Tag Archives: adoption

I Am Not Her Best Friend

The school door opens, the kids trot out and my eyes search the stream for the faces that I love. It makes me smile the way their faces light up as I collect them from school. My son beams and runs towards me, then slows down with feigned indifference just before he reaches me, and I scoop him up into my arms despite his pretence at not caring.

Then my daughter comes out. Her smile illuminates up her face and she says “mummy!” as if I have been away, as if I haven’t been there every day for three years. I get hugs, kisses before the predictable question: “what’s for tea?”

As we potter home, his hand in mine, they gush and stammer over their day at school, at the jobs or tasks they have ticked off, the stickers they have earned, the new grazes or plasters on their knees and the classmates who said or did nasty things.

Best Friends

“I invited Annabel to my birthday” announces my daughter. A birthday that is still just a date in the diary and has no plan or booking or venue. I don’t “woah” her or “hold on” or “what birthday?” for I have learnt that these invitations are as fickle as their love of their fidget spinner.

These invitations are scattered like sprinkles on a cake, and then taken away seconds later. They’re playground shorthand for “today I like you, but tomorrow I might not.” I can barely keep up with the every changing nature of who is in and not invited.

My son’s list is pretty constant. He has a little entourage of nice boys that he likes and plays with and he knows whether they have a spinner, how many Lego cards they have and their favourite superhero. No-one too loud, too brash, too physical, no-one who bites or spits or hits.

It is my daughter’s list that saddens my soul.

They Were Inseparable

In pre-school and her first year full-time, Bubbles had a best friend, Izzy. They were the youngest in the year (born a few days apart), both small for their age and they stuck together like dried on Weetabix on a cereal bowl. They did everything together and since Izzy’s mum was fun, we had plenty of playdates.

Then before Year One, her best friend left to be home-schooled.

I thought it would be okay. That Bubbles would quickly make new friends. Upgrade her friendship with Izzy 2.0. But despite my hopes, things haven’t turned out like that.

One day she is best friends with Jessy, but the next she is mean. She flits from friendship to friendship, and I don’t know if I am overreacting, or if she is over exaggerating when she says she has no friends. But my heart goes out to her.

I love my little girl so much. She is inventive, creative, playful, fun and I want the world to love her too. When she comes home and says that “Mary wouldn’t let me play with her today” or “Rhianna stole my friends” or “Chloe insists that I am always the baby when we play, I don’t want to be the baby” I feel so helpless.

I wrap my arms around her and tell her that she is loved, that she is amazing, that if only her school mates could see what I see. I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter but I know that it does.

I was lonely at school, bullied at times, lost and afraid. I wanted friends more than anything in the whole world and when she shares that no-one played with her today, I imagine her sat, lonely, on her own in the corner, perhaps in the shade of a tree, wondering why she is alone.

I remember how that felt. How empty and confused I was by their rejection of me. What was wrong with me? I used to ask myself. I played on my own, but it’s not the same as playing with a friend who gets you.

Bubbles hasn’t found a friend like Izzy. Someone who adores her and is adored in return. Two years on and she still asks to visit Izzy, loves Izzy to the moon and back, talks about her with that wistful love in her voice.

There is no Izzy 2.0.

Why Can’t They See?

Bubbles is loving and compassionate, inventive and perhaps a little silly sometimes, but then she’s only six.

I am so confused. I don’t know what to do, or say to make her popular – I don’t even want her to be popular, I just want her to have one solid friend – or how to mend my own heart that yearns for her to be happy and loved. I remember so well the aching loneliness of not having friends and yet I cannot save her from it.

I cannot be her best friend in the playground. I cannot fight that battle alongside her.

My lovely, kind, thoughtful, creative, compassionate girl is lonely and I don’t know what to do to make things right.

Confessions of An Average Mum

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Why did I do it? I clicked on a link to a Huffington Post article today about parenting and there it was – a long list of stuff that I don’t do for my kids. A bucket of guilt to pour over my head like an Ice Bucket challenge as I cringe and wonder why I am so rubbish as a mum.

I am fed up of guilt. Fed up of feeling not good enough. Fed up of the subtle and insidious comparison that comes for free when you become a parent.

Parenting Is Not A Competition

On Bubbles’ third birthday, just a few months after we adopted them, we invited a few other adoptive families for a birthday party since we didn’t know anyone else with kids.

As the children ate/ demolished/ inhaled their finger food, the grown-ups chatted. I got drawn into seemingly innocent conversations about bedtimes or nappies or mealtimes that became surprisingly competitive.

“I just turn to Charlie, ask him to go to sleep and he naps, even in the car.” Charlie’s parent then demonstrates this never-going-to-be-on BGT talent. I was at a loss to know how to respond. “Um. Good for Charlie?”

“Julia is amazing, she will eat everything from olives to cauliflower”

And whilst I wish ours were so easy to feed, I am equally unsure how to respond to this, without getting all defensive.

What has happened to us?

A few months ago we were sharing stories of miscarriages and infertility and bonding over our shared tragedies and now I seem to be defending the children we adopted in a game of one-up-child-ship that I wasn’t expecting to be the entertainment at a children’s party.

