Back in the game - for three months!

I had an appointment with my physio on Tuesday. She thought that I had progressed quite well with my arm. I can bend it more - but not straighten it so well. Now that I'm back at work, the gym and driving again, my confidence has increased (around living with a bung arm) and she noticed that.

So I asked her. I asked her if she thought I could care for a baby - that our plans to adopt were on hold and that we only had a few months left in the pool of prospective adoptive parents. She said to go for it. She suggested practising carrying around bags of pototoes or flour (!). I said I had been testing the water, trying to lift our cat!

The thing is, she's young and not a Mum and I'm not sure her advice is necessarily right. I feel weak, sore and tired right now. But I am getting better each week. The reality is I will have a disabled arm for life. It will never be the same. I damaged my arm way too severely for it tofully recover. My surgeon and physio have both warned me about this.

I phoned our social worker on Tuesday and told her what the physio said. So she is happy for our file to be reopened. I've just emailed her an edited version of our profile - as a few things have changed over the last six months or so (husband has a new job, we have a dog, I hurt my arm and if we adopted now, I would leave my job for good.) I will be dropping off a colour final version to her by the end of the month.

Our file expires April 29th so we have in effect three months left in the pool of prospective adoptive parents!!

I have to say I am both excited and relieved about this. We have a teeny tiny opportunity in a very small time-frame for something to work out. And if it doesn't; it is finally over. I can honestly say I am glad the end is in sight, whatever happens.

Our social worker said it was time to consider a biannual update if we wanted to go in the pool for another two years. She said we could think about it and come in and let her know. I said we knew already - I told her we didn't want to go in the pool for another two years. In fact I wanted to say "God no!!" when she asked me. I'm so over the waiting. I said we'd consider fostering but that might not be immediately - that later on we'd make contact with the appropriate social worker.

For coming up to five and a half years I have lived a life on hold and I simply can't do it anymore. I'm done. I've started looking to the future and there is hope that a life exists for me post-SIF, that once this era is finally done and dusted I will be free and able to move on. If fostering is something that happens, it will be more likely that we invite a child or children into our home to fit into our lives - not the other way around.

I'm moving forward - somewhere. I even booked a weekend in Sydney for my daughter and I in June. We are going over for my niece's 10th birthday. I got flights for a reasonable price. If I'd waited for another three months - until we got our "answer" around adoption I would have missed out on the flights.

So 2012 is about making life fun again - about something other than what isn't in life. I'm ready for it.