119: My favourite manifestation of all time

Hello everyone and welcome back to Canny Crystals, the podcast. As you know by now, I'm Mart, I am your host, and this might actually be one of my favorite podcast episodes. I'm going to say ever, ever, ever in the whole— what are we up to, 118, 119 episodes here? I'm going to talk you through my favorite manifestation to date with how I did it, what I went through. Bit of a trigger warning as well for those of you affected by drug or alcohol abuse or sexual abuse or physical abuse, just to put that out there. A bit of a trigger warning because I will be discussing some of these themes in this episode. This also may appear to be a bit of a shorter episode because you'll understand at the end, time is of the essence at the minute and I don't have much of it. So with all that in mind, I've got something to tell you. I'm an open book, as you all know by now. We're all friends here. I don't mind sharing with you lot, so I'm going to tell you about the last year of my life. And in my opinion, this is even better than the free cruise that I manifested last year, and that was my favorite manifestation up until this. So I think I've spoke about this before, but I always remember growing up, you know, thinking, I'll be married by the time I'm 18, I'll have a wife, I'll have kids, you know, fitting into all those societal norms. And then when I hit 18, I came out to my family, I was so skint and in debt, I thought, okay, husband, kids, and house by the time I'm 21 now. Then I got to 21 and I thought, no way can I bring up a kid now. My career is just beginning. I just started in the NHS. And it took a bloody pandemic and a national lockdown for us to be forced to stay in our own homes in 2020, for me and Johnny to stop and think about what we actually wanted for our future and to start looking into bringing up a family of our own. So in total, I have 8 nieces and nephews who I all love. They're not my actual nieces and nephews, they're my cousin's children because I don't have any siblings. But every time I go to Durham to my, like, family village, I'm always playing with them. I'm always taking them for days out. Honestly, they cost me an arm and a leg at Christmas, as you can imagine, but I love them like they're my own. And my nana always said, you know, "Oh, you're really good with kids. You really should have some kids of your own." I'm like, "Yeah, thanks, Nana. I'll just, like, grow a womb." Um, so as the majority of you listening will know, last February, after 3 years of doing research— 3 years, like I say, it was in the pandemic, 2020— after 3 years of doing research and feeling like the timing was finally right, myself and my partner Johnny, we started the adoption process. And it involved lots of home visits by a social worker, and I think, I think there was about 25 visits um, and they lasted about 2 hours a visit as well. So very, very intense, as you can imagine. I mean, it's just as well we both work for ourselves. Like, Johnny's a graphic designer, he was forced to go self-employed during the pandemic. Obviously I've got Canny Crystals, but I just feel for someone who has gone through this whole adoption process when, when they have to work, because they would have to take off like all these 2-hour slots. I mean, one time our social worker came around, she was with us for 5 hours 15 minutes. My stomach gurgled and she was like, oh, are you hungry? And I was like, well, yeah, you've been sat here over lunch, do you know what I mean? So it is very, very intense. And they were quite intrusive as well. They were talking all about our childhood, how we grew up, how our parents treated us, what school was like. It was like being psychoanalyzed on every area of our lives. And I mean, I didn't mind doing that so much because, you know, I'm all about unblocking limiting beliefs and things like that. There was a few things that it really made me get to grips with and really think about what happened in my childhood, but I think Johnny really struggled with that kind of thing. So there were even times when we even had to do solo sessions whilst our social worker wrote down all this stuff about us. And finally, it culminated in this huge document that was over 100 sides of A4 in the tiniest font you've ever seen, and that would be what the panel get to make a decision on us. I mean, it was overkill. There was stuff in there about how Johnny wasn't around in Northern Ireland through the Troubles, how his granny was around for the potato famine we were like, what the actual has this got to do with us having kids at all? We even got asked at one point if we owned dressing gowns so we weren't exposing ourselves to a kid through the night when changing them. Honestly, so many odd questions. Do people these days still have dressing gowns, by the way? I know my mom wears one. I know my nana wears one. Do you wear a dressing gown? Let me know. Um, but I've never worn a dressing gown since I was maybe 13, 14. But anyway, we powered through the silly questions. In the last 12 months, we had to attend these multiple day training days as well as our social worker visits, and they were so heartbreaking. They were so intense because you'd be talking about real life scenarios and real life cases that the social workers have