Aah Mothers Day...that old chestnut

I'm in the supermarket shopping for icing sugar and the place is heaving...I know... 'whats new' I hear you sigh but seriously this is worse than normal. There are people everywhere panic buying tulips, chocolates and roast dinners. And then it dawns on me...it's Mother's Day tomorrow. Aaah....the day of mothers... a celebration I have always blanked, ignored or simply had no reason to jubilate. I lost my own mother brutally to cancer when I was 21. She was 48 (yikes...not much older than me really) Yes, my dad has a new partner and she is an amazing mother who I love enormously but we randomly celebrate Mother's Day on a different day of the year in SA. I also have a wonderful mother-in-law but she lives four hours away and celebrations aren't really their thing. But yes, I have bought her a card from LRUN, signed it and reminded him to post it. So tomorrow is going to feel strange. All my friends have plans as many of them are now new mums. For me it's going to be yet another reminder that I am still not yet a mother. "Ooh but enjoy all those lie-ins while you can", they say.  The truth is..I don't like lie-ins, lie-ins make me lazy and remind me that I don't have something to get up for. Anyhoo...LRUN's under the duvet whiffs confirm why lie-ins aren't always what you dream they'd be. Plus the dogs need a wee and I need tea so I just don't do lie-ins. But I don't want to come across as all glum and solemn and feeling sorry for myself as I am just not that type of person. So instead I am going to embrace tomorrow. Celebrate it as my 'mummy-to-be day.' Going through the adoption process is like a having a pregnancy but with no due date. I will be a mummy some day...I'm just not sure what day. I decide to bake myself my all time mood uplifting, bog standard chocolate cake but plan to add a twist of white chocolate and oreo icing. Gah! After all that  trolley dodging, I forgot to buy the icing sugar!

Sunday - Happy Mummy-to-be Day to me

Going bananas with Miss Delia......
It's the most beautiful sunny spring day and with a bounce in my bosom-supported step (yup I'm feeling young again) we welcome Miss Delia into our home for one last session of home study. Feeling positive, I had whipped up a scrummy banana loaf with the added feel good factor of wholemeal flour and carefully lay four tantalising slices on the coffee table in front of her. It turns out to be an incredibly intensive meeting and we spend nearly 3 hours talking about disorders we would consider including foetal alcohol syndrome, drug abuse, mental health problems etc. As we break for me to make another much needed cup of tea, she lunges (yes...you heard me....lunges!) forward and grabs a piece of banana bread and I hear her say to LRUN, "Gosh this is really delicious" I grin like the proverbial Cheshire and instinctively do a little dance in the kitchen and hope no-ones looking apart from the dog. We talk alot about the matching process and how long it takes...around three months from when they first show you a profile until you actually get to meet the little angel. (Once again, Dear Mr. Cameron....please explain) She wraps up the session with the good news that she is still aiming to take us to panel to be approved as adopters in April. The subject of my husbands commuting will continue to be an issue to deal with after that. She asks me if I had considered how different things would be with a child with us....seriously Miss Delia, I have thought about nothing else. Everything I do now, I find myself thinking about how this would be with a little one in tow. I no longer blank the contents of the shelves in the baby aisle, I now even allow myself to look at the bedding for kiddy-winks in John Lewis. I need to tread carefully, as I have been here once before. With a pregnancy where the closer we got to the first scan, the more I allowed myself to believe and I stupidly allowed myself to believe that it was ok to buy my first mother and baby magazine. Sadly that pregnancy ended in a devastating 'no heartbeat' situation and I had to come home and toss that magazine into the recycling bin. I vowed never to do go there again.  So, this is emotionally a huge step for me. I am allowing myself to get excited about this. Oh please let this happen this year. I don't think I can face another Christmas playing Santa for the dog. ;-)

