Secrets and Lies

I realise that I haven't blogged for a long time, and there is a very simple reason for that. There was absolutely nothing to blog about. My brother is still not talking to me but we manage to facetime his children every few weeks, although we weren't invited to their birthdays this year which was heartbreaking, so it's well over a year now since we've actually seen them. The new house is taking shape, we're both in the same jobs, my parents have had health issues but this isn't the place to talk about that. There really wasn't any news or anything to blog about. Except, well, that's not exactly true.......

We decided to give adoption one more shot. In June, we went away for our wedding anniversary. Suddenly, away from everyone and everything else, and in a venue where we were surrounded by children full of sugar being persuaded (altho, to be honest, it didn't take much persuasion!) to do all manner of silly dance moves and wacky games on the dancefloor before the evening entertainment proper started. For whatever reason, we weren't annoyed by it. Usually that family-centric environment is the kind of thing we actively avoid, but not this time. Maybe we were in a better mood, maybe it was because we'd had a few sherbets ourselves, but it was unexpectedly endearing. And, out of nowhere, Hubby suddenly declared that that's what he really wanted. He wanted me to be telling him off for giving them more sweets as they ran round in circles next to us. 

So, there we are. A third agency was found, another online training session was attended and in September we filled in and submitted the application form. We told no one. We were so scared it would all fall through yet again and we didn't want anyone getting their hopes up for us. The application form was the most comprehensive one we'd filled in and required multiple referees to be listed, so we did tell those people what was going on - we didn't want to put names and contact details down for people without telling them that's what we were doing with their information. It was a grand total of three people. We'd both put our mum's down but didn't tell them, I can't imagine they'll refuse us a reference so we felt comfortable putting their details down without saying anything or telling them what was going on.

The application was approved and we had a social worker come and see us at our house. This is the furthest we had ever got before!! But it was exhausting, we spoke to him for over two hours and went through not only our relationship history (including our split) and fertility history, but also mental health history and family history. For me, of course, this included what has gone on with my brother. The fact we have never spent one-on-one time with our nephews and niece, to them, is a red flag. The fact my sister-in-law has openly said "I don't trust you with my children" has, of course, concerned them - I believe the phrase was 'a possible safeguarding issue'. Great. So at the moment we are being tentatively progressed as they want a reference from my brother and sister-in-law to explain this. Well, that's going to be fun.

I genuinely have no idea if they will do that for us. I want to say that my brother won't be that pigheaded but I know full well he can be when he wants to be, the fact we had no invite to his children's birthday parties this year is testament to that. It's also forced our hand slightly as if they are at least going to ask them for a reference (regardless of whether or not they will give it), we need to come clean to parents as I'll have to tell my parents and it's unfair then not to tell hubby's parents. And it's sooner than we wanted to tell them but needs must, particularly as we've outright lied to them over the past few months about this kind of things but it needed to be done. Let's hope they understand that!

Speaking of my brother.... Since we aren't allowed to see them in person, the only contact we have with them are video calls. The last two calls we've only spoken to our niece and littlest nephew, eldest nephew hasn't spoken to us which was a shame. We had no idea why he hadn't spoken to us, I wasn't even sure he was home during the first call but I saw him at their dining table in the background of the second call. He started secondary school in September and I wanted to know how he was getting on. After the second call without speaking to him I started to worry and even said to hubby that if it happens a third time I would have to bring it up with my mum (even though she usually shuts down any conversation about them or my brother when I bring it up) just to make sure he's ok. He could have just been busy with homework or similar, but two calls in a row had concerned me. Then I got the following text from my sister-in-law:

ELDEST NEPHEW has been made aware of what has happened over the past 18months or so, as he has asked questions about why they haven’t seen you for over 14 months now apart from the odd video call. He has made the decision that he doesn’t want to speak to you both at the moment and, as we always do, we will ask each time you call or they call you back if he wishes to speak or not. We will not be pushing him on this as it’s his decision to make and we will respect his wishes. 

As I always do, I have changed names to titles but that is the only thing I have changed about the text message she sent me.

First things first; "the odd video call" - how passive aggressive is that?! They never answer when we video call them, they will call us back later. We call them virtually every weekend, they call us back around once a month. If it's "the odd call" then that's on YOU - not us. Secondly, what exactly have they told him?! That I was mean and didn't apologise? That I called his dad names and didn't say sorry? That I told a load of lies and couldn't see the error of my ways? Whatever they said, it was surely just their side of things and why wouldn't he side with his parents. Especially ones that are so controlling and will therefore only tell him the facts that suit them. Parents that have never, ever, deigned to imagine there was any other side to this then theirs. They are right and I am wrong, simple. I just hope that at some point in the future he starts to think for himself and will realise that there are always two sides (minimum!) to every story, that he hasn't been told the whole truth. I realise now I have been incredibly naive, as I always seem to be sadly when it comes to my brother. I was hoping that as his children got older and got more independent we might actually start to speak to them more and perhaps see them occasionally. That's obviously not going to happen, there's a very real chance it'll actually go in the complete opposite direction, and all this has done is make my heart hurt.