had in the past in terms of children being taken from their birth families due to sexual abuse, physical abuse, drug and alcohol abuse. Obviously I've had my eyes open to it before because when I first started out in the NHS, I worked in A&E, and part of my A&E role was that I worked in pediatric A&E as well. And sometimes I would be, you know, preparing the court reports and the police reports and things like that, and I read some pretty gruesome stuff, and it made me go to my manager and say, I can't work in A&E any longer, I need to be moved. And it was just because I was bringing things home, like, in my head thinking about all the kids that had dealt with all this kind of abuse. It's horrible. Like, it's not even worth thinking about. So these training days were covering, you know, the trauma, the PTSD that children would experience in their lives before they were physically given up for adoption and then passed on to us. So as you can imagine, that really takes its toll on you. And I won't lie, there were, there were moments of the training days when I thought, you know, we were driving home and I just thought, I haven't got capacity for this, this is far too intense. Or let's do surrogacy instead. So when we first started the process last February, we were asked the standard, you know, would you prefer a boy or a girl? How many children are you looking for? What age range are you looking for? Then there's all the skin color, religion, disability questions, and that alone is just so tough. I almost felt like I was having to explain myself time and time again as to why we were saying no to certain things. So at first I was kind of scared to say no because I thought it might put us at the back of the queue, so to speak, but it's not like that at all. The hardest day that we had was in training when they had 3 areas of the room, one saying, um, a big sign saying 'would adopt,' another part of the room saying 'wouldn't adopt,' and then the other saying 'needs further discussion.' And the trainers would read out the profile of a kid and say, for example, they had one arm had one arm or one leg or leukemia or they were blind or they had Down syndrome. We had to then move around the room to say whether or not we would adopt them or not. I mean, how horrific is that? You feel like everyone else in the room is judging you as well as you're doing it, so you just had to be brutally honest. And I was stood there explaining that I probably wouldn't accept a child with Down syndrome, basically on the reasoning that my cousin has Down's, and when she was born her mom had to give up her job to become a full-time carer. Now, she's now 36. She was told that, you know, she wasn't going to survive into her 20s. She is 36 years old, but she still requires full-time, around-the-clock care. So basically, if I went up to any straight couple and said, you know, "Your kid is going to be disabled, but here's a tablet that can fix that," people would jump at that opportunity, wouldn't they? Because naturally, we all want a happy, healthy family. So it was kind of hard to get my head round it and get into the mindset of of not feeling bad for wanting what I wanted. Of course I wanted a happy, healthy baby. Of course I didn't want them to have a disability. Of course I wanted them to have the best start in life. And I specifically remember coming home after that training day and just feeling so flat, so down, and really overwhelmed, you know, thinking we bit off way more than we can chew. And I do apologize in advance, like I say, I'm not having a go at any kind of disabilities. I'm not disabled in any way, shape, or form. I think it's just natural to want what is best for your family. And then, so we just continued on that hard slog, and in October, I think it was, it all culminated in our panel, which is basically where we sit opposite about 7 or 8 different people who were adopted themselves, who have adopted in the past. They're made up of doctors, social workers, teachers. You know, it's a bit like having a huge job interview. But one of the biggest job interviews that you'll ever have in your entire life. And we passed it. We were approved as adopters. However, I still had my mind set on twins purely because we want two children, but we didn't want to have to go through all of this again in a couple of years' time because they said to us, you know, legislation changes, the rules change, the law changes, so you'll have to go through all of this training, all of this all over again. And we just thought I don't want to have to go through all of this in a couple of years' time. So they approved us for one child due to the fact that they weren't sure that we could cope with two. Rude, I know, but we move. And you know, I'm a great believer in everything happens for a reason, so I thought, okay, they've approved us for one, I'm just going to be grateful for that. That is all I need right now. So then it kind of all went quiet after being approved. There was a couple of children that came up on the LinkMaker app that we showed interest in. So basically LinkMaker is It's like baby Tinder, to be honest. It matches adopters with children. So we have a profile, all children have a profile. You basically show interest, and then the Family Finding team have a look. They see