Should I admit that there were times when I didn’t wash the bedding or towels for weeks, until I winced from the smell when I got into bed, because I was so tired? Or that I even Googled “how infrequently can I wash bedding” only to find zero articles to inform my lazy laundry habit.

And in typing that truth, getting that admission off my chest, I feel a need to confess, to slough off all the guilt that I carry with me, to admit to all the…

Ways I Am Not Perfect As A Mum

I don’t keep every single painting, sock puppet, toilet roll and sellotape structure that my kids make to create a shrine to their non-stop creativity. I regularly chuck stuff in the bin to save my house being overwhelmed by pipe-cleaner and egg box models.
I haven’t lovingly pasted the last four years of “worth keeping” drawings and stuff into a scrapbook with dates, washi tape and photos for them to treasure when they are sufficiently old enough to reminisce about their childhood rather than yawn in teenage boredom with it.
By Friday I am all out of caring about homemade organic meals and open a tin, because I made something homemade on Monday and Tuesday, fed them sandwiches on Wednesday, found leftovers in the freezer to serve with jacket potatoes on Thursday and reckon I have banked enough nutrition in them the last four days to serve spaghetti hoops by the end of the school week.
I roll my eyes at my partner and despite our promises never to undermine each other in front of the children, I sometimes butt into his showdowns with the kids because I can’t bear to hear all that noise and arrogantly assume he is doing it wrong.
I refuse to go to the shops, buy ingredients, bake a gluten-free cake, carry it to school wrapped in cling-film, then buy my own cake at the Bake Sale to raise money for the PTA. I say “I’d rather just give them the money” but then I don’t do that either.
A few weeks ago, I couldn’t be bothered to motivate and help my kids with their homework, which coincided with discovering that it was optional and let them play all weekend instead.
I would rather my kids were on their tablets non-stop for five hours on a long journey than hear them ask “are we nearly there yet” one more bleeding time.
I avoid organising play dates for my kids, because I don’t want to deal with the extra dimension of chaos (he won’t play with me, she hit me, I don’t like her, I want to go home) and watch another kid refuse to eat peas.
I send my kids to school in uniform that has Pollock-inspired pen splodges all over it, because I refuse to buy a new top just for them to draw over and I have yet to discover a magical way of removing it using a strange cocktail of ice-cream and Yak urine.
I feed my kids the cheap milk chocolate and keep the good stuff (dark, 70% cocoa and above) for me, hidden away in my secret place.

In My Defence

And in case you read this list and call in a child protection, perhaps I should fess up to the other stuff that creates our family.

We read them stories every night.

I walk them to school everyday on time, for reading before class starts. I ask them about what they did in school, praise their learning and cry when they win prizes in assembly.

I feed them – sometimes with wholesome balanced meals and sometimes with cake and crisps.

I encourage them to play, to think, to share, to treat each other with respect (we’re still working on that), giving them more responsibility as they grow.

I expect them to participate, to play their part in the family – putting their plates in the dishwasher, sorting out the laundry, putting their clothes away, drying up, laying the table. They moan but I don’t give in.

I feed their minds and souls whenever I can, even if I have to ask Siri for the answer.

I tell them how amazing they are, I praise them when they are lovely and kind.

And more than anything else, I love them. I tell them I love them. I hug them.

The Pros and Cons of Adoption

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As an adopter, I didn’t have a choice between giving birth and adoption, I found myself in the Land of Adoption because the giving birth route didn’t work out, like many others I have met and connected with since.

But adoption is a secretive and tricky land to live in, because people don’t understand and come out with all sorts of unhelpful nonsense. My mum once suggested that adoption was “just like being pregnant” and I nearly spat my drink out. Just like being pregnant? In what way? I fumed for a while after that I can tell you.

That said, there are differences (some more obvious than others) between adoption and giving birth and this morning on twitter, the lovely adoption twitterati (sparked by a comment from @feelingmumyet) shared their pros and cons about adoption. It morphed into a wonderful celebration of what it means to adopt and what we miss out on:

Pro – you can pet lambs and eat soft cheese without damaging your child
Con – there’s no birth to help lose half a stone of “baby weight”

Con – you can’t get your cracked tooth done on the NHS or free glasses
Pro – your body doesn’t swell out of shape and you don’t need special stretch mark cream

Pro – You don’t have to suffer with sore boobs
Con – You don’t get big boobs either

Con – people don’t give you their seat on the train or bus
Pro – you can go on a boozy holiday just before the child arrives

Pro – you don’t have to pee every hour after having them
Con – you never get to pee on your own/ without an audience again

Con – no stories to share when other mums ask “how was your pregnancy/ labour/ childbirth”
Pro – plenty of stories about PAR and panel and matching to share on twitter

Pro – there is no morning sickness to deal with for weeks on end
Con – no-one tells you how much adoption “suits you” or that you are “glowing”

Con – you can’t wallpaper social media with photos of your new addition(s)
Pro – you don’t have whispered tales of what happened “down there” that send shudders down your spine as you remember

Pro – you can wear high heels until they move in
Con – you’ll only wear trainers once they have

Pro – you get to meet and become friends with incredible people on twitter – which is where this blog post was born. But this isn’t everything, there are more pros and cons on the wonderful “Feeling Mum Yet” blog, click here: Feeling Mum Yet: Pros and Cons Part Two

Adoption was not like being pregnant one little bit, but I did eat lots more cake to make up for it.

