Present at this meeting were all the same people who had been at the initial 'introduction planning' meeting, bar our SW who didn't need to be there unless we had raised any concerns with her during the days so far - which we hadn't. The purpose of this meeting was for the Duty Manager from the placing authority to hear from our sons SW, his FC's and also the family finding SW on how the days so far had gone and what we had been up to. Of course the photo of the three of us visiting Santa was proudly presented along with our excited tales of everything we had done so far.
The FC's and ourselves had been in agreement from day two that we felt the intros could really do with being cut short a day (if nothing else to save our baby from another unnecessary four hour car journey) and our SW was in agreement given things had been going well. However the Duty Manager was not on the same page and didn't agree to this plan, unless anyone had a good reason to put forward - I did (I thought). Tomorrow was originally planned to be a 'day off' (from parenting?!) but we had since said we thought this was silly after spending five days phasing into his little life and they had agreed to let us spend time with him tomorrow. So given we were doing an extra day, that in our minds seemed reason enough to bring the final day forward... but alas it wasn't to be, and Thursday would go ahead as planned. Never mind - we would still be bringing our little prince home in just three days!
An hour later, our next meeting was the big one - meeting our sons birth Mother (BM). We followed two SW's in our own car to the meeting place, all the way thinking how this single meeting would be something we needed to remember every detail of to recount to our little one as he grows up, and how it woulds play such a key moment in our new family history.
We had prepared as much as we could for the meeting, drawing up a list of questions which we thought our son might want to ask himself. He has really great life-story work prepared by his SW's team, answering more serious and fundamental questions about family health issues / reasons for adoption etc. so we wanted to ask things that might not be answered, which he may ask us over the years to come. We asked things like "What hand do you write with?", "What's you're favourite colour?" etc etc. Silly things but things that he way want to know.
All week we were unsure if the meeting would actually go ahead as we had been told to prepare for it being cancelled if the team had news that BM had pulled out. As we sat in the children's centre waiting for her to arrive we were still not sure if she would show up, but 20 minutes late we heard the door go and footsteps followed. We were both so so nervous - do we stand to greet her, is shaking her hand to formal when she is responsible for giving us the most precious gift in the world?
A hug seemed to familiar, so on the SW's advice we opted for the handshake and sat opposite her. Before her arrival I had asked the SW's what structure the meeting would take and checked that one of them would take a lead and introduce us to each other. We decided not to share our names with her for security purposes and instead introduced ourselves as Daddy and Pappa. The details of the short meeting (about 15-20 minutes) I'll save for a personal letter to our little boy to read in time but we got answers to all of the questions we asked and finished with a lovely photo of the three of us sat together - all smiling. And really it's this photo that Pappa and I wanted most out of the meeting, so that we can tell our boy quite honestly in the years to come that his BM met with us and is really happy that he is our son; because in her words; we are able to give him the life that she cannot.
A happy ending to the day and a strange feeling of relief as we drove home having had the last meeting.
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