if that they think that you would be suitable and that you're a good fit before you go into kind of an intense 2 to 3 months of face-to-face meetings, paperwork, introducing you to the child, you know, because they'll be placed with a foster carer in the interim. So all of this to deal with in the next 2 to 3 months. And I don't know if you remember the podcast episode that I had a few episodes— well, I say a few episodes ago, it was probably a few months ago now— with Mike the Medium. He gave me a message from my granddad who passed in 2019 and ultimately led me down this rabbit hole, leading me to set up Canny Crystals in the first place. So Mike told me that I was going to have a baby girl, and he told me that my granddad knew that his name would be in there somewhere. So my granddad's name was Ken, and I was thinking, a girl named Ken? Really? Do you know what I mean? And then one of you lovely lot, after listening to that episode, messaged me and said, what about Kennedy? Anyway, this was such a good shout. However, in adoption, the adoptive parents such as me and Johnny, we would never get to choose the first name. We can always give them a middle name if we want to, but it's really, really frowned upon. It's not illegal, it is really frowned upon to change their name because That's basically changing their identity, and their name is the only thing that some mothers can actually provide for their children. So it's almost like a parting gift. Um, so yeah, we just thought, you know, if a Kennedy comes up, we'll know it's for us. So about a month ago, we were told about a little baby that was going to be born, and the mother was quite young and no longer with the father. She had made the decision to relinquish her child and give it up. We obviously both got excited thinking, oh my God, we're going to get a baby. And it is tough because we've put in for 3 or 4 other babies, got right up to the final stages, and then being told right at the last minute, you know, oh, they've gone to another home. And we're like, okay, fair enough. So we thought, let's not try and put all our eggs in one basket. So in adoption, they told us by the time the paperwork has gone through, the child has been removed from physical abuse, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, whatever it is, That whole process can take 12 to 18 months, so there was very little to no chance of us actually getting a newborn baby because any children removed at birth would then go to a foster home, and then once the decision has been made that it wasn't safe for them to go back to their birth parents, then they would go up for adoption. So there we are, about summer last year, told that, you know, we could have a boy, could have a girl, we couldn't name the child, we wouldn't get a newborn baby. And I remember thinking to myself, nah, I'm not having that. You might remember in a past episode I was talking about how we wanted a baby boy called Jacob, and I was doing things around the house to really bring that into fruition and into reality. So I would be making me tea in the kitchen, and I would go to the bottom of the staircase, and like an absolute lunatic, I would shout up the stairs going, "Jake, your tea's ready!" And then I would stand there at the bottom of the stairs with me eyes closed, visualising them little footsteps coming down the stairs and me taking him into the kitchen, pulling out the chair, sitting him at the table, plating up his food. I mean, Johnny must have thought that I'd absolutely lost the plot, to be quite honest. But I wouldn't stop there. Every single night when I was going to bed, I would hold me moldavite, I would have me Libyan Desert glass on my bedside table at the side, and I would put me head on me pillow. And as I did, I would close me eyes and I would just visualize me mam pulling up on my drive getting out of her car with my two aunties and me little nana, and me opening my front door with a little tiny baby in my arms, and all four of them would be stood there at the door crying and coming into the hallway just stroking his little face and stuff, and I would go to sleep with that image in my head. I'd even sometimes wake up with the moldavite either still on me hand or stuck to the side of me face because I knew in my heart that was my future. I had no doubt about it. I felt every associated emotion, every associated feeling. Sometimes I would rock myself to sleep with tears and crying because I knew that it was coming, and I was just so grateful that it was coming. I even went on this website a couple of months ago. Some of you might have heard of it. It's called My First Years, where you can get little embroidered blankets and clothes and things. And I bought this little embroidered dressing gown with the name Jacob on the front. And I've spoke about this before, it's kind of a symbolic gesture to the universe, getting so, so specific. So we're getting to the manifestation now, don't worry, it will blow your minds. So I think it was the week before Christmas, we were told that the girl who was relinquishing her baby had chosen mine and Johnny's profiles out of everyone. And then last Wednesday, just after I'd recorded last week's episode, we got an email from our social worker to say that she wanted to meet So we had a meeting with