The other thing that I've wondered about is the timing of all this, call me a cynical old cow but do you remember over Christmas last year when my brother clearly panicked that he was losing control of the narrative when it came to this? (the end of this post) Eldest nephew started secondary school in September, I sent him a card (with a small chocolate bar in it) a few weeks after he'd started at that school to wish him luck and tell him that I worked in a secondary school so if he had any questions, or if I could help with anything, he could always just ask me. A couple of weeks later I get a notification on LinkedIn that 'someone had viewed your profile' - low and behold it's my sister-in-law. What on earth is she doing looking at my LinkedIn profile?! She clearly doesn't use the site very much, her job title was listed under her name in my notifications and it was a job she left at least three years ago. I also can't imagine she would have looked at my profile on there if she knew I'd find out! Further proof she doesn't know how LinkedIn works... But she's blocked me on FB and never accepted followed requests from me on Twitter or Instagram so how else was she going to be nosey and find out about my job?! And, of course, heaven forbid one of her children comes to me for help and gets closer to me so this is when they decide to tell him.

Now, there is every chance he has asked questions and they told him and this could be a complete coincidence but as I say - I'm cynical and I'm not sure the timings here aren't entirely unlinked. I know he's asked questions before as we've been chastised (in the post I linked to above) for forcing my brother to tell more than he wanted to. But, on this occasion, once they've verified where I worked, they've answered his questions. It's horrible, I hate it. When I read her text I sobbed. But it is what it is. We can only keep doing what we're doing and hope, hope against hope, that one day things will be ok.

Now What?

So. We'd moved house, the adoption was progressing, I was starting to hope!! More fool me.

After we'd moved house, a further phone call was booked for mid-January with another social worker and it wasn't good news. Our application is on indefinite hold. Things have changed since the summer and there are fewer children available (which I guess is a good thing) and they already have a lot of prospective adopters on their books who are already approved so are not moving forward with anyone new at the moment. They weren't sure when, or even if, the situation would ever change but we were welcome to get in touch with them every couple of months to ask the question.

Great. More limbo.

So, yet more research was done into other agencies and other charities that offered the same thing. The phone call I mention above took place in January, by February we'd emailed another agency and had been accepted by them so hoped that would progress. It's now been six weeks and they're no longer replying to my emails. I got in touch with our first agency to see if the situation had changed, it hadn't. Suddenly there is a very real possibility that this isn't going to happen for us. There are only so many times we can bang our heads against the wall and hope that wall will come down. It seems that wall is very firmly up, we can't get to the other side, and I'm genuinely not sure how much energy we both have to keep trying. Hubby is 40 this year and I'm a good few years older than him, at some point we need to just realise this is our life now. Just us. 

Hubby is suddenly on the same page as me, before Christmas he had started volunteering at a local cubs group to get more childcare experience - as requested by our first adoption charity. He's always been great with kids, and he always comes back from his evenings with them smiling, but he's going to give it up in the summer. If we're not able to adopt then he doesn't 'need' the experience and every evening there just reminds him of what we don't have. It's heartbreaking.

I try and feel positive, I try and look for the good in things. I know I have so much to be thankful and grateful for. But it's difficult, I cannot deny there is a massive chasm in my life - a huge, enormous, all consuming black hole where my children should be, what my life should be. And the pregnancy announcements keep coming, and the moaning from those that have children keeps coming. All the while I'm sat here wondering what the point of my life is. Genuinely, how do I get to the other side of this? How do I feel that my life isn't utterly worthless? 

There is now a very real possibility that this isn't going to happen for us. I really didn't think that would happen, I'm sorry if that sounds naïve but I really didn't. I always thought something somehow would work out, even if it wasn't our first choice or how we thought it would look like - I nevertheless always thought that SOMETHING would happen. I genuinely didn't consider that at the end of the road we would actually be childless. And that is now very realistically what it looks like our future will be.

Onwards...............

