Prep Course - day 1

The prep course has arrived and we are both a bag of nerves...

We are not on the course run by our own LA as they share the prep courses with two other LA's therefore we have had to travel a bit for it.

We have only driven up and down the same road 3 times before I can convince the know it all darling husband that we need to stop and ask someone local for directions.  The lollipop lady was quite amused as we were the second couple to stop and ask her.  Gosh, this was not the stress we needed on day 1 of the course. 

Anyway we park and we are on time, infact we are 20 mins early - that was probably down to my obsessive not wanting to be late characteristics which I know for a fact drive my hubby mad!

The group was a really large one 12 couples in total.  We were told to expect around 12 people or so in total so it was a little over whelming.

Now I am quite a confident person when in company I am familiar with, I am even considered confident when meeting new people on a one to one level, I am happy to strike up a conversation with pretty much anyone.  However put me in a large group of people I dont know much about and I am pretty quiet.  So my worst fear was alieved when we were told that we would not have to stand and introduce ourselves and that we could opt for name badges instead.

We were told the format of the course, who would be visiting us, what we would be covering and that we would be expected to participate in as much as possible.

Today we met a birth mother, who came to speak to us about what life has been like since having her youngest daughter removed.  She lived for the letterbox contact they exchanged and on the hope that one day her daughter would come and look for her...

So my feelings towards this...  partly i was sad for her, I felt bad that she couldnt turn her life around.  I also felt anger that she assumed this child would definitely come looking for her when she was 18.  More so i felt sad for the child in question.  She was obviously flourishing with her adoptive parents, they sent the birth mother pictures that she had drawn etc and there was this expectation on the child from the birth mother to seek her out.  However I felt a caring side as well, that had this woman had a little more love care and education in her upbringing she may have stood in better stead for caring for her own children.  It taught me that given the opportunity I would like to meet any birth parents, just so that they could see who is going to be caring for their children in the hope that gave them a degree of comfort to allow them to start to move on with their lives.  It also highlighted just how important letterbox contact is for all involved.

So after hearing all the messages on the Adoption UK boards of how tiring prep course is, and from thinking I would be fine and that it couldnt be that tiring sitting and listening to information.  I am absolutely exhausted, maybe even dead on my feet.  Takeaway it is tonight and tomorrow I will try and be more organised for our evening meal.  Oh and a large glass of vino to wash that down nicely.

The homework can wait until morning... some things never change.