DURING the lonely years of childlessness, Michael and Ruth used to borrow other people's kids to go and feed the ducks. Last July they adopted their first child, a boy named Jack - seven years after they negotiated the emotional minefield of unsuccessful infertility treatment, five years after they applied to all the adoption agencies in Ireland and one year after they applied to their health board for assessment for foreign adoption.
Ruth anticipates every day with pleasure: the new words and the little things, like Jack turning over in the cot for the first time and snuggling into her bed in the mornings after Michael has gone to work. "Our dream has been fulfilled. At night when we are sitting downstairs and he's upstairs asleep, we look at each other as if to say `God, it's so unreal'. This year we'll go on holidays with him as a family for the first time, which is something we never thought we'd do. For years, when we drove down the country, we would look in the back seat and wonder will we ever look behind to see if the baby is okay. I still find myself grinning in the car on the trips home. It's the gift of life; the light is switched on for us. Sometimes you feel so happy you can't describe it."
Before getting Jack, Michael and Ruth met his birth mother and talked and cried with her in a mix of pain and joy. The birth mother will not be forgotten in 1997 as the couple keep copies of each photograph and a record of the milestones in Jack's life to be given to her through the adoption society.
Already, Ruth and Michael have sent one letter which they carefully wrote and rewrote, aware that every word was important.
"We both admire her so much for putting her son first," says Ruth. "It will help him in years to come, when he wants to trace her, to know that she loved him as much as any mother would but that she felt she just could not manage to care for him."
Whatever their circumstances, today's birth mothers are given non directive counselling for as long as it takes to ensure that their decision, one way or another, is right for them. The result is that some babies are nine, months old before being placed.
The most daring form of adoption is "open adoption" in which the birth parents actually visit their child once or twice a year. It is a challenge for adoptive parents and birth parents alike.
Last summer, after eight years of being childless and in agony without - ever letting anyone but close family know, Philip and Mary brought their infant son Keith home to a house which their friends had decorated in bunting. January 1997 will bring the signing of the adoption papers, a christening and a huge party. There will also be more meetings between Philip, Mary, Keith and Keith's birth parents - meetings Philip and Mary dreaded at first.
When he was first introduced by an adoption agency to the idea of "open adoption", Philip rejected it instinctively. He believed that if his adopted child's birth parents were to remain in his child's life, he would be more a token foster parent than an adoptive parent. But he gradually reasoned that it would be far better for a child to know from the beginning that he had adoptive parents and biological parents and what the difference was between them. That way, the child would not wake up at the age of 10 or 15 - as so often happens now - demanding answers.
"There are kids, aged 13 and 15, frying to trace their birth parents without their adoptive parents knowing and it's very sad," says Philip. "Keith will know who and what his mother is from the beginning. There will be no fairy tale. We will be able to tell him because we have been with them through this and seen how hard it was for his parents to give him up," he says.
Philip has also realised that "I don't own Keith. Keith needed a home and I needed a child, and the two of us needed one another. Likewise, his birth parents needed someone to become parents to their child. Now our arrangement has made five people very happy and it's not often you can say that."
In the first year, the birth parents will meet Keith once every three months, then, in the second year, once every six months and after that once annually.
The first meeting was terrifying. The adoption papers were not yet signed and "the prospect of seeing our son walk away with them made me want to scream," says Philip.
Instead, the opposite happened. Keith had to be pushed to go to his birth parents. Deciding to face his fear head on, Philip encouraged the birth father to take Keith's hand and to bring him for a little walk. As biological father and son moved away, Philip felt for a moment that everything was lost. But within seconds, Keith came running back to Philip - his father.
There are still difficult questions, such as what happens if Keith's parents stop visiting him? Or what happens if Keith's birth mother's worst fear is realised and, as a teenager, Keith tries to expose her? Risks have been taken on all sides. But now Philip and Mary feel lucky they did not come to Keith by conventional adoption.
The coming year will see many more unwanted, crisis pregnancies yet, despite improvements in the adoption process, few women will consider adoption. Maria Hayes of Rotunda Girls Aid says: "Adoption is seen as a dirty word; it's seen as very unnatural giving up your child to someone else to rear. It's: seen as selfish whereas I would see it as a self less thing to do."
The happiness of adoptive parents and the contentment of their children paints a heart warming picture. Yet no one who has been involved in the adoption triangle has any doubt that it is the birth mothers who adoptive parents and children will be remembering as the New Year dawns, because for every birth mother who gave a bit of her heart away there is an adoptive couple who think of her and thank her more constantly than she may ever know.