I haven't blogged for a long time, and for that I am sorry. There's a couple of reasons really; firstly, since we're not actively TTC anymore and aren't planning on any more treatment there really isn't that much to write about! And then, secondly, the blog tends to get behind whenever big things happen with my brother. I always need to muster the emotional and mental strength to write a post about anything that goes on with him and therefore relive all that that entails and so things get delayed. But, that has now been done (and it was done a while ago - sorry), so here's where we are on the reason I actually created this blog in the first place (I realise this is the only safe space I have to talk about my family with this much honesty and I very VERY much appreciate you for reading it but, let's face it, this is a fertility blog and not a family blog).

We always said from the beginning that we didn't want to go down the donor route, any child would either be 100% us or 100% not us, we decided a long time ago that we really didn't want anything in-between. So, it's taken some time but we have decided to go down the route of adoption. Forgive me if this sounds horrendously arrogant, but maybe we aren't meant to have our own children as we have too much love to give and there are children out there that desperately need it more than a biological child would. Therefore, the research began.

We attended a video call with our local council adoption service and we really didn't like how they were doing things, quite a lot rubbed us very much up the wrong way, so we found a charity. A very large one that really did seem to do things very well and we enrolled on one of their video calls. That all went well and so we downloaded the (very long....) application form and started filling it in. The brother of one of my best friends has adopted two kids with his wife and so we went over there for an evening and asked all manner of questions and there was incredibly generous with their time and their knowledge. More research was done, more information was sought. Eventually, the form was completed and off it went. 

Two months later we both had an initial phone call with a social worker, we talked with her for an hour and it seemed to go really well. Weirdly, they said hubby needed more childcare experience but I was fine. It's to do with our jobs, which I don't really want to go into here for obvious reasons, but I did think it strange. So, he signed up with a local cub group as a volunteer leader and I forked out a huge amount of money on a load of books it was recommended that we read. Very enticing titles too:

• Parenting a Child Who Has Experienced Trauma Parenting Matters 
• Parenting a Child With Difficulties In Learning Caused By Trauma
• Parenting a Child With Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties       
• Parenting a Child Affected by Parental Substance Misuse
• Parenting a Child Affected by Domestic Violence
• Loving and Living with Traumatised Children: Reflections by Adoptive Parents

Don't they just make you want to read them?! Name me anyone who's had kids that has been judged so much beforehand - hoops to jump through, medicals and references and financial checks. How is this fair?!?!? Sorry, I know I should look at the bigger picture of this is how we get to be a family but sometimes it's just so hard.

*breathe*

Anyway........

This was all going on last summer (i.e. Summer 2022) and after that initial phone call everything was put on hold as we were in the process of buying a house. We couldn't do anything further until we'd moved, there was no point progressing the application and sending a social worker round to see us if we weren't living in the property that the child would live in. We finally moved in November last year and informed the charity in December once we'd done about half of the unpacking, a follow up call was scheduled for January 2023.

Meanwhile, the hypocrisy of my brother continues. We facetimed his kids before Christmas and it was heartbreaking, our niece came out with "I want to see you at Christmas but mummy says I'm not allowed". She's five. And then eldest nephew asked if we were going to come over on Christmas Day and I said that I'd love to but we couldn't. It was the end of the call, he'd already been told to hang up, and so I wasn't going to explain any further but I was not going to lie to him. After that phone call, hubby got the following text from my brother:

Don’t tell ELDEST NEPHEW that you ‘can’t’ come round for Christmas cos that’s a lie. It’s now made him question with us why you ‘can’t’ come round as there was no explanation to it and it’s left me having to explain a few things!! He’s really pushed asking why now so I’ve had to tell him that it’s not that you ‘can’t’ it’s that you wouldn’t want to cos of some things that have gone on between us and quite frankly that we wouldn’t want you coming over cos of it either.

It’s put me in a very awkward situation with my son now as I’ve now had to tell him more than I wanted to as I was trying to keep them out of it. It’s bad enough for them as it is that they only know you guys as just a face on a screen once a week for 5mins or so.

Don’t act to my children like nothing has happened, especially ELDEST NEPHEW being the eldest, and act to him like you’re both just an innocent party leaving us having to explain.

Wow. Erm, how is it lying when he says in the next breath that they don't want us coming over?! How is it my fault that he needs to tell his children about this? He could have just said we were spending Christmas Day with hubby's family (which we were, but only because there was nowhere else to go). There was no reason to give that level of detail to his son if he didn't want to so I do find this interesting. They've also changed where their facetime calls take place. Previously, each child would be in their own bedroom but now they're in the downstairs playroom which can easily be overheard by adults in the lounge or kitchen. Anyone else think that he's scared about losing control of the narrative?! He's the one that's not keeping the kids out of it by saying we can't see them.........

So, it's been a very rocky road in the past year and who knows what the future will hold. For now at least, we have a very lovely house and are keeping absolutely everything crossed that we might actually get that happy ending.