The Pondify Podcast

, tonight we have some very special guests and I feel quite privileged that that's the case. So first of all, on my left, and you can't see this, I'm aware of this, but on my left is our guest host Noelle. How are you, Noelle? I'm good. Thank you. Excellent. It's really good to see you.

Thank you for coming and helping because, uh, frankly, you don't just want to hear my voice, but the reason we have a guest host is because we have two, well, one beautiful, beautiful, lovely guests with us and another host who's normally here. So Matt and Esther are our guests today. Hi, Esther. First, how. I'm very

well, thank you.

So would you like to tell us something about yourself and who you

are? I am Esther. I have been in this church for my whole life. I'm married to Matt and I'm absolutely loving the weather at the moment because it's been snowing.

And then there is this stranger I've never seen before in my life. Matthew,

how are you?

I'm very, very well. Oh, my mother's here. Only my mother calls me Matthew, and only when I'm naughty. So nice to meet you Tonight we

are going to talk about adoption. It's the thing that we were asked. We did a survey recently, um, on the first episodes we did, and we asked people what they wanted to hear podcasts about and who they wanted to hear from.

And you guys were one of the most popular suggestions. And by that I mean there were like half a dozen people suggested to talk to Matt and Esther about adoption. And of course adoption, as we know, is very obviously a pretty biblical concept. , so we're gonna talk about your. Experiences in adoption, cuz I know you're both very passionate about it.

Mm-hmm. . But we're also going to talk about a little bit about what adoption is in their, uh, family of God and what adoption is in the Bible. Just to set the ground rules, you set two ground rules. The first one is your children are, Going to be named what?

Eldest daughter

and youngest

daughter. Thank you.

And are we going to talk about their birth parents?

No, we are not, because that is our daughter's story and not ours to tell. All right.

Big question we're talking about today. What does it mean to adopt and be

adopted? How did it start? I'll kick us off then. When Esther and I, were dating, before we were even engaged, we were taking, our relationship very, very seriously.

And, we sat down and we, we were, were talking about what life would look like when we were married. Esther, very bravely told me that she had, something called polycystic ovaries, which meant, uh, or that she'd been told by the doctors that it, it may be harder to conceive, children, um, when we were trying for a family and, um, and she said, you know, would, would that be an issue?

For me. She wanted to let me know, and I just said, well, we'll, uh, you know, we'll, we'll try for our own children and if it doesn't happen, we'll just adopt. I thought, yeah, it's as easy as pie. And then, we kind of left it . We, uh, we, we got married. Um, we've been married for, oh, help me, Esther.

How many years? 11 years. Yep. That's what you are here for. The numbers we got married and a couple of years in, we, we started to think, maybe we should start having another conversation about what life's gonna look like, what family's gonna look like.

So how old were

you when you married?

I was

24 and I was 26. Okay. Thank you. Carry on.

okay, so then my part of the story is that, we're kind of thinking about future and. Is this the right time to have children? When are we gonna have children? And one Sunday morning I was at church and, being prayed for somebody, asked for anyone that wanted prayer for kind of what the next stage of your life is gonna look like.

And I thought, yep, that's me. What's it gonna look like timing wise, et cetera. And my friend Susan was praying for me and I just felt God say very clearly to me, adopt your first child just heard it in my head. Knew it was God and thought, wow, that's, that's huge. I'm just gonna sit and think on that.

Which I did. So I didn't tell Matt. I thought I'm just gonna, you know, let this stew for a little while. Was thinking about it all week and praying about it, and I remember one drive to work, I said to God, right. Okay. If this is you, if this was you speaking to me, I want a clear sign on Sunday morning.

I want somebody to maybe ask if anyone wants prayer about adoption. Yeah. I want it to be spoken about at the front. And that Sunday morning. It was a, a charities morning at church and different people were getting up and talking about different charities that they were part of and involved in. And one couple in the church in a malini got up and shared their story of adoption.

And I thought, wow, that is a definite sign from God. On,

on that same, , morning again. Esther hadn't told me anything about this, uh, hearing from God and, Inna Malini got up and at the end of, , the time, of each of the, charities or things that people are passionate about, the leader of the meeting said, if anything has resonated with you, if you want prayer for anything here, um, just come up to the front and someone will pray for you.

So I went forward for prayer. I didn't tell Esther what was going forward for, for prayer for, and whilst I was being prayed for, I had , a picture, from God of, , a helicopter. Seed, falling down from the tree. I think it's sycamore , and landed, in some soil at my feet.

