Category Archives: The Adoption Process

This is all the courses, meetings, interviews and form-filling that we went through in order to create the Big Report (The Prospective Adopters Report, PAR) to get to our panel interview.

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?

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.

Letter To Their Foster Carers

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Dear Ken and Mary (not your real names).

You gave our children a home, when they needed it most. You kept them together, letting them stay with each other and stay connected to the only family they had left. You helped her to recognise that she had a brother until they became inseparable (as they still are). Thank you.

You held her, when she arched her back and threw her head back and didn’t let her ironing board of a body dampen your love for her or desire to cuddle her. You loved her, unreservedly, however difficult her behaviour, however little she knew how to be loved, until she softened and yielded to love. Thank you.

You gave them structure and routine, love and fun, stories and bathtime, even when you’d only just left hospital and your shoulder was mending. You parented them with love and joy and kisses and hugs until they became touchy-feely-giggly-happy children. Thank you.

You took photos from the day they arrived to the day they left, charting their history, their lifestory, creating amazing books that meant we almost felt that we were there, stories we share with them and remind them of their past before us. Thank you.

You took those photos. The photos that tugged at my heart, as the Universe yelled “these” in my soul, the photos that had me falling in love with these little lives with their mischievous smiles and looks of contentment. I knew that these were my children the moment I saw those photos. Thank you.

You shot that video. Where he potters around, surprisingly trouser-less, playing with bracelets that she in her tutu kept stealing back for her cart, then they’re bouncing on the sofa until she says ‘that’s my bobble’ in her squeaky voice and my heart melted and I knew I was hooked for life. Thank you.

You came to our house, with a tower of photos, and the tears in your eyes Ken, told me how much you loved and would miss these precious lives. And if I could have done anything to save you from your tears, I would. Thank you.

You created a magical moment on the first day we met them, where those four incredible words “flowers for my mummy” shocked, surprised and delighted me, and tears flowed because for years I never thought I would hear those words said to me. You helped me bond with them, get to know them, by leaving the room and making space in your home for us to nudge you out and take over. Thank you.

Every day, despite your grief at losing them, you got them excited, peering through the window, waiting for our car to arrive – I can still see their cute little faces and feel my heart leap at that look. Thank you.

You helped me believe that I could do it, Mary, when you saw the doubt in my eyes, as you described their routines and I saw how effortlessly you parented them and knew I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. Hearing you say that I’d be an amazing mummy, when I felt like a fraud, was just the cheer-leading and encouragement I needed to save myself falling into a pit of doubt. Thank you.

You stepped in when needed, when the children struggled to cope with the confusion and different faces and feelings and more, calming them, even when you were struggling with the separation on the horizon. Thank you.

You were brave and courageous throughout this process, as you stepped aside and let go of our children until they became part of our family. Thank you.

You are the heroes of this story, their story, our story as a family.

Words are not enough

I cried as I wrote and read this back, because I mean every word from the depth of my heart.

With huge love, respect and more.

Emma

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…