Wholemeal Banana Loaf

An apple a day.....
I'm feeling old this week and for some reason have become very conscious of time just passing. It might have something to do with LRUN's question to me on the weekend when I returned from the dog walk wearing what I guess was technically my pyjamas of  "How many hours a day do you spend without a bra these days?" After my initial glare, he said he was just concerned....you know...gravity and all that. More glares! It got me thinking, at nearly 42, am I getting too old to be a mummy? Am I too old to be running around after a little one. Aah but alas..my LRUN is alot younger than me so surely what my mother always taught me of 'you're as young as the man you feel' now couldn't be more apt. Anyhoo...I like to think I am technically only 35...plus VAT.
I have a doctors appointment too. These always make me feel old and past my prime but that's probably because the surgery here is like geriatric city. They want to check my thyroid, as there seem to be some obvious symptoms like infertility, sluggish system and difficulty in losing weight. It turns out my thyroid is completely normal, so normal in fact it's obvious to everyone that I am simply just infertile and incredibly greedy. I celebrate these results by making one of my favourite cakes, an Apple Crumble Cake. Thick layers of luscious spiced apple sponge squished together with lashings of buttery icing and a crunchy sugar topping. An apple a day and all that.....

Apple Crumble Cake

More delays...rant alert

Just when I thought things were running smoothly, it turns out that LRUN's move up north has been delayed. I know this may seem like a good thing but in essence, it's quite the opposite. The sooner he gets going, the sooner he can be seen as 'settled in his new circumstances' in the eyes of the Adoption Services. In our session with Miss Delia this week, she says she may have to delay panel by another month and then wait another 3 months while he settles in. I want to scream, in fact I want to throw my chocolate and hazelnut cookie at her. But I know it's not her, it's her boss..her royal highness... who is uncomfortable with our instability. So I mentally direct my cookie throwing at her boss. The problem is that HRH commutes and hates it and therefore thinks LRUN will not be happy either. Of course he won't be happy..I want to say...but she commutes because it's to keep her job...LRUN is going to commute to keep us becoming as a family and I can promise you, he wants that more than anything in the world. Anyhoo...we decide to leave that topic and keep going with the assessment . The rest of it is an easy session and Miss Delia even succumbs to a cookie. She looks different...and it takes me a while to realise its because she has returned from her holiday in Africa with a glowing tan.  We talk about how our lives will change, what plans we have in place for the future and our childcare experience. We spend time answering questions about how much contact we are prepared to have with the birth parents. A year ago, I would have said none and back then I was horrified to hear that I would even have to meet with the birth parents. Now I realise how important this is and despite dealing with the guilt of taking someones child away who was unable to care for them, I think it's very special that I can say to my little ones one day that I had met their tummy mummy and tell them a little bit about her. Miss Delia has plans to meet up with our references in the next couple of weeks so even though our next session is not until next month...(seriously Mr Cameron? I thought they were speeding this process up!).. at least things were progressing behind the scenes. I had made the most delicious lemon, poppy seed and ricotta loaf (ok, actually I had made three...but I'm not that greedy....I rung the changes with one as orange and  taken it to a friend with a newborn who was suffering from sleep deprivation! It sure went down a treat) I would have offered Delia the rest but felt it was too early for cake so I take it to work and share it with the girls instead. They listen to me rant...it feels good to rant.....we put the kettle on and tuck into the cake. Suddenly things don't seem so bad.

It's the end of an era....

When most people hit their forties, they tend to go off on a mid life crisis tangent and buy a sports car, change religion or hells bells..even start meditating. Me...I have taken a different approach. I have decided to go back on the pill. Periods for me don't equal fruitfulness and fertility, instead they represent stressful annoying little pain in the ovary hassles! I have spent the last five years monitoring my cycles, coping with 12 day (sometimes longer) bleeds, desperately worrying that I wasn't giving LRUN enough 'us' time. Basically living my life by what day it was of my cycle. Some friends joked over breakfast the other day when they told their boss they were expecting a baby, she had responding by saying..."oh was that planned?" They replied..."of course it was planned.....we had sex!" An awkward silence followed when I mentioned that for us, sex did not simply = baby. I cannot begin to describe the stress each month as it got closer to the day my period was due....would this month be the month I got pregnant? Would this be our time? It turns out, no it never was, not even with 3 rounds of IVF. The disappointment each time got harder and harder to cope with. If that wasn't cruel enough, as it turns out, for us...even a positive pregnancy test does not = baby. Trust me...I have been there...4 times! It's like someone is playing some really heartless game. A few years ago, a friend went through five years fertility treatments and when it finally worked on cycle no. 10 of IVF and she was blessed with twins, I remember saying to a colleague, "Gosh, I am not sure I could cope with five years of trying" ....Hahahaha......well here I am...five years later! So I have come to the decision that I simply do not need my periods. I wanna be the carefree happy me again, not the Day 14 me. With the biggest sense of relief ever, I delete the Cycle Tracker app from my i-Phone and pop my first pill. It feels good...really good. Who needs a sports car! Now a Kitchen Aid Artisan Mixer - in white of course- now that I can justify...