And from the soil, grew up this tiny little plant, and then it turned into this, uh, sunflower. And in, in this picture, I saw myself dig the sunflower up, put it in, uh, a wheelbarrow, and take it home and put it on my windowsill. And in that moment I felt God basically say, look, , this seed is gonna come from some other place, but you are the one that's gonna nurture it.

By taking it home. And yeah, I, I had that picture and just like Esther, I kept my mouth shut. So I

Also had a picture of a, a seed being implanted inside me and it grew into a sunflower.

And I knew that this was not a, a baby to be birthed from me, but this is the child that I would look after that God's kind of putting it inside me, inside my

heart. So we we're quite practical people. I like to think. We'd kept this, very quiet from, from one another. Kept, kept this first secret.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's it. We talk a lot. , but again, it was, it was coming, up to, to the time, maybe like a week or two later where again, we, we'd agreed that we would, , write a dream page. I dunno if you've done a dream page before, but basically you, you write down if, if money's no object, all the different areas of life that you'd like to see, you know, that you didn't envisage.

Yeah. And one of the things that I'd written down was, adoption. And so we, decided that on a particular day, on a particular evening, we'd drive out to the middle of nowhere and we ended up at a, like a lay by near Duxford, , Duxford Airport, how romantic and . Um, and we shared our dream pages, uh, with one another.

Now, I had written adoption. On mine, and I've seen that Esther had written adoption on hers, and I found that very, very interesting. And quite late at night outside Duxford, where we, we shared what God had said. To each other. I like, I was just blown away cuz I was like, oh, wow, God's spoken to me, but God's spoken to my wife.

Yeah. At the same time. And specifically the, the picture of the sunflower. So sunflowers are like, uh, a big thing for, for our family. We love growing sunflowers in our front garden. And people have, drawn pictures and painted pictures of sunflowers and given them to us before.

Yeah. And it's just, uh, I think it's just like a little reminder that God's , dropping, gifts like that on us. Yeah. To just go, oh, by the way, yeah, yeah. I made this happen. , you know, he's not showing off, but he is a little bit

through, through other people. So you kind

of

meet together, you tell each other what has happened and it's kind of a decision like of, okay, we're gonna do this.

We're gonna adopt our first child. Was there any sort of like, Grieving process maybe that either of you went through in terms of coming to the understanding, at least for right now, we're not gonna have our own, or not our own, but biological children, but instead

of docs. So for me, I think, um, looking back at it now, I know that God knows me and is good to me, that he said to me, adopt your first child.

He didn't say, only adopt children and never have your own babies. Yeah. Because I thought then that's just, that's what you do in life. You kind of, you get married and you have babies and then on to the next and the next. You'll hear later on in our story that actually God is very kind and gave us two babies.

Yeah. Um, when we thought we would just be adopting one. So it's just God just knows you and knows where you are at. And if I think if I'd heard only adopt children, I might

not have done it for me, there was no real grieving process because God's been really, really kind to me by. Making this feel like it's completely natural.

We as Christians, we are adopted into God's family. Yeah. Right. That's his plan. He's our dad. We are, we are his kids. We come to this conclusion that, , we were gonna adopt, but we didn't know how to, to go about it.

Yeah. So we, we met with, um, Ian and Malini who had, had gotten up and spoken about adoption that, that weekend and they kind of gave us a real idea of, the adoption process will, will be like. They didn't. Paint a pretty picture. They told us the truth and that that's what we needed. And they, they just gave us some guidance and, and the, the first part of the process was that we needed to go on some information evenings, because it's, it's not like America where parents, the birth parents are involved a lot in it, right?

It's charities like Bernardo's, or county councils. And so we arranged and to go on, on some information evenings one, basically said, well, you're too young, how old were we at this point?

I think I was about

26.

Yeah. I was 28 then. They basically said, look, you, you're too young. Why are you doing this? That put on those outta joint, it was. It felt, it felt quite painful. So, you know, because it was like the first bit of rejection, so to speak, in this process.

, but we did go to Bernardo's and they explained, a bit about the process bernardos tend to deal with older children, uh, and more difficult to place children. But we also went to the Essex County Council information evening they were really, really informative.

And, and for me, you know, you asked about the grieving process that there was a, an adoptive parent, um, who got up at this information evening and she said that she'd got to the point in her life where she was more interested in being a mom than going through the process of giving birth. Yeah. And I, and I, in, in my own mind thought, well, actually I'm more interested in being a father.

