The Move... or not

Oh my sweet Jesus. What a nightmare. Yesterday J spent over two hours on the phone dealing with estate agents and solicitors. We still haven't exchanged contracts so we obviously didn't move yesterday and it doesn't look like we're going to be able to move next Friday either. Poor J. I thought he was going to cry at one point. It's all so frustrating.

It's now come down to this - our sellers have had their baby but there were some complications and the baby is rather ill. The house that they've had built won't be ready until 14 October but they were going to stay with family until that date. Now, with the baby being in hospital they'd like to change the moving date to the 14th. OK, we cam obviously sympathise with their situation. Fine with us. Fine with our buyer. NOT so fine with our buyer's buyer. They said no way. So now we're stuck.

J was freaking out. It's rare that he gets really rattled but he definitely was yesterday afternoon. We talked on the phone for a long time and his main concern was us and our new baby. He felt like we had to move ASAP or not at all so that we could concentrate on our family. I then drew him a picture of what it would be like if this all fell through - stuck in Chislehurst, a place we've grown to dislike; all of our friends moved away (George and Tim exchanged on their new place on Thursday); me driving Tobes back and forth to school in Blackheath three times a week because he's just settled and there's no way we could make him change schools again; me losing my mind with a new baby and no friends or even worse, getting postnatal depression (always a fear).

Personally, I would rather just push through and get moved. Even if it means doing it a week before the baby is born. We even talked about scheduling the move while I'm still in hospital with the baby, just to get it done. Life will be much nicer and easier once we're in Blackheath.

By the end of our talk we realised that it's truly out of our hands now. It's between our seller and our buyer's buyer. They have to thrash out the dates and there's nothing we can do to facilitate that. The really irritating thing is that the buyer's buyer would be the least affected by the moving date. They're buying the flat as an investment, they're not even going to live in it. All the rest of us are purchasing homes and two of us are dealing with babies and children too. It's just unbelievable how awkward some people can be.

So, J and I have backed out of the process and have decided to let the others duke it out. Hopefully it'll all still happen but there is a chance that we might be here for quite a few months longer. Hopefully we'll know in a few days.