Well I never?

As a mid winter treat, we booked a weekend away in cottage in the cute little village of Orford with Mr and Mrs Fat Lady. I will confess, the main reason we chose Orford is there is a new father and daughter bakery opened up called the Pump Street Bakery which is taking Suffolk by storm. We stopped by for breakfast on the first morning and I found myself literally drooling over the vast array of breads, cakes and pastries on offer. Lets just say we stopped there alot over the weekend. They are only open Wed-Sun and just before closing on Sunday, we found ourselves panic buying croissants and pastries for breakfast on Monday morning.
I had taken a few of my adoption related books to read and snuggled up in front of the fire, with a cup of tea and a Portuguese Custard Tart and it was pure heaven. Whilst indulging in this decadence of 'me time', I went on to learn something fascinating. Apparently, it was possible to breast feed your adopted baby. Now I am under no illusion and that the chances of us adopting a child of breastfeeding age are virtually impossible but I still found this incredibly fascinating. It seems that the sucking motion on the breast encourages milk production. Admittedly, the milk won't contain the same hormones that a birth mother's would so you would have to supplement it with formula and you do have to start using a breast pump a few weeks before for it work. (In reality, the thought of me alone at home with no baby but pumping my breast just feels plain weird!) Still it was interesting reading. There was another option which involved a spaghetti thin tube which fits inside the bra and attaches to the nipple (I know, LRUN and I were both squirming too until we realised it was just on the outside of the nipple) and the baby sucks both to get as much bonding time and benefits as possible. Truly amazing. Now...back to my Portuguese Custard Tart.
 

Queen of Tarts

It is all about the cake....

Sometimes a cake is so special, it is simply worthy of it's own post. My dear friend and champion baker and Mum to be (aka Mrs Fat Lady) made this gorgeous cake for me last night. A truly lush velvety loaf soaked with a sticky pomegranate syrup...all topped with a Persian mood board of pistachios, glistening  pomegranate seeds and silky icing. I have grovelled asked her very nicely for the recipe and promise to share this gift to the cake world as soon as....

It's my party and I won't be crying...but will mostly be eating cake

 My little babysitting monkey was so excited about seeing me all week, she kept asking her mummy "is it today that she's coming?" so by the time I got there on Saturday night she was beside herself with toddler excitement.  At the grand old age of 3 she had already planned we were going to watch the Lion King together, as her mom said she she could stay up until 8.30pm. We snuggled on the sofa together, sang Hakuna Matata in chorus and shared lots of giggles. After a couple of Maisy the Mouse bedtime stories, while I stroked her hair as she drifted off into slumber, it really hit home how much I want this. She slept soundly all night while I tucked into the light fruit cake her mom had left for me (she always makes sure there is cake for me on babysitting nights and she pays me....am feeling very grateful.

Sunday was filled with more kiddy winks time, as we went to a first birthday party. My friend had triumphed and successfully made her daughters first birthday cake. It was a beautiful light vanilla fluffy sponge and delicious.  (I cannot begin to describe how many friends/mothers call me in a complete panic while putting themselves through the guilt defying challenge of making their own first birthday cakes. The usual... "I've added the eggs to the butter instead of the sugar, does that matter. Should I start again....or..Help, why is my icing so runny....or my all time favourite...it's not bloody rising, I really should have got you to make it!!!!!"
The party was from was from 2-4pm but to be honest, I could have stayed there all day. Watching all these kids interact was the most fun I had had in ages. There were no tears, just tons of cute little faces all thoroughly enjoying themselves. Wild horses couldn't drag me away....

Triumphant achievement!