Century Paddington because we are hoping to adopt a child somewhere in the age range 3-5 years old and have no preference as to either a boy or a girl. As we hope the process will be taking sometime within a year (and this may be an optimistic time scale due to the obstacles put in the way by the various organisation we need to deal with), this means that they are somewhere out there right now. They have a name and a personality and they don't know we exist. So to refer to the child I need a name, rather than calling it "it". When I was young I loved the Paddington stories, by Michael Bond, mainly due to a boxset of his books that one of my aunties bought for me which I treasured and read over and over. For those of you who don't know who Paddington is, first of all let me be the first to welcome you out from the cave in which you were born and raised. Paddington was a bear from Darkest Peru who came to Britain by boat with a battered suitcase, a shapeless hat and a tag saying "Please look after this bear, thank you". He arrived in London and was found in Paddinton Station by the Brown family who took him home and made him part of their family. Adopted him, if you like. Therefore I thought Paddington would be a good name to refer to our child to come in the interim. Having grown up with these delightful tales, it's nice that the stories have some real relevance to my life now I'm a lot older
Why do we want to adopt?. Without going into too much detail, we tried to conceive a child the normal way but it just didn't happen. After a while we underwent medical investigations that were inconclusive, though we stopped short of the IVF (too much emotional, not to mention financial, investment in something that has, at best, a 20% success rate). We discussed the idea of adopting an orphan from somewhere like China, but were put off this by the bureaucratic assault course that adopting a child from overseas actually is. To give you an idea, imagine trying to pop to Tesco's but having to get over two Himalayan-sized mountain ranges to get over, separated by a bottomless chasm a few thousand miles across, and paying a five figure sum for the privilege. This was a few years back during which time we've moved to another part of the country and had put the whole adoption thing on hold for a while. Now the time seemed right to think more seriously about adoption but for a child from our own country. After all, it's not like there is a shortage of kids who need a home here. Since we are now a bit older than when we first thought about adoption, it just seems right to take in a child who is a little bit older which is where Paddington is going to come in. Not only that, but we don't have to deal with stuff like teaching them to walk, nappies and, quite literally, all that crap.
I chose the name, 21st Century Paddington because we are hoping to adopt a child somewhere in the age range 3-5 years old and have no preference as to either a boy or a girl. As we hope the process will be taking sometime within a year (and this may be an optimistic time scale due to the obstacles put in the way by the various organisation we need to deal with), this means that they are somewhere out there right now. They have a name and a personality and they don't know we exist. So to refer to the child I need a name, rather than calling it "it". When I was young I loved the Paddington stories, by Michael Bond, mainly due to a boxset of his books that one of my aunties bought for me which I treasured and read over and over. For those of you who don't know who Paddington is, first of all let me be the first to welcome you out from the cave in which you were born and raised. Paddington was a bear from Darkest Peru who came to Britain by boat with a battered suitcase, a shapeless hat and a tag saying "Please look after this bear, thank you". He arrived in London and was found in Paddinton Station by the Brown family who took him home and made him part of their family. Adopted him, if you like. Therefore I thought Paddington would be a good name to refer to our child to come in the interim. Having grown up with these delightful tales, it's nice that the stories have some real relevance to my life now I'm a lot older
Why do we want to adopt?. Without going into too much detail, we tried to conceive a child the normal way but it just didn't happen. After a while we underwent medical investigations that were inconclusive, though we stopped short of the IVF (too much emotional, not to mention financial, investment in something that has, at best, a 20% success rate). We discussed the idea of adopting an orphan from somewhere like China, but were put off this by the bureaucratic assault course that adopting a child from overseas actually is. To give you an idea, imagine trying to pop to Tesco's but having to get over two Himalayan-sized mountain ranges to get over, separated by a bottomless chasm a few thousand miles across, and paying a five figure sum for the privilege. This was a few years back during which time we've moved to another part of the country and had put the whole adoption thing on hold for a while. Now the time seemed right to think more seriously about adoption but for a child from our own country. After all, it's not like there is a shortage of kids who need a home here. Since we are now a bit older than when we first thought about adoption, it just seems right to take in a child who is a little bit older which is where Paddington is going to come in. Not only that, but we don't have to deal with stuff like teaching them to walk, nappies and, quite literally, all that crap.
I think that pretty much sums up how we are where we are at the moment. I'll try and keep up to date on any progress we make in terms of the adoption process.
No comments:
Post a Comment