J’s Adoption Story

She is also the smartest and funniest toddler on the face of the planet. I know these are ridiculously absurd statements to make, but for me they are true. 



When people tell me that she is my spitting image – which happens almost every day – I literally swell with pride, hardly able to contain my smile.  Every single day of being her mother is my dream come true and not one moment goes by that I am not humbled with gratitude.

When I showed up at the local playgroups for the first time last spring with my 12 month old daughter I got all the usual questions from the other Mums who had never seen us before:

Mums: “Where do you live?”
Me: “Just around the corner”
Mums: “Oh! Are you new to the area?”
Me: “No, we’ve been here for 4 years”
Mums (looking confused): “Oh, that’s so odd, I’ve never seen you before. What’s your beautiful daughter called?”
Me: “She’s called ____”.
Mums: “Isn’t she just the spitting image of you!”
Me (swelling with pride): “Thank you”.

After the first few weeks those questions stopped and after a while some of these Mums became friends. We all see each other at playgroups, the park, kid friendly places around town and birthday parties. 


After a while everyone just forgets that you showed up out of the blue one day with a fully formed one year old. 


Or maybe they’ve figured it out?


Or maybe no one ever really thought about it in the first place. 


As an adoptive Mum, especially in the first weeks and months you often secretly wonder to yourself, “can they tell?”. You feel a bit transparent. After a while, as you settle into Motherhood, you realise maybe they can, maybe they can’t, but that either way it doesn’t matter.

I’m generally very open about the fact that we adopted our amazing daughter, it’s something that I am incredibly proud of. More importantly, I want her to grow up being proud of who she is and how we became a family. 


I am the biggest advocate for adoption you will ever meet. However, when it comes to the local families and the kids she will grow up going to school with, I strongly feel that she deserves her privacy and that it’s up to her to tell her friends, if and when she wants to. It’s her life, her story and I don’t want her realising at the age of seven that everyone in her class already knows. 


As she grows up she may not mind if anyone knows or she may choose to keep it private, I want that to be her choice to make.


Trying for a baby and how we decided to adopt

We struggled for years to have a baby. I have always, always, always wanted to me a Mum. I thought I did everything right.


I took good care of myself, married the right guy who I knew would make a wonderful Daddy and we waited until we had been married a year to start trying.  


Much to my delight, I got pregnant immediately. I was so ridiculously happy, filling every available piece of paper with baby names, reading every pregnancy book I could find, sending so much love to my baby, even when I was too dizzy and nauseous to stand up.  


At my first scan I was told that the baby had stopped growing at 10 weeks. That “these things happen” and to “keep trying”.  


Four years, four IVF’s and three more miscarriages later, including one that almost killed me, we decided that we were done.  


I won’t go into those 4 years here, but suffice to say that they weren’t fun.  My husband and I talked a lot about adoption over those 4 years. In fact, we had talked about adoption from the beginning of our relationship. It was something that we both always wanted to do, but figured we’d wait until after we had biological children.  


After my 4th miscarriage, when it became crystal clear to me that my body was not going to carry a baby and would likely die trying, I made the fortunate decision to let it go.  


How do you let go of the life long vision you have of yourself being pregnant?  


How do you “let go” of having biological children?  


Well, I suppose that’s different for everyone, but there is definitely a grieving process. For me personally it involved reconnecting with my body. Forgiving it for what it couldn’t do, apologising for what I had put it through and ultimately appreciating it and myself for who and what I am.

It was from that space of healing and clarity that we made the decision to begin the adoption process.


The adoption process

We researched going through the Local Authority and the local Voluntary Agency, both of which we liked. We ultimately decided to go through our Local Authority for the simple reason that I really liked the Social Worker who answered my call when I rang the first time to enquire. 


By total coincidence, or luck, or perhaps fate?, six months later that lovely Social Worker was assigned our case and we began the journey to our daughter, who hadn’t even been born yet. 


We had heard all the horror stories about adoption: how much work is involved, how invasive it is, how judgemental the social workers can be, how careful you have to be about everything you say, etc etc. 


Those things could not be further from the truth.


We were so supported by everyone we met in social services. They were friendly, helpful, available and encouraging every single step of the way.  


Yes there is a lot of waiting and everything takes too long. Yes they ask a lot of questions and want a lot of information and yes you have “homework” assignments and have to do a lot of writing. 


Is it worth it?  Of course it is!  


We welcomed it all with open arms – “what would you like to know?”  


We had spent four years either injecting myself with fertility drugs (lets not even get into the expensive weekly immune therapy transfusions in London for the last two IVF’s) or sitting in a hospital. That journey toward parenthood was a nightmare.  


We were more than happy to open our home and lives to a lovely social worker who wanted to help make us a family. We didn’t find the process to be invasive at all. It is thorough and it should be thorough. They are entrusting you with a child. We threw ourselves into the process and decided to enjoy it, so we enjoyed it. I suppose it’s all down to perspective.

Approval Panel


Eight months later we went to Approval Panel and to our sheer delight were unanimously approved as adopters! Knowing that we were one step closer to becoming a family was an incredible feeling. 


Then the matching process began which was, for me, the hardest part of the entire adoption process.


For some people the first match they see is the right match. I believe that comes down to a combination of brilliant social workers and fate. 


For us, however, it wasn’t quite that straightforward. Our social worker had said, “don’t rush, you’ll know in your heart when it’s the right match”.  


Months were passing and we’d see profiles of potential matches with a knot in our stomachs. Nothing felt right. Months began to pass and I started to wonder and doubt if I would ever have that elusive feeling of knowing with my whole heart that it was right.


Then a few more months went by as my doubts began to grow bigger.  Then one November morning, I sat in my living room looking at a piece of paper with a tiny little paragraph and a tiny little photo of a tiny little girl and I knew with 100% certainty, deep down in my heart that I was looking at my daughter. With tears in my eyes I handed the piece of paper to my husband and his eyes filled with tears as well. 


There was no question, there she was.

Introductions


Four months later my beautiful daughter was in my arms as we began “Introductions”, a very specific 10 day process where we slowly took over care from her Foster Carers.  


10 days later she was home.  


I have felt like the luckiest woman in the world every day since.


Our daughter has been home over a year now. A year of laughter, tears, cuddles, colds, first steps, teething, first words, tummy bugs, hand holding, singing, dancing, playing, reading, teaching, learning, loving and being a family under our belts….and many, many nappy changes!  


She is a confident, happy, curious, feisty, brilliant (if I do say so myself!), kind, affectionate, hilariously funny little girl who has the most incredible belly laugh you will ever hear.  


She says “Mama” about 100 times a day and every single time I hear her sweet little voice say that incredible word my heart skips a beat.


I have so many hopes and dreams for my daughter. I hope she approaches her life fearlessly and follows her passions. I hope she moves through life with the grace and confidence of a person who has been adored her whole life and has never for one moment questioned her relevance in the world.  


I hope she has healthy relationships and spends her adult life loving and being loved. Above all, more than anything, I want her to be happy. Really and truly happy, now and always. I hope she keeps that big belly laugh her whole life!


My daughter and I both had a rocky road to get to each other and her Daddy and I will share her story with her, little by little, age appropriately, as she grows up. 


Is there any part of me that wishes I had been able to have a biological child? 


Not for one single second…though I would have loved to have been pregnant with my daughter, to have held her as a newborn, to have breastfed her. But nothing good could ever come from dwelling on those things, so I don’t. I just thank my lucky stars every day that we found each other, she is the gift of my life and I will spend the rest of my life being the best Mother to her that I possibly can, each and every day.