Thanks to the adoption twitterati including @field_erica, @stillfreckled, @adoptingstorks and @webuiltahome for their pros and cons that I have used in this blog.

What Pros and Cons would you add to these lists?

(my own list of the pros and cons of adoption can be found in my book “And Then There Were Four” soon to be published on Kindle)

What I Wish I’d Known BEFORE I Adopted

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Dear Prospective Adopter

I remember being where you are now – the heady excitement of what is to come, the giddy nerves of the all-important Panel, the heart-melting magic of Matching. It is one fabulous adventure.

When I took my children home I was over the moon and under prepared. If only I had known then what I know now, those first few weeks would have been easier and more joyful – which is the aim of this blog.

May it help you through the first unsettling months when it’s weird and your life feels unreal and you’re not yourself and keep wondering why won’t they just eat their tea/ sleep/ stop screaming/ love me?

1. GREAT SLEEP IS YOUR TOP TRUMP

The children are important.

But they need a parent who is confident, capable and can access all their brain. And that only happens if you’ve had enough sleep. A half-asleep, over-caffeinated parent with the emotional stability of dynamite is destined to create a day where you end up blubbing “that could’ve gone better” as you scrape pizza off the ceiling and tears off your chin.

Grab sleep greedily and without apology whenever and wherever you can.

Your child is napping? Nap.
Your child is in bed – go to bed early. 7.30pm early if you need to (I did).
Your child is watching TV? Snooze on the sofa.
You keep waking up in the night? Use earplugs if you need to.
You can’t get back to sleep once woken? Put your partner on night-duty.

Get as much sleep as you need to wake happy and raring to go.

Sleep is more important than ironing, hoovering, tidying, watching your favourite TV shows, mowing the lawn, answering emails, cleaning the bath, painting your nails, shaving or going on Facebook to let people know you are still alive.

The best mum or dad you can be is a well slept one.

2. YOU ARE NOT ALONE

God bless Twitter.

I was a bit “meh” about twitter until I discovered the adoption and fostering twitterati (thanks to @First4Adoption). If you are struggling with any aspect of parenting, adoption, Panel, Matching, Introductions, food fussiness, sleep or potty training, there is someone who will help on twitter.

Open an account – with some vague name like “adopter73.” No-one will ever know who you are (and your social worker can relax). Then load twitter onto your phone, follow a few people (I’m @emmalgsutton, check out who I follow and follow the ones whose posts you like) and join in.

Just recently a brand new adopter, on day 2 of her forever family asked if it was normal for her children to “feels like little strangers”.

The Twitterati replied that it was normal for them to feel like strangers and that love takes time. Maybe that helped her sleep at night, maybe it just took a worry away, maybe she could then step back and think “that is totally normal, we are going to be fine”.

If you want to know what to feed a fussy child – ask twitter
If you are having a bad day – tell twitter, we’ll sympathise and send hugs
If you want to know if continued contact with foster carers can work – ask twitter
If you feel like something is out of kilter – tell twitter and we’ll share our experiences

Sound off, ask for support when you are feeling low, share your concerns, your worries, your hopes, your dreams and build a community of people who know what you are going through.

I only wish I had found them four years ago when I started my forever family, they would have made my life so much easier.

With Twitter, you don’t have to do this on your own.

3. LOVE IS NOT LIKE MAKING A CUPPA

Loving your child isn’t as quick as making a cup of tea. Your family appears “ready-made” when the children come home for good, yet love takes longer to blossom.

As giddy as I was about dating my husband (way back then), it took months for us to truly fall in love, and it will take time for you to love your child/ren. There’s no timetable. There’s no rush.

My daughter loved my husband and rejected me for a while. Despite my confident assertion at Panel that we would ‘deal with any one-parent attachment issues as they arose’, it still had me crying in the morning when she shouted at me to get out of her bedroom.

You might love one of your children first. That’s okay. The love will come.
Your partner might fall in love before or after you do. Still okay.
Your children might love one parent before the other. That’s normal too.
With two parents and two children, one day you will all love each other to bits, but it won’t happen on the same day nor overnight.

Let love grow.

4. WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET

During Introductions, the children played contentedly on their own. They were content, happy and only approached their foster carers Ken and Mary when they needed help or food. They pottered around the house and we shadowed their move from one area to another. They read, played in the sandpit, chatted to us, not all that bothered whether or not we joined in. They were independent, confident, outgoing.

Yet children we’d seen in their video and at the foster carers’ house were not the children who moved into our house.

They became dependent, cautious and stuck to us like chewing gum to hair. They whined and Nibbles went ballistic when we said No, spinning around on the floor like a Catherine-Wheel whilst Andy and I stared at each other in awe and shock.

The move changed our children. And we hadn’t expected it. I naively presumed that we could transfer the children from the video to our home. But they needed more reassurance, more attention, more of us than they had ever needed during Introductions and that took some getting used to.

It took months before Nibbles and Bubbles were like the children we saw in their video.

5. ONE THING AT A TIME

It is all to easy to try to create a perfect family from the moment they move in. Don’t.

