been ttc#1 forever (and a bit longer) ....

Hi all... Just popping in...

Would having a gay brother affect the adoption process?? My brother is gay, so wondering if that would make a difference?

Hope everyone is ok... it is so thundery here, loving it

Camden was the only borough even remotely interested in us - Waltham Forest, Haringey, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Redbridge, Barking, Essex all turned us down.

herby that's really rubbish of them . I don't know anything about adoption, but would you have the option of moving borough, or would there be problems because you haven't been approved by Camden? I think I'm really naive about all this because I just assumed that everyone who was vaguely normal would get approved!

I'd love to do a meet-up, but probably won't be able to because we're not really that near London. Keep me posted though, just in case .

Does anyone fancy doing a 'London pissed-off no1 TTCers drown their sorrows in booze' type of meet up?

I know the girls from 'my' miscarriage thread - Popsy, Ronshar, and others - met up and it was great. They are also nearly all now pregnant, so maybe it would be a good omen!

It's Camden, and no, I don't think they could be more useless.

I work with councils during my job, as well, so you'd have thought I'd be used to ineptitude, rudeness and total lack of ability to take responsibility for anything by now.

Not that you're like that Gilly!

Thanks Gilly. I asked the social worker to put everything down in writing for us, but considering him and his department have never answered a phone message or email in the eight months I've been dealing with them, I'm not holding my breath.

They've based their judgement on us on seeing how we behaved in a preparation group course - 20 of us sat around in a stuffy room, listening to three of the worst speakers I've ever heard, when every second word was 'you know', or 'sort of'. And on a 'feedback' interview afterwards, where they didn't want any feedback on them, and hadn't even read our notes (from an in depth interview with another social worker a few months previously, at which we went into the whole four miscarriages, awful but stronger relationship thing). At the feedback meeting they recommended some books (which we subsequently went out and bought), and that we got some childcare experience (which I had been trying to get, by looking after a friend's child in the park). Did they ask about that? NO.

thanks LL.

My immediate reaction is to write a huge, ranting letter to the SWs, copied to the chief exec of the council, and all the papers. But fear this would scupper any remaining vestiges of hope: they said 'put it on hold', and while that probably means 'just piss off you awkward bastards', maybe, just maybe, things might change if we 'do our reading'. Oh, who am I kidding...

And no, you're not being patronisingly obvious. I'd never considered IVF before, as I'd always conceived OK, but now it is on my option list. Perhaps with donor eggs. What does the Swedish programme do differently from UK clinics, which give about a 0.1% of success?

I'm going to see a (private) fertility specialist next week, and she can perhaps advise me on my next route. It could be that clomid would do the trick.

At the moment, I'm in a state of calm denial, and thinking 'OK, maybe life would be perfectly fine with no children'. Which works until I see a pregnant woman, or sweet toddler. Babies don't really tug at my womb-strings. But toddlers...

herby... I really hope that you don't feel too down. (((hugs)) I read out your list of things I must have for the adoption process to my dh, and he smiled sweetly and said that he had enough of all that for the both of us. In other words, I do not possess any of the above. No patience, never mind saintly patience. Nerves of steel, nope. Jelly more like. And on an appraisal once a boss wrote "doesn't suffer fools gladly"

Thanks girls. It's just remarkably shit. If they only have 'hard to place' children, ie older or difficult, why didn't they just say that at the beginning of this 8 month process?

I'd love to go internationally, but you have to be approved in this country first. Usually, by a local authority. And that local authority is only interested in approving you if you can take children in their area. Which, if you're white and looking for a child under 5, it looks like you can't. So even if there are loads of young white kids needing adopting in, say, Warrington, or Romania, because we can't get approved by our LA, we can't get to them, either.

Ready - don't let this put you off. You'll need nerves of steel, the patience of a saint, and an ability to smile sweetly in the face of the most monumental ineptitude, but your LA might be totally different in who it wants.

LL - I must say, I was nearly moved to violence. Instead I just sat and sulked, while DP was all articulate and great, and then stormed out as I thought I was going to cry. And, indeed, did.

I'm a bit stunned, really. I guess I'm going to have to start facing up to the future with no children.