Than passing on my jeans. Yeah. And that's why I say it fe it felt very, very natural. And again, you know, in the natural process, the dad bit's done, you know, and then it's the mum for nine months, you know what I mean? You know what I'm getting at. So May maybe, maybe it's easier. I have have five

children and I can say that is absolutely correct.

thank you doctor. Uh, . But, but yeah, so we went on this, this information evening and, and they told us quite honestly, like, look, you're living in a, a one bed flat. At the moment, it's, it's, it's not, it's not gonna happen.

Yep. So we lived in a one bedroom flat and we knew that we, uh, needed a house or a bigger flat.

Um, so we had already saved some money, ready to buy somewhere, but decided to take our time looking. We found a house that was perfect for us, um, big enough in size. We really liked it. Bought it, settled down in there, like, took a little while to settle down and then decided. Then go for it. So

did you buy the house

because you wanted to adopt or did you buy the house because you were gonna buy

it anyway?

We wanted to buy a house anyway, so we needed to buy a house first before we could then start the process to adopt it. How do you feel about that?

I didn't, I didn't wanna buy a house

I, I am, I'm the nervous one around that, and I was pulling my hair out thinking, can we afford this? Can we afford this? You know, and God, like, again, was very, very kind to us. In, in, in that, the, the main, the main thing for me was we got the house. because I wanted to, to pursue what, what life was gonna be like as, as this, this adoptive family.

Yeah. When, whenever we drive past my old flat in Newport, I always shout out the window, give me my flat back. Um, uh, the kids have no idea what I'm on about, but Esther does . So yeah, for, for me, we got the house, uh, because we wanted to adopt that. That was the main thing for me. I'd still be back in that one bedroom flat in Newport.

Otherwise you

went for it. What

does that mean?

So we started the, the adoption process. We filled out the paperwork, we filled, we told social services, uh, um, family history. Growing up, what it was like growing up for us. And we went on a few day, a few courses with them about parenting. They told us more about what it's actually like adopting.

We went on a three day parenting course with other people who were wanting to adopt, who then became very good friends of ours. Yeah. After all that paperwork, we then had a social worker, came round to our house for two hours every week for about eight weeks. And she asked us absolutely everything about

our life.

She interrogated us is, is is what she did. That was the, for me was like the most, daunting part of the process. I, we were really lucky. We had a really lovely social worker called Zoe. I think she made things very, very comfortable for us. Yeah. She, she made it very, very easy for, for us to talk.

It's easy for me to talk anyway, but she made it very, very easy for, for Esther to talk . But she also really made us think about things. There's one particular time she, she came round. She knew that we were Christian. She said, you do know that God won't love you more if you adopt, and he won't love you less if you don't.

You do know that, don't you? And I that put my back, uh, my back up, um, a little bit. And, and what she also said was, you, you do realize that what you're doing is completely

weird. She also said to us, um, I knew one family who wanted to adopt, and they were Christians and they felt like God had told them to adopt.

And they adopted a couple of boys and they found it really hard. And they're divorced

now. , why

did you want to adopt? Okay, so on the basic level of, you wanted children, I get that. But why?

Because God told us to, when God speaks to you, he puts something on your heart that you then pursue. So I had always known of people who were adopted, had friends who were adopted, friends who adopted children.

And so it wasn't weird, it wasn't unusual, it was for me, another, a different way of having children. And I think when God spoke to us about it, he put it on our hearts and as we pursued it, it was something we were passionate about. And, and

what did each of your families think about this process as you were going through it, as you told them, okay, this is something we're gonna do, we're gonna pursue it.

How did that go? So I spoke to my family about it. My parents are in the church. I think my mom found it a bit strange at first, but was on board with it, you know, Often on board with these things. My dad said to me, oh, but why, why would you want to do that first? Why, why didn't you have biological children?

And then adopt? And I said, oh, well, God, God spoke to us about it. And he went, oh, alright

then go for it. My parents, thought it was very strange. Even quite a way into the process. My dad was like, so how much are they gonna pay you to adopt these children? I was like, dad, they're not paying us.