I tried to be the best possible parent I could be – with homemade cakes, delicious and nutritious meals made from fresh ingredients, lots of playing together with stickers and playdough and trips to the library and park, with little TV, no shortcuts, no giving in, clear boundaries, walking places without using the pram, whilst constantly battling the influx of toys into every crevice of my house (and even once in my bra). All from Day One. I made myself miserable.

Choose happy over everything: laughter over tidiness, bouncing on their bed over fears of them falling off, messy fun over tidy boredom, reading over ironing, cuddles over clean clothes.

So what if you feed them spaghetti hoops for every teatime for a week or a month? In ten year’s time will that have caused any long-term damage?
So what if you let them watch TV for an hour every morning so you can shower without an audience? Yes I know you don’t want to set a precedent (I can’t tell you how many times I worried about that), but is it really setting them up for a life of crime?
So what if they don’t have a bath for a week because you don’t have the right bubble bath?They might pong a bit, but baby wipes work wonders and do you really want to fight that battle just before bedtime?

Don’t let reporters in the Daily Mail stoke your guilt about feeding them fish fingers and drinking wine of an evening. Do what needs to be done and leave the rest until you have got this bit sussed.

Build your family one solid foundation at a time, and start with love and laughter.

Go for happy. And that includes YOU.

YOU MATTER

It’s easy to focus on the children when they turn up in your family. How can you not, when you’ve waited this long to become a mum or a dad? Yet when we forget about ourselves, when we let our own needs slide, then we are doing our family a disservice.

Sleep, food, laughter and love. Those things matter far more than how much you spend on a pram, or how tidy your house is, or if your ironing gets done.

Make your life simple. Make it easy to be happy. Make your kids and yourself smile, as often as you can.

What do you wish you’d known before you adopted? Comment below and they might make it into “what I wish I’d known… part two”

You’re My Mummy

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I gaze down at the tiny girl, almost swamped by her own curly hair and feel her fingers wound around my forefinger like a boa constrictor. She peers up at me, her eyes twinkling with wonder.

Just as I’m about to make some bland small talk about a leaf or something…

“You’re my mummy” she says, her eyes locked unwaveringly on mine; a huge grin spreading across her face like the sun rising over the horizon,

I nod gently as tears of joy spring to my eyes. Speechless.

A Wish Come True

She’d wanted a mummy and here I am; her wish come true.

For the last week, she has looked at our photos and watched the video we sent every tea time. She knows who I am.

I can’t quite believe it (I might be in shock).

You’re My Mummy

Maybe she reads the doubt etched on my face. Or maybe she is so thrilled that once is not enough.

“You’re mummy, you’re my mummy, you’re my Mummy”

Overnight I’ve become a mummy to two children. Children I met just ten minutes ago. Despite all the preparation, the interviews, the training, the gradual disclosure of information since matching, I don’t feel like her mummy, I feel like a fraud.

“You’re my mummy”

How long will it be, before I feel like her mummy, until you could cut me in two and see Mummy painted inside like Blackpool through rock?

How long was it before you felt like their mummy?

Dear Children On Our Fourth Birthday

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Dear Nibbles and Bubbles,

How can I forget the day we finally laid you down to sleep, in cots built months ago that had lain achingly empty? You’d bounced in them but tonight you would sleep in them for the first time.

A Forever Family At Last

You watched TV in your PJs then we carried you upstairs. Daddy gave Nibbles his bottle, we kissed your foreheads, turned out the light, slipped out your door and stood in the hall, smiling and pulling silent faces as we waited…

You slept.

Daddy and I grinned at each other and tiptoed downstairs, desperate not to wake you.

We Had Made It

After all the disappointments and struggles, finally we were a family. We could barely believe that we’d made it, that we were now parents, that you were our children. It didn’t seem real.

How tiny, how precious you were, marvellous in every detail. Yet we were a little frightened by what we had done. We had no idea how to be parents. There’d be time to work it out.

Except there wasn’t because two hours later Nibbles woke, cried, screamed and we tried everything: soothing, stroking, cooing, milk, rocking, jigging, hugging, more milk until Nibbles, you found a spot, half-way down the stairs in Daddy’s arms and finally gave into how very tired you were.

A New World

Those first few months, learning how to be your mummy, were the hardest months of my life. I had to learn everything, from how to read to you, play with you, praise you, hold you without dropping you, feed you, cook the right foods, prepare your bottles, bathe you, change your nappies, recognise that John Wayne walk before your nappy burst and get you dressed as your wriggled and writhed. I had to learn to cope with too little sleep and keep an ever watchful eye on you in case you fell, tripped, slipped, choked or ran into the road.

I kept waking up bleary eyed, putting one faltering step in front of the other as a Goldilocks mum: sometimes too hot, sometimes too cold and sometimes, miraculously, just right.

But as exhausting as it was adopting you is the best thing I’ve ever done.

It Goes So Fast

There’s been so much change in these four years: you started mostly helpless and dependent on us, toddling, muttering words that were difficult to understand (chibley? what’s a chibley?), needing help with everything. I ached from lifting you so much, until my lifting-and-carry-little-angels muscles developed (not the technical term).

Now look at you. Two amazingly independent, loving children with strong wills and personalities that shine. You love school and reading, you populate imaginary landscapes with dragons, superheroes and princesses in stories you build as you play. You do your bit around the house, getting breakfast ready and helping sort out and fold the laundry, always keen to mend things (even Daddy’s motorbike) by bashing it with a hammer.

