Placement Day

[AgathaCroosty]

Well, it's here! After 18 months of hard graft, pouring our hearts out onto paper, revisiting our past & making sense of it all has finally succumbed to today: Placement Day!!!!!!

Intros were such a strange thing, although everyone was very accommodating to us it was the strangest of things I've ever had to be a part of!

Our house feels like Christmas Eve at the moment, waiting for the arrival of our new LO. The house is busting at the seems & full of toys and love & it's like they've never not been here.

Can't wait to be able to finally relax with our LO without watchful eyes, reasurring to begin with, but frustrating towards the end.

Good luck to everyone else who's at this stage!

I would have shouted this from the roof tops of Social media (Facebook) but you have to remain anonymous on places like that, that's why I'm doing it on here instead!

How exciting! I don't know you but your post has made me all emotional! Best of luck!

What a lovely post! I can feel your joy and excitement and it's made me smile this morning. We're still on our adoption journey and hearing stories like this gives me hope that we will get there.

Shout away and enjoy this special time

Ohh how wonderful. Enjoy this time, sounds strange but I think this would be the first time I'd relax through the whole process. Your first night will be so special and emotional. Good luck with everything. We have matching/link meeting this afternoon. Best wishes being sent your way ❤️💐

Congratulations and best of luck to your new family.

Congratulations and I hope the handover goes smoothly. We start intros in a couple of weeks so not far behind you.x

Intros strangest thing ever. However, our FC were lovely, (we are similar ages etc) -, and I envisage them being part of our lives for the future.

We hadn't met LO until first day of intros - and that felt wierd (LO is 7).

Two weeks from placement and it feels I have known LO for ever - but I never expected it to be this hard.. feels either 25 or 50

Wonderful! Do update USA be let us know how things are going!

Well first day went quite well tbh. LO was overly excited & needed a lot of calming down at times. Bedtime routine was brilliant though & LO is now sound asleep.

How wonderful! How's it been going since?

Lots of hypervigilence observed yesterday as we said farewell to FC. Then lots of disregulation following that.

Today she's been more herself, the self we got to know whilst on intros... singing, laughing etc.

She's been able to concentrate on activities better aswell today

2.5 weeks in, and our LO is more like the happy one we first met.

baby steps - and of course will take as long as it takes.

Today she's been more herself, the self we got to know whilst on intros... singing, laughing etc

How lovely and exciting for you and your LO, I hope all continues to go well. Just a word of caution though, the self you got to know in intros is the scared, anxious, masking like crazy self, part of your little one, yes but not I imagine their true self. If you think about it the disregulated, hypervigilant child is a much more usual response for having your whole world change - I’d be thinking that’s more likely to be “more herself” than the laughing singing child.

I don’t want to bring you down or rain on your obvious happiness but do think about what you’d expect to see in someone who lost everything and everyone they were familiar with, given to someone else, told they’ll be your family now and left in a new house where the noises, smells and routines are different. Think about why she may not be letting you see the terrified, unsure, anxious, sad, angry little girl undoubtedly inside just yet - when she does let you see that part of her, she’s being more “herself”.

I’m saying that in the hope when “that” little girl does appear, it doesn’t knock your confidence or make you think you’re doing it wrong - quite the opposite.

Great that all is well.

Totally agree with jelly everything is up in the air for her. Just be there for her, be all those great things you are for her. Don't expect too much from her or yourselves.

XXXX