That's not the way it works. , this isn't the motive. We're not fostering, you know, to, but we we're adopting these, these are our children. He is like, okay, fine. and what what was also really helpful was that social services allowed us to send our parents on a course, again, to tell them that this isn't gonna.

like having natural grandchildren. If, I'll give you an example with natural grandchildren, you socialize babies, you know, you pass them from person to person to person. So they get used to being, , around different people, , with adoptive children. , you don't do that.

You have to form a, bond with that child and bearing mind that, these children, no matter what age they're adopted, they've come from some trauma. And that trauma can be, being taken away from their, their birth family, then bonding with a foster carer and then being taken away from that foster carer.

There is, um, trauma there, there is loss there, there is grief there. You know, you ask about our grief, but there's also the grief of, of our children that, that they went through. And, and it manifests itself in different ways. , for example, our eldest came to, to live with us and be with us, around like the end of November, early December.

And so when we put up our Christmas decorations, our oldest goes a bit funny, gets a bit distant doesn. Really wanna behave, um, can throw tantrums sometimes. And she doesn't know why, but, because, I mean, she came to us when she was nine months old. But there's still something there, there's still something about, oh, hang on, what's this change?

What's this? Yeah. Tree going up, these lights going up. You know what's this? And it feels strange, the

deep stuff, which doesn't necessarily show on the surface because whilst your children came to you as babies, effectively, it's still there. Yeah. The trauma is still there.

Yeah, absolutely. So you are going through the adoptive process. You've had your social worker come round and quiz you and she still quite likes you, which is a good thing. . What

happened

next? So then we went in front of a panel. Our social worker wrote a whole case about us, about why we are suitable to adopt.

She took us to a panel of about. Eight to 10 people. Some were doctors, some were teachers, some were adopters, social workers. They have read our case. They know all about us and they ask us questions about why we want to adopt. We leave the room after asking, answering all these questions. They sit and talk and make a decision there and then as to whether we can be adopters or

not.

Was that intimidating?

Yes. For me, no. . Um, so es Esther was literally shaking like as we were walking up to the room cuz it is intimidating. There's, there's this group of people around this massive boardroom table and you are at the head of it. You are having to basically prove yourself that you can be.

Parents, you don't have to do that with, with your natural children. It's like, yeah, there you go. Okay, fine. Yeah, you've made it, it's yours. With, with us, we've been assessed. Yeah. We've been interviewed, we've been weighed, they've gone through your entire lives.

They go through your finances. Yeah. They go through your home to make sure your home's safe. You know, you have to have safety catches on your cutlery, um, draw because there's knives in there. You have to have these safety catches under the sink because there's bleach under there and all that sort of stuff.

And my kids survived all of that. . Exactly. But we had to prove it. You know, we, we had to prove, yeah, we are responsible parents. We've got, a set of stairs that lead from our, uh, hallway into our living room. So we had to put up, what was it? Wasn't it two stair gates to show, you know, that, that actually we are serious about this.

So we had to jump through all these different hurdles. And then finally in front of these, Eight to 10 people who don't know you. Some of them are smiling, some of them are not. It is quite scary. , and then your social worker stands up and is an advocate for you and basically says, look, this is the reason why I think based on the assessment I've done, Matt and Esther will make great adoptive parents.

And she reads out the case. They ask you a few questions cuz they wanna test that it's, it's not just been information that's been fed to you to make you sound good. And then you go to another room and they, leave you waiting for about 10, 15 minutes, feels like an hour. And then they come down and they say yes or no.

And, and in our case they said yes, .

So when this, uh, when this social worker was interviewing you, she was checking your finances and all the rest of that, did she ask you any stuff which made you think, well, which she thought

might put you off there? There was the one time when she said, um, About it being weird.

And she said specifically, if you were my children going through this process, not trying to have natural children and going and choosing adoption, instead, I would tell them not to do it. And she said, I, I think you should really think about this. I was so angry with her. I, I was really annoyed at her like she left and I just went from going, I really like her to, I can't stand this woman.

But we thought so hard that entire week between the interview sessions. We thought so incredibly hard and we were like, you know, do we, do we wanna do this? Is this right? Are we weird? We were questioning everything and then it, then the week rolled around and she knocked on the door and she said, oh, I'm surprised you let him me in.

I thought I was gonna get a, an email or a phone call from, from you saying, you know, it's not gonna happen, but that hasn't happened, so should we carry on ? And we were like, yeah. And we were best friends again. It really tested us. Yeah. It really made us think it wasn't, oh, , God said this, so we're doing it.