Moments To Make Me Glow

The last four years have been packed with firsts, for all of us. From that first unsteady walk up the road, where you sat down and I nearly tripped over you and I hadn’t a clue what to do, until you could walk to nursery (with stops), then a few miles, and last year when you climbed up a mountain in the Lake District, aged just five and four.

Do you remember how you learned to twist your socks on so they sat just right? Trying again and again for weeks, as I patiently helped and advised you (‘stop splaying your toes’), occasionally helping (aka doing it for you) when you found it too frustrating or time/ my patience ran out.

Until one day, without fanfare or ceremony, there was no struggle, no tears, no huffed “CAN’T”s and we forgot how hard it is to wrestle a sock on and moved onto the next skill to master.

When you get it right, when the socks slides on, when you reach the end of a long walk, when your letters are neat and perfect, when you read a whole sentence without stumbling, the look on your face makes me melt. I am so proud of you both, for all that you have achieved already in your short lives (#glowmo).

Firsts and Lasts

Remember Bubbles, last summer when Daddy and I were busy disagreeing how best to help you learn to ride your bike and you simply powered off and did it all by yourself, silencing our debate? I cheered, high-fived, hugged you, shed a tear and then filmed it again. I couldn’t have been prouder if you’d just won the Tour de France.

This week Nibbles, you proudly raced in to declare that you were ‘dry again!’ and I delighted in the your reaction and praised you for being so grown up, and we threw your last nappy away to great fanfare with party poppers. And how now you’re getting dressed every morning, fending off my offers of help with an insistent “I can do it by my own“.

So Much More..

Our lives are sprinkled with more, more shouting sometimes, but lots, lots more laughter. There are giggles, tickles and silliness (and yes, sometimes that silliness drives us bonkers) with your homemade jokes and pranks.

Every day you say things that delight us and make us laugh, like at the wildlife park this weekend, when Nibbles asked:

“Can we see the cannibals, mummy?”
“Do you mean the camels?”
“Yes, the caramels, let’s go”

And who can remember our first trip to the zoo when Nibbles asked if he could see ogres? How can I not swoon slightly at these surreal and imaginative conversations we have, that I note down and laugh at for months or years to come?

Our BC and AC Life

When you came into our lives, when you completed our family, things changed more than I might ever have imagined. It was not ‘just us, with two kids’. Because in adding two children, ‘us’ changed forever.

Yesterday I swam. Grown-up swimming. Up and down, up and down. Quiet, peaceful. I could hear my breath, the water, my thoughts.

But it wasn’t much fun.

Not like when we go to the pool: when it’s a chaotic, noisy, crowded adventure. When we giggle and jump waves and splash, and queue for our turn down the slide, then scoot down at breakneck speed until we are breathless with delight and need another pee. For all the noise and chaos, I prefer life as a mad, giggling, frustrating adventure that reminds me what its like to feel truly and breathlessly alive.

I Love Being Your Mummy

Being your mummy is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Utterly unpredictable. Iced with an unconditional love for you both that takes bring frequent tears to my eyes.

Being your mummy is a rollercoaster that whips my hair, flushes my cheeks and leaves me struggling to keep up, but I wouldn’t give it up for all the Prosecco in Italy.

Being your mummy has been so much more than I ever expected.

Nibbles and Bubbles, here’s to all the adventures ahead. Here’s to the tears of pride that will fall, to the smiles we will share, the jokes that make us laugh and groan, to the hugs and kisses, the scraped knees and the broken hearts. Here’s to helping you grow and letting you go, to the firsts and lasts yet to come. Here’s to more unforgettable memories. Here’s to more laughter, more love, more joy.

Thank you for being my amazing, adorable, incredible children.

I love you, so much.

Your Mummy

(the woman previously known as Emma)

pass the tissues.

The Day I Met My Children

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What if they don’t like me?

We’re sat in the parked car, fidgeting, having arrived ridiculously early for this Important Day. It’s 915 a.m. and we have a vast expanse of forty-five minutes to kill. So. Much. Time. Today we get to meet our children for the first time. And I’m bricking it.

My stomach can’t decide if the sharks or the butterflies are winning. I can’t sit here fidgeting for that long, but what else can we do? Why not go for a drive? I suggest What if we get lost? And my brain decides to catastrophise — what if we drive off the edge of the known universe into a not-on-the-map black hole from which even a GPS signal and Google Maps cannot rescue us?

What if we’re late?

We drive just a few streets away. We sit. And fidget. And check our phones. And post on social media. And wait. Out of sight. We get out of the car and go for one of the most bland, pointless walks ever. Well, not entirely pointless, because there are now ten fewer minutes to burn.

Today we will meet our children

Our children. They don’t feel like our children at all. They aren’t really our children, except they are, but then they’re wards of the adoption agency, so they’re not, but we’ll be looking after them, so they are, and it’s all quite confusing.

I can’t stop thinking about the moment we’ll see them for the first time.

What if all my dreams and hopes come crashing down around me and I think, ‘I can’t do this?’
What if they’re crying and whining and awful?
What if they ignore us?
What if they don’t like us?
What if they run and scream and hide and refuse to come out?
What if they hate us?
Worse still, what if they like him and not me?

