An adoption lawyer

So, there's been an interesting development with the adoption. Our friend Praise has a friend who's from a well to do family in Manila. She asked her if they know anyone in government who could help us. The lady asked her mother who suggested we contacted an adoption lawyer in Manila who she knows and would help us for free. Today Daniel called the lawyer (giving the name of who had recommended us). Apparently she was very surprised to hear we have been waiting almost a year and didn't seem to think that was normal. She has asked us to email our info (names, date we applied, social worker etc) and she will look into it to see why and where our application is now. I don't know if this is good news or bad! Good we have someone in a position to actually help us. But weird that she didn't think it was normal. It gives me all sorts of doubts about our social worker! I'd rather not think of all the possible explanations. But anyway hopefully it will help us to get somewhere. Even if we don't actually get anymore news, it will be good just to know (from another source) that we're moving forward.

I bought a few more little clothes the other day, in hope. I'm trying not to let myself think about it too much though in case its still takes a while. Just being around people here (in HK) and talking about it makes it seem much more real though. Someone even asked us if we had any names prepared and I didn't know what to say. We had names prepared almost a year ago but we've not talked about them for so long now. Something someone said the other day really struck me. That if an adoptive family have been promised a child at a certain time and then that is delayed indefinitely the emotions that come can be almost as if you've had a miscarriage. I'm not sure if I agree 100% percent, I don't think it's the intensity of emotions as when you know that a child has died (not that I know anything about that obviously!). But I understand what she means, that you have to go through the same grief process. You've been led to believe it will happen at that time and you do everything you can to prepare and then you have give it all up. Then it's easier to just stop thinking and talking about it all together rather than leave yourself open to going through that grief again. So for us to be here and talk about it as if it will actually happen and have people ask us things like what names we are thinking about, is all a bit difficult but yet good at the same time. Actually for the first month or so I was meeting all these new people and didn't say anything about it. It wasn't until we heard from the SW that things were moving that I mentioned it to the mothers group at church I've been going to.

So anyway, it's now almost the end of March. We were hoping to go back to Tagbilaran within the next 2 weeks but it doesn't look as if Nya's HK immigration will be sorted by then. Daniel will need to go to attend meetings April 8-11 and we had to book tickets so we decided he should go alone and come back. Then we'll work out all of us going back whenever immigration is all finalized.