her last week, and it was the most magical yet emotional thing ever. She was the loveliest girl ever. We were able to find out more about her. She was able to find out more about us and put her mind to rest, you know, that the child would have the most loving home ever where they would be brought up with care, you know, and to feel that they could be anyone that they could possibly ever want to be in life. She was 39 weeks pregnant last week when we met her, and she's having a baby boy. And she said to us, 'I don't have a name chosen, so I think I'd like you to name him.' Well, I started crying. Me and Johnny both looked at each other. I was really, really tearing up, and I said, 'Well, you know, we would love Jacob.' And she agreed that she liked that name as well. She also said that she was happy enough to hand the baby over to us properly in hospital, and that, you know, she would love for us to be at the birth. How mad is all of that? The complication with all this lies in a little 6-week period after the baby boy is born. The mother can basically change her mind within that 6-week period due to, you know, hormones or feeling like she's made the wrong decision. So for the first 6 weeks, we are fostering him, but I have no doubt in my mind that this baby boy was meant to come to us. So from being told that we wouldn't get a newborn baby To being told we wouldn't choose the sex, to being told that we couldn't name him, I never once strayed from my thoughts. I kept that faith. It was unwavering faith. I kept up the acting of shouting Jake up the stairs. I kept visualising me mam coming to the door and I'm stood there with a baby boy in me arms. I never once lost faith. I knew it was going to happen. I knew it was real life. I could feel all that associated emotion inside of me. So we agreed to take this baby. We've gone through all the meetings that we needed to, all the paperwork that comes through it all. And here's the funny part, I was trying not to get, you know, too excited about it and put all my eggs in one basket because it could have fell through at any point. A few of our friends from the adoption training had been about to be placed with children and they'd fallen through right at the last minute on the day of birth. With either complications or something else. So to try and protect meself, I logged onto me MacBook one night a couple of weeks ago, and I just started scrolling LinkMaker, and you'll not believe this, there was a little girl for adoption called Kennedy. Kennedy! Just like what Mike had said. Well, Mike didn't actually say that, one of you lot said it, but Mike said that my grandad's name would be in the baby's name. My heart sank. All these questions started raising through me head like, Are we going with the right girl here? Because, you know, is it all going to fall through and are we going to end up with Kennedy? Was Kennedy actually destined initially, but I've since changed my destiny in those last few months from wanting a baby boy? I guess we'll never truly know, but it did give me goosebumps when I saw that name. I just thought, how weird is this? I always say in the law of attraction, nothing is coincidence, everything happens for a reason. So today, as I record this, it is Wednesday the 24th of January, and our birth mother was induced last Thursday. I was sat on tenterhooks, as you can imagine. It was so hard just sitting around waiting for that call to say, you know, baby's here, birth mother's fine, baby's fine, no health complications. And I was just thinking, God, I could potentially be a dad in just a few short hours. I was screaming, crying, throwing up. So my mom came over and she obviously stayed in the house with us because we thought, baby's born overnight, we need to dash to the hospital, JJ is going to be on his own. JJ is my little dog. And thought, if he's left on his own, like, you know, he'd need a walk in the morning, he'd need to be let out for toilets because he can't hold his bladder through the night. So my mom came and stayed with us and I just thought, if this birth goes without complication and all goes to plan, we're going to have a baby in the next 24 hours or so. And it was just wild. So we started panic buying everything on Amazon. We, we live right next to the IKEA in Gateshead, so we just nipped straight to IKEA, managed to get a cot and everything like that. And we just thought, you know what, if any of this has to go back, Amazon and IKEA both have 30-day money-back guarantees, do you know what I mean? So we just thought, let's buy it all, let's be prepared, just to be on the safe side. So Thursday afternoon, I got a call at 2 o'clock to say that a baby boy had been born. Mother was healthy, baby was healthy, there was no health complications whatsoever. God, I'm tearing up. There was no health complications whatsoever, and that the mother would like, um, some time with the baby, which is totally natural apparently because they are absolutely shattered after giving birth, obviously. If you've ever given birth yourself, you'll know this. And that she would like to spend overnight with him just to get some rest, that her mom was going to look after the baby overnight in the hospital, and the next morning we would get a phone call to say that she was ready to be discharged and we