I have no idea what to expect

It’s now 10 a.m. (turns out you can kill time — just worry incessantly) and we drive up to the house. Their foster carer Ken opens the door and welcomes us in with a twinkling smile.

‘Take a seat in the lounge. I think they’ve something planned,’ he says.

That sounds promising or ominous or something (the sharks and butterflies cannot agree). My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry. I perch nervously on the edge of the sofa, waiting for I don’t know what; I’m a child waiting outside the headmaster’s door.

The lounge door opens and in tumbles a huge bunch of flowers — a pink riot of colour and petals and leaves that’s moving all of its own accord. Then I spy her. Beneath this colossal display, wobbling in her efforts to hold it, is a tiny girl with cascades of curls. The flowers drown her, yet she bravely carries them straight to me. She shyly hands them over and in her sing-song voice says four incredible words that I will never forget:

‘Flowers for my mummy’

She looks at me, and I break out a smile before my hand flies to my mouth in shock and surprise. A lifetime of tears well up in my eyes, and despite my promise that I would not cry, tears pour silently down my cheeks. It’s far from the first impression I wanted to make.

Happy tears

A tear for all the times that I went to bed despondent.
A tear for all the times that my period came and I lost faith I’d ever be a mummy.
A tear for all the times I wondered why I couldn’t grow a child.
A tear for a child who never made it past the few cells.
And a tear of utter relief that a child has finally said that word to me.

The word I have wanted to hear and thought I might never hear. The word I do not own despite all the preparation.

Mummy

The most amazing word in the whole dictionary. I thought it would take weeks or months for them to utter it, and it was the fourth word she said. Even better, she used ‘my’ before it, binding me to her in a relationship. I feel complete in a whole new way. I stutter a broken ‘thank you’, but she’s already gone.

She and her brother follow Ken back to the kitchen, where he’s making tea.

Andy sits on the floor, and when they return, these two tiny children are crawling all over him, hugging him and talking to him, tugging at his shirt, smearing dirty fingerprints over his glasses, asking questions but not waiting for the answers, bringing him books to read and toys to play with. I sit back, dabbing my tears and drinking everything in. They take to Andy like pandas to bamboo, and I feel that his idea of sitting on the floor was far better than my bursting into tears.

I dry my face and take a deep breath: we have fifty-seven minutes left to start getting to know these miniature people who are our little boy and little girl.

Our children.

I still can’t believe it

This is an extract from the book “and then there were four” available via Amazon in ebook (Kindle) and paperback versions. It’s an unputdownable, unforgettable rollercoaster through infertility, adoption and parenting.

What happened the day you met you children? Share your experiences below.

I Am Not The Mum I Thought I’d Be

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As I sit on the loo, my teeth grinding with frustration, my head shaking at what I’ve become, my ears shrink from the sounds wafting up from downstairs. Her sister is consoling him, hugging him, there-there-ing him. She asks tenderly ‘what’s wrong?’ and his answer puts my head in my hands.

‘Mummy made me cry’

This morning, after a director’s-cut-extended-version of the normal ‘hurry-up’ mantra that increases in urgency and volume, today I reached decibels even my neighbours would have heard, the pent-up frustration of chivying two children into shoes and coats boiling over like milk on the hob. Yet had I overheard someone else remonstrating so manically, I would’ve raised my eyebrow and muttered ‘how could anyone could be so melodramatic about getting to school on time?’

What Has Got Into Me?

I am not proud of myself. My head hangs in weary shame as I go downstairs and apologise – I aim for unreservedly but am unable to resist saying that I wouldn’t have needed to shout if only he’d have hurried up in the first place. Humble is not my middle name.

I used to be fun, mischievous, curious, creative and fun (again). Yet recently I’ve become a shadow of my former self – a grey-washed version devoid of fun or cheeriness or that joie-de-vivre that surprised and annoyed colleagues who fervently believed that being at work and singing in corridors were mutually exclusive.

Who Am I?

I am not the mum I thought I’d be. Not the mum I dreamed I’d be. Not the mum I told the adoption agency I would be.

I naively thought that being intelligent, organised, a bit of a neat-freak, a creative problem solver and – let’s not forget – fun would magically make me into an awesome mum. The sort of mum who never-shouts, breaks spontaneously into a chorus of ‘she’ll be coming around the mountain’ in the checkout queue, has a permanent powder-puff of flour on her nose from all that hilarious baking, hilarious-fun-mum that has other mothers jabbing their fingers down their throat in jealousy.

I am not even close. And that hurts.

I can’t help feeling a bit of a failure as a mum – all because I judge myself against an unrealistic ideal of SuperMum.

Why Am I Not The Mum I Dreamed Of Being?

