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Should we hide the booze? When social services told us that they were going to visit, that's the first question my partner Michael and I asked ourselves. Please don't judge us. We knew we were about to open up our lives to intense scrutiny, and we wanted to make a good impression.

Two years after our gay wedding in Toronto, and ten years after meeting each other, we had decided that we wanted to adopt. We knew it would be a long and difficult process and, for that reason, we had delayed the decision many times. But now we were seeking the approval of social services. Seeking someone's approval can drive you to strange behaviour. And so we found ourselves hiding our bottles of spirits and the martini glasses at the back of a kitchen cupboard.

Adopting as a gay couple has been possible since 2005. When we first approached Tower Hamlets, our local council in East London, about adopting, they were at pains to point out that we would be treated like any other couple. The days of expecting gay adopters to take children who are “harder to place” (as the social worker vocabulary delicately puts it) were over. Another London borough I contacted had refused to consider us, apparently because its books were closed to white adopters. Whether that was true, or was because we are gay, is impossible to prove.

But Tower Hamlets stressed that its priority rightly remains putting the interests of the children first. Before its staff even agreed to visit us, we had to prove that we had enough childcare experience to be considered as adopters. Michael, as a teacher, had a head start. Luckily we have trusting friends with young children who were willing to hand them over for significant periods of time. I learnt a lot about changing nappies, feeding, bathing, putting to bed and - crucially - how distraction techniques can be used to stop tears and end tantrums.

When I came out at the age of 18 I had more or less accepted that being gay equalled not having kids. Aged 33, after the now obligatory criminal record check, I found myself volunteering at the local nursery school once a week. Every Wednesday I inhabited a world populated by three and four-year-olds. Although my job as a reporter for ITV News puts me in some unusual and stressful situations, on my first visit to the nursery I was terrified. Yet every week, as I learnt more, I felt more certain that we were doing the right thing. It was invaluable to watch how the professionals dealt with a child who couldn't admit that he or she urgently needed the toilet, or managed the bully who wouldn't share.

At first I would back away in terror when I found two children in mid-squabble. But when I noticed myself instinctively separating, calming, then obtaining the appropriate apology, I knew that I was doing something right.

Some of our friends couldn't believe the lengths to which we were going just to get approved. I wasn't surprised when I read last week that Redbridge council, also in East London, is to stop placing children with foster parents who smoke. Luckily our smoking days are long gone, because we wouldn't even be considered for adoption if we still smoked - and we had to have the medicals to prove that we don't. Friends would point out that a straight couple could end up with a child after a couple of drinks and a night of fun. My feeling is that we were doing nothing compared with the time and effort we would put into parenting a child.

Once Tower Hamlets agreed to assess us as potential adopters, we started a series of home visits with Gina, our allocated social worker. She possessed both a sense of humour and a determination to get us approved within the eight months that the Government had set as a target.

The assessment under way, it was time to tell our families. My parents had long accepted my relationship with Michael and came to our wedding, but I hadn't anticipated quite how difficult Mum would find it when I broke the news. (In her defence, I sprang the announcement on her just after she had come home from the supermarket, laden with shopping.)

“We're being assessed by Tower Hamlets to become adopters,” I told her.

“To adopt what - a dog?” was her reply.

I explained that we were hoping for a child and, despite expressing her reservations pretty strongly at first, she has since become a lot more understanding and supportive. When she told me on the phone last week that she had put aside a toy car for our as-yet-unknown child, I was speechless for a moment.

All the same, both my parents and Michael's can't seem to understand why we would want to give up our current lifestyle, where we have few responsibilities and go on holiday three or four times a year. I can understand that. They must think that we lead a charmed life compared with the struggles they were going through bringing up children when they were our age. But we believe that we have something to offer a child - not least the love and stability that our parents showed us. Though we have enjoyed the carefree life, we have also learnt that making a commitment brings its own reward.

There was never a law preventing gay people from adopting on their own, but the world is still getting used to the idea of same-sex parents. During the medical that is required as part of the assessment, my GP, new to the surgery, asked whether I'd had any fertility issues with my partner. When I explained that my partner is a man, the doctor then asked whether it would be OK for him to put that on the form. I pointed out that we were making a joint application and that both our names appeared on the paperwork in front of him.

After about ten home visits and a four-day preparation course at the Town Hall, Gina wrote up our “Form F”, a bewildering 60-page document. It details everything from our earliest memories to our coming-out stories, our bank balances and the healthiness of the food we eat. It even specifies the ethnicities of our friends. It also outlines what we are looking for in a child. When we read through it for the first time, it was exhilarating to see Gina's comment at the end: “I highly recommend that Michael and Philip be approved as adopters.”

In July, a year after making our initial inquiries, we went before the approval panel. It was an intimidating experience: 12 people sitting in a room at the Town Hall, discussing your ability to parent as we waited next door. After what seemed like for ever, we were called in and questioned. It's not meant to be a grilling. Nevertheless, they fired off a round of questions. Why do we want to adopt a boy? Who exactly do we have near by to help us? Do we know other gay parents?

This week is National Adoption Week and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering is highlighting that boys often linger longer in care than girls. Adopters are apparently often put off by fears that boys are more likely to get into trouble, less affectionate or difficult to tame. But most of the gay male adoptive parents I know have chosen boys. I think it's something to do with both partners knowing what childhood is like for a boy. We just feel that we would have more to offer a son.

After thankfully the shortest of pauses, the head of the panel came out to tell us that we had been approved. In the bland surroundings of a council meeting room we experienced a moment that will change our lives. Michael, Gina and I exchanged hugs.

What we have been through over the past year seems to pale into insignificance compared with what lies ahead. If getting approved seemed hard, finding the right child will be far harder. Then to take that child home - a child who has been removed from its birth parents and will have lived through some tough times - is almost incomprehensible. Our lives are about to change in ways that we can't even imagine. But we have prepared for the challenge.

We are hoping to adopt a boy under four years old. As children are rarely given up for adoption at birth any more, it is unlikely that our child will be a newborn baby. We may well not get to see our son's first step or hear his first word. But we will get to bring him up. It is a thought that I find exciting and terrifying in equal measure. And I suppose that mixture of emotions has been felt by parents throughout history. But I'm more than a little awestruck that now I get to feel it, too.

Gay adoption facts and figures

3,200 children were adopted in England in the year to March 2008. Of these, 90 were with gay couples. A change in the law in 2005 allowed unmarried couples to jointly adopt children. This encouraged more same-sex couples to come forward and adopt, as the new rules allowed both partners to have legal responsibility for the child.

Since 2006, 170 children have been adopted by same-sex couples, the majority of which - 120 - went to women.

Research for National Adoption Week has found that 50 per cent of people in the UK think that boys are harder to parent, despite there being little evidence to support this. This could mean that boys wait longer for adoption.

For more information visit www.nationaladoptionweek.org.uk

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