could go and meet the baby. So we thought, you know, we're going to get this baby from the maternity ward, have some little training, you know, about how to clothe, how to feed, how to bathe a baby, and then come home. And when we got to the hospital, the birth mother actually wanted to see us, so she was still in the hospital room. So obviously I went straight over to her, give her a hug, started crying my eyes out. She had dressed the baby— this is just the cutest thing ever— she had dressed the baby in a baby grow that said, "I love my daddy." And she said to me, I tried to get one that said, "I love my daddies," but I couldn't see one anywhere, so "I love my daddy" will have to do. And she handed him over to me, and as she did, she said, you know, I think he actually really looks like you. And straight away I was in tears, she was in tears, her mom was in tears, the midwife, the nurse, they were in tears. Johnny was sat bawling. Our social worker even like started tearing up. It was very, very emotional. So we spent about 45 minutes with the birth mother. She'd bought loads of little things to gift him um, her mom had basically passed down like books that she read to the birth mother when she was a baby. So it was very, very emotional. And then I asked what she'd called him. Now, in the adoption process, we had to do an exercise called My Dream Child, and it was all about describing your dream child, you know, scripting it out. It was a bit woo-woo, if I'm totally honest, but it was to get you very specific with what you physically wanted. So I drew baby boy, you know, blue eyes, blonde hair, so that he kind of fits in with me and Johnny. Because, you know, if you got a baby that didn't look anything like us, it's clearly been adopted. Whereas, you know, a baby with blonde hair might look a bit more genetically connected, if that makes sense. I hope that made sense. So anyway, I wrote down that I would like a baby boy called Zach. Obviously, Johnny wrote down that he would like a baby boy called Jacob.. And when the birth mother turned round to me, she said, "I've decided to name him after all." And I was like, "Okay, what have you called him?" She called him Isaac Jacob. Isaac. I said, "Zach." Isaac. Isaac Jacob. She has called him Isaac Jacob. That's his name. I can't get my head round this. Like, Is that the wildest manifestation story that you have ever heard? Or not? I was told that I couldn't have a baby from birth. Got a baby on the day of birth. I was told that I couldn't choose the sex. Wanted a baby boy. Got a baby boy. I was told that we couldn't choose the baby's name. And yet somehow the birth mother, without knowing, chose both of our baby names. So never give up on hope. Never give up on your dreams, your aspirations, your goals. We all want these different things for totally different reasons, and even if someone says that you can't have that specific thing, I just want you to hold that thought in your mind. Keep that faith. Never let that feeling or that emotion go, just like me and Johnny haven't. Never let it go. You can get whatever you want in life. You just need to have that faith to achieve it. So baby Isaac Jacob was born last Thursday. He's now been in our care for a week. He makes me smile and cry and laugh all at the same time. I don't know how it's even possible. He is the cutest thing I have ever met in my entire, entire life. He's been with us a week. We are sleeping maybe 1 or 2 hours a night. Nobody told you about this, by the way. Nobody tells you that you'll, you'll be sleep deprived from a screaming baby from 10 10 PM till 6 AM, and then he'll sleep all through the day as well when it's light. But he is the most beautiful thing I have ever had. Honestly, I, I can't describe it. Childbirth is so magical. It's such a miracle, and to experience it firsthand is— it's just phenomenal. So all I am doing now is keeping that faith that in 6 weeks' time we get the parental order to say that, you know, we can be on the birth certificate as his adoptive parents. So baby Isaac Jacob, or Jake as we're knowing him. It's weird because, you know, some people probably don't know this, but my real name is actually Gareth, and I know that's really weird because you'll be thinking, what the fuck? My real name is Gareth. My middle name is Martin. So bit of a useless fact for you there, but I go by my middle name. Johnny's brother is called Michael, but his real name on his birth certificate is Andrew. Michael is his middle name. My grandma was called Noreen, and until she died and until I saw her tombstone, I didn't realise that her first name was Margaret. It was Margaret Noreen. I just find things like this absolutely fascinating. So, baby Isaac Jacob, known as Jake, I'm hoping that he's with us for years to come in our family. I feel so blessed. I feel so grateful. And this is honestly one of the best manifestations that I have ever, ever had in my life. I'm quite impressed as well because I've done this entire episode with him in me arms and he hasn't made a single sound. Oh, oh, hang on. Okay, um, and on that note, I'll be going because it's begun. He's been sick all over my Mub. Oh, it's everywhere. Right, I'll see you all next Friday for another episode. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. Take care. Bye.