I am tired. When I wrote about the skipping-through-the-meadow fantasy of forever family life, I hadn’t bargained on being this tired all the time. I’ve never experienced such a protracted period of dead-in-my-slippers tiredness, so I failed to predict the impact of this on my personality. Turns out, mega-tired Emma has little reserves left for being some let’s-make-a-tree-house-now-fairy-cakes mummy.
I am tired. I can’t remember the last time I woke up in the morning and felt refreshed – that kind of jump-out-of-bed-and-annoy-your-still-asleep husband as you fling open the curtains, declare “Hello World, You Gorgeous Thing, I’m He-ere”, then gleefully sing in the shower as I prepare myself for a day of gadding about, laughing, pottering, walking and more. Instead, the kids cry my eyelids open, or the alarm shatters my dreams, I fight the impulse to take a baseball bat to the alarm and crawl back under the duvet whilst hanging a sign on the door telling my family that I am on strike.
I am tired. I feel like a bomb disposal expert whose scissors are hovering over blue and red wires, the music winding to fever pitch as I go to either save the world or get blown to smithereens whilst screaming “should’ve cut the red one.” When they are awake, my vigilance-o-meter is constantly in the ‘danger’ zone, alert for sharp corners, their siblings biting their ear off or snatching the toy they weren’t interested in two seconds ago, hot stuff, cold stuff, things they can climb onto and hence fall off, other people (all assigned potential kidnapper status), coughs, coughs that are choking, shouting, that eerie lack of shouting that indicates mischief of YouTube fame and any noise that is out of the ordinary (which is every single thing in this surreal experience of becoming a family overnight). And at night, it’s not as if I can simply fall into a pit of dreams only to wake in the morning. Every thump wakes me up as my ears strain to discover if they’ve fallen out of bed… wait… no cries? Just them thwacking their mattress with their leg then. False alarm. But since you’re awake (says my brain) why don’t we plan what you can make for tea a week next Friday, or better style, analyse all the ways you failed to be a great mum yesterday? Argghhhh!
I am tired. There are so many tiny things to cram into every day, things that take up little time individually, but like writing a Christmas card, when you pile them all together into a single day, they take your will to live and wring it through a mangle, until the tasks takes on epic proportions that deserve a Nordic song, and you wish you could put it off until the last day of posting, but you can’t because tomorrow there will be another enormous list to complete. If I drank it, I’d just want a cup of tea that doesn’t go cold before I even get a sip.
I am tired. My children are emotional – their life is a rollercoaster of extremes but who knew I had tickets to ride alongside? When they scream and cry from pain, injustice, or that minuscule sprig of cauliflower on their plate with which I am clearly hell-bent on poisoning them, I wish I could watch them with disinterest and distance. Like shrugging with confusion at how anyone in the audience thought that weak pun deserved anything more than a wry smile during a bad sitcom. It’s not as if I get to join in the laughter and giggles, for my adrenaline response seems to think that when they scream I need to remain stressed for at least another 3 hours, or until the kids kick off again, whichever is soonest, so that even their giggles fail to penetrate the taught muscles of my nervous system.

No wonder I am grumpy.

The Anti-Grumpy (aka Sleep) Plan

There is of course a solution to all this. I go to bed at 7.30pm and catch up on some sleep – which is the night they wake up every forty-five minutes, coughing their little lungs inside out, until they are so pumped full of Calpol I wonder if they will ever wake up.

But I am nothing if not persistent, so the next night I put my ear plugs in, go to bed at 7.45pm and tell my husband in no uncertain terms that tonight he is on coughing-Calpol duty.

I am not promising that tomorrow I will wake up and be the mum of my dreams, but maybe, with a following wind, a decent breakfast and without anyone being sick or wetting themselves before we’ve even made it to school, I won’t make my son cry.

SuperMum? Gah

Is it just me who shouts and struggles and feels like I am not good enough?

Share your experiences of your struggles against the ridiculous ideology of the “supermum” in the comments below…

The Biggest Challenge In Adopting Was RSI

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What’s the process like? How long does it take? Isn’t it intrusive? I remember pondering these questions (and more) myself as I considered if I wanted to adopt, so let me tell you my version of events.

What’s The Process Like?

There are bursts of activity and then frustrating periods of waiting – it can seem all “hurry, hurry, hurry! Wait… wait…. wait……… now, now, NOW!” There are meetings, interviews, training courses, research, forms to fill in, questions to answer (again and again it seemed). When I typed my first batch of answers to the 27 questions our social worker emailed us, I excelled – typing 11, 468 words, or 13 pages of close-typed text. I was hoping for an ‘A* – very thorough’, but my social worker was not impressed and asked me to precis it (my beautiful words, cut to the core, how very dare she?).

Yes I was impatient, but that’s a character flaw of mine, so hardly their fault. The hardest part for me was hours spent hunched over a keyboard typing answers to the endless questions about our lives, history, past relationships, finances, parenting experiences, culture, beliefs and more, hence the risk of RSI.

How Long Does It Take?

Ah the ‘piece of string’ question. The process to be approved as potential adopters (stages 1 and 2) takes around six months. But matching you to a child can take longer. Our process was slightly different and we were both matched and approved as adopter on the same day, so we took less than 12 months from picking up the phone to enquire about adoption to bringing our children home for good. Sometimes it’s quicker, sometimes it takes a couple of years.

Even if it had taken two years (which given my impatience would have had me huffing and pacing until the floorboards were worn through) it would still have taken far less time than all the years we tried to conceive and attended fertility clinics.

I know you’re impatient and you want a child or children now, but believe me, it’s worth the wait.

Isn’t It Intrusive?