Yeah. There's that obedience. But there's also, do we really wanna do this? Do we, we know that this is gonna be tough. Yeah. We know that children are gonna come with trauma. We know it's not gonna look the same as having natural children. We know it's a bit odd, a bit weird, but do we really wanna do this?

Did God really say this? Uh, and we came to the conclusion, yes. And not only that, but throughout our entire story and we'll get onto some more of it, but God's been constantly dropping in r more reminders.

Uh, another thing the social worker did do, I think the week before that really testing week is that she took us to a group that ran in the village, for children who have been adopted and their parents to go along too.

It was like a youth group. So the children were a bit older and she took us round to every couple that she knew and she was like, hi, this is Matt and Esther and I would like you to tell them the hardest part about adopting . And she really wanted our eyes to be open to what it's actually like to parent a child that's been through trauma.

What I find quite amazing about this, this is just dawning on me, is I'm listening cuz I've heard this story before, is when you are part of a birth, . You just, you are in the family. That's the way it is. What's happened with you guys is you have had to very intentionally look at all of the things that most of us find really painful about being in a family, but you don't get away.

You can't get away from it. Mm-hmm. , you've chosen to walk into that with your eyes open, knowing that not only are your children coming or your child is coming, but that when your child comes, they're likely to be traumatized, troubled. They're likely to have some issues. Um, no, less lovable, just, I think that's amazing.

That's

what God does with us though. You know, we are like, we are, we are broken. Um, we've got mess, we've got trauma. God still runs to us with open arms. He still pursues us. He still loves us. He lavishes us, with gifts, with his time, with his affection. Uh, I wanna recommend a book. It's a book, uh, by Kris Candi and, um, it's called, home for Good.

And it talks about loads and loads of different people throughout the Bible and then relates it to like a real life story. Oh, that's cool. And it's a fantastic, but we read that before we even went into the adoption process because actually, when, you know what God.

Says about adoption, what he thinks about adoption, when it's his plan to grow his family, where that's the way that he grows his family, the primary way. All of a sudden it, make adoption as a first choice makes more sense. Hmm. Or that's, that's my opinion, uh, of it anyway.

Speaking of knowing that you're adopting these children, they're going to have the trauma of leaving their birth parents, did you adopt them as babies or did you adopt them, um, when they were

older or what age were they?

When we were approved as adopters, we were approved to adopt a child from birth to five years. So we said that we would look for a child within that age category. We were thinking realistically between the ages of two and five. We've been told a lot throughout the adoption process that there are not, there aren't babies to adopt.

You don't come in here adopting babies. I think the point of that is to help people that are, that have tried to conceive naturally to show them this is not a replacement baby. This child will be a child that comes from trauma that will be, need to be parented differently. This is not a kind of second best option, a replacement baby.

So it really makes you think about do you want to parent a child or do you want to keep trying to have your own baby? So we had got it in our heads that we were gonna, yeah, adopt an older child. And we were looking at profiles and our social worker had changed. We had a different social worker. Our.

Previous one had moved on. And this social worker was a Christian that we found out. And um, we were talking to her one time, she brought around a profile of a child and saying, you know, it's not right. And she said, I think Esther, you want a baby? I think you want a baby. and we were like, oh, okay. And she said, I know that Matt, you want to parent an older child?

She said, but Esther, you won't. If you get an older child, you won't get to parent a baby. If you get a baby, you will then get to parent that older child. She said, and Esther, you are gonna be at home with this baby, with this child, and I think you need to speak up and say what you want. And I think, Matt, you need to listen.

And I think she, she knew something there. That was something that we wanted. We were, we were saying we're not gonna have biological children, but God wasn't saying, but you're not allowed a baby. He was saying, you know, adopt these children. These children are meant to be yours. And, and it was totally right.

You've already said you wanted. children, you've got daughters. Was there ever a thought of having sons or was it daughters? How did you, what did you choose?

So I, I grew up with two sisters and another Esther grew up, uh, with two sisters. For me, it was like, actually, yeah, like, we want girls. That was it. We wanted girls, didn't we?

It messed with my mind a little bit because for so long we had been told there's no babies. , I understand why they say that. We met people who their babies die in the maternity ward. We met somebody who's, who was born without a womb, and, we met people who had tried with I V F time and time again, and it hadn't worked.

And they were just devastated. And they too were told, you are not going to get a baby. Every single one of those , couples. Got babies. But I think they just wanted to test us to say, do you really wanna do this? Because it's gonna be a lot of work. It's gonna be hard.