Yes, it’s intrusive. It has to be. If it wasn’t, it would be superficial and the social workers then run the risk of ending up on the front pages of tabloid newspapers whose journalists declare how deplorable the system is that gives vulnerable children to just anyone. Wouldn’t you want them to be thorough if these were your children they were finding homes for?

Personally I found it liberating. I reflected for hours (and thousands of words) on my childhood, my relationship with my parents, and how I imagined myself as a mum. My husband and I discussed and debated our approaches to boundaries, who does what and the nitty gritty of what it was going to be like as parents in far more detail that we’d have never delved into if I had been pregnant.

It’s Just Hoops

Yet the moment we saw the faces of the children we were destined to adopt (a moment that even four years’ later still brings tears of joy), I realised that it was all just hoops to jump through – none of which were flaming. It was annoying at times, frustrating in the extreme when our first social worker went off sick and we had to start again, and tenuous because it was never certain or real until the panel said yes to the match.

But at the end of it all, when I fell in love with my children, I knew that they could have asked me to strip naked and run across a football pitch on national TV and I would’ve done it. I would have anything they asked of me, however much I rolled my eyes at the time, because being a mum, being their mum, being called mummy, that was what really mattered.

While you’re going through the adoption process, you can choose to focus on the frustrations, the delays, the form filling and the things that drive you bonkers. Or you can remember the dream – holding hands with your little boy or girl, and them looking up at you with love in their eyes and calling you mummy or daddy.

What wouldn’t you do to have that moment, not just once, but over and over again?

What was your experience of adopting? How quickly did you go from deciding to adopt to bringing a child home to join your family? Please share your experiences below…

Is It Because They’re Adopted?

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I only popped out for milk….

Andy had arrived home to the usual fanfare of whoops from my kids, and in the post-daddy-comes-home invisibility of ‘Mummy? Who she?‘ I’d chosen to bank their inattention and pop to the shop for milk.

An Unexpected Reaction

The minute she’d heard me go, my 3YO little girl started crying, her hands dragging forlornly down the window pane, begging me silently to come back, whilst I obliviously skipped to the car and shop, unaware of the reaction I’d unwittingly created. It was only when I returned a few minutes later with milk and wine (it just lept into my basket) that I noticed her distraught features, all blotchy and puckered. I dashed in to comfort her.

Yet my ‘I’m home now, sweetie’ repetition, my kissing away her tears and the evidence before her eyes were krill to the whale of her fear. I hugged her and consoled her and told her that ‘I will always come back’ but my popping to the shops had triggered a secret fear inside her that no amount of logic would redress. Where did it come from?

The Scapegoat

Later that evening, as Andy and I talk about her tears, we ponder what might’ve caused it. And we start a round-robin of blame that heavily features the birth parents, her foster family and us, as reserves. And we hit straight into the conundrum of what causes a child to behave a certain way.

Is it because she is adopted?
Is it because of something that happened (that we do or don’t know about) in her backstory?
Is it because she’s a toddler?
Is it because she’s tired? Or we’re tired? Or because she missed Peppa Pig earlier?
Is it because the sun rose in the east, or because there’s a rainbow in the sky, or she’s Sagittarius with Pisces ascending, or because of Brexit/ Trump/ Bake Off moving to Channel 4?

Too Convenient By Far

I have found myself sorely (and arrogantly) tempted to presume that everything magical and amazing my children do is because of something I have done as their adoptive mum (with a nod to Andy’s involvement). And then I surreptitiously blame all their challenging behaviour (i.e. anything that attracts the glares of nosy strangers in public) on the black hole of ‘their past,’ whilst conveniently forgetting the not-inconsiderable impact of their fabulous foster family (who did all the hard work, if the truth be told).

She bit her brother? No idea where she gets that from. Not my fault your honour.
She learnt how to put her sock on the right way around? All me.
She drew lipstick onto her face with a permanent marker? Where’s she seen that? I never even wear lippy.
She gave me a hug, a cuddly toy and a book when I was shivering with fever? Of course she learnt that Florence Nightingale routine from me (those who know me well are choking on that line).

It’s Not Because They’re Adopted

After a few rather dodgy scapegoating sessions, my husband and I choose to ban the phrase ‘because they’re adopted’ from our vocabulary (and I humbly recognise that this might not be true for you).

We did it to take full responsibility, to accept that we have the most direct impact on their behaviour now, to make up step up to the plate and take it all as a reflection of our abilities as parents. Yes there may be some ripple effects from their lives before us, but it’s up to us now to give them new skills, new reactions, new behaviours for their new family.

If he bites her, it’s because I haven’t taught him not to.
If she draws on her face in permanent marker, it’s because I left a marker in reach and ignored her when she begged me to play makeup, but let me take a photo of that pen moustache for Twitter before I suggest she tries scrubbing it off.
If she cries when I pop out for milk, it’s because I slipped away thinking it would go unnoticed, instead of talking her through where I was going and when I would be back and perhaps even giving her something of mine to look after for me.

They are my children, my responsibility, and everything they do and say is a reflection of my influence on them. And maybe that is easy for me to say, because I have never had to deal with behaviour that gets my kids excluded from nursery or school, or suffered child-on-parent violence or things that aren’t easy to live or cope with.

But for me, for our family, that’s the way it has to be.

Have you ever been tempted to use the phrase “because they are adopted”? Share your stories below…