They call it parenting. Plus, there's a lot

of romance attached to a baby though, isn't it? To have a baby. Yeah. There is

a very romantic thing to do. I think there's a lot of romantic stuff attached to adoption as well, though. Like, oh, it's such a lovely thing. It's a privilege. Adoption is a privilege, or that's what I feel.

Um, anyway, I, I get quite embarrassed when people say, oh, what, that's a lovely thing you are doing. And I just think, no, this is just a thing that God's told me to do. Yeah. He's told me and my wife to do. It's the template for our family. God's adopted me. Why can't I adopt other children? And again, like I, I don't look at my, my girls and think You are adopted.

You are different. No, you are, you are mine. So again, , when you go through the adoption process, , we spend, I think it's like six months, maybe a little bit more, being approved, just to be told by this panel of people. Yeah, you can be parents. That doesn't mean to say that you get a baby straight away,

, you have to go through more processes, and something called matching. And that's the hardest part.

Then you go back to work on Monday morning and you just wait and you wait. We were fortunate, we only waited five months. It seems like a very short amount of time now, but when you are in it, it's a very long five months knowing that your child is probably out in the world somewhere waiting for you to be their parent.

But there's absolutely nothing you can do about it there. You can't. Email your social worker lo over and over and over and hurry her up because it doesn't work. . I tried it. . Um, but yeah, so we were just waited and you've got people asking you, have you heard anything yet? And they are asking out of love and, you know, wanting the best for you.

But it, it was hard just waiting.

Yeah. Imagine if everybody knows, like e your entire circle of friends and family know that you are trying for a baby. And every single week when they see you, they say, are you pregnant yet? If it was like that, I found that, particularly hard. As I said, we'd met other friends on these parenting courses and, we'd been all been approved. All, all the couples had been approved and we were at a barbecue and , they knew we wanted a girl. . Like they, like everyone knew

what everybody wanted.

Cuz you know, you're quite open, you're quite exposed in, in that environment. And, um, and at the end of the barbecue, , one of the couple said, oh, we've got some news. We've been matched with a little girl. And there's a little girl, coming to live with us, a baby. And I just looked at Esther and Oh my days.

Like you were just, you were distraught, weren't you?

Yeah. I, I thought that they had, were gonna be adopting our child, . You know, you kind of, yeah. Thinking I'm, I'm waiting for a baby and, and you have got this baby, which just sounds perfect for us. But actually, definitely was not meant to be our child, but at the time

it hurts.

Yeah. I mean that, that baby is definitely their baby . Like, like yeah. No, knowing, knowing them, their family and knowing and knowing that little girl, yeah, she's totally in the right spot for, for that one. But, but it was still, it, it was still upsetting cuz it was like, well we, we've been approved first. Why are you matched first?

You know? So how did you get past

that, Esther? Because that's must, that's quite a strong feeling and that that's one of those feelings. It's like a worm that gets into your psyche. How did

you get past

that? Well, I emailed our social worker . I said, have you heard anything ? And, and I said, and I was honest and I said that we have met with friends and this had happened.

and it's really hard. And then she came around and met with us, said that I did the right thing to email her and to be honest about how I was feeling.

The other thing is, is that well, in, in this waiting again, God was really, really kind on two occasions that, so , we'd gone on holiday, , and it was, it was really stressful at work.

I had a lot on my mind. You know, we got all this, we'd had all this flurry of activity and then nothing for ages. And I was sat on the coach from the airport to our hotel in Turkey and I closed my eyes and I just said like, what's going on? Like, when's, when's this? When's this gonna happen? And he very, very clearly said to me, in two weeks, you're gonna hear something in two weeks.

So I thought, okay, I'll enjoy my holiday. So the weeks holiday went by and then we got back, and then it was another, another week to the day , it was an email or a phone

call. I got a phone call from our social worker and I could hear in her voice and she said, Esther, I've got a profile for you.

And I knew that this was different. The way that she was excited talking to me. I thought she knows something here. She had a profile of this baby. I was getting ready to go and meet Matt in London for a night out. We were gonna go to the theater and we were at dinner beforehand talking about the information.

She'd told me we were waiting for the email to arrive with the profile and it arrived just before the, the show. And we read it and we watched the show, but we didn't really watch the show because we were so excited. Cuz his profile just sounded perfect. I thought, I think this is, I think this is my baby.