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Two Plus Two Equals More – Adopting Siblings

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This year, the focus of National Adoption week is siblings – as around half the children waiting for a family are siblings.

I’m not going to tell you that adopting siblings is easier than adopting one, that would be crazy. It isn’t.

When my husband returned to work I was scared. I felt woefully unprepared to cope with two children vying for my attention. I needed eyes in the back of my head, a nose like a sniffer dog, seven pairs of hands and was worn out by it all.  My life felt like an exhausting roundabout of nappies, meals, tidying up, refereeing fights, supermarkets, naps, bottles, laundry, nappies, trying to understand their sort-of-words, more tidying, another meal, more nappies, baths, stories, bed and more.

When Bubbles went to pre-school for a few hours, I suddenly experienced how much easier one child would have been.  Not just a little bit easier, but soooo much easier.  With just Nibbles, there seemed more space, more time to do things, more time to even think, less to do. So I can understand why you might be thinking of adopting one child.

But there are upsides.  Things that you can only get if you adopt siblings.

LOVE

They’d only been with us a few weeks and Nibbles was upset.  We had no idea why he started crying in the car and nothing we said or did, not even my most soothing rendition of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” was working.  Two-year-old Bubbles asked him to “hold my hand.”  She stretched out towards him, touching fingers between the car seats in a moment of joyful tenderness I will never forget (captured in the photo above).  The impact was immediate.  His tears stopped and he smiled.

When everything else was strange, unsettling, weird, when their new home didn’t feel like a home at all, they had each other, they had love and that helped them feel safe.  Their love for each other is massive, unbounded, magical. With siblings you get share a love that goes to the moon and back.

HISTORY

Their lives and the people in it have changed so much in the few years since they were born. They’ve experienced trauma and separations. But one person has always been there for them, always been part of their lives.  We were somewhat late to the party, but Nibbles and Bubbles have always had each other. Their history started and continues together. And through this history, they’ve learnt that you can trust some people to be there for you through it all.

SUPPORT

“What did he say?” I would ask her, all confused. When Nibbles spouted sentences of jumbled consonants and vowels, when I had tried all the combinations I could think of and was running out of patience, Bubbles would often know exactly what he was trying to say.

She was our go-between and not just for translation.  When he was confused and upset in those first wobbly weeks, in a way we could not mend, a big hug from his sister was all that he needed to know that things would be okay.

INDEPENDENCE

Nibbles and Bubbles are inseparable (most of the time). They invent make-believe places and games that take them into the depths of their imagination, with a healthy borrowing from films and things they have read. Together they play, they explore, they invent, they create, they cut and stick. They learn interpersonal skills when they are too noisy or boisterous, don’t play nicely and learn the consequences when they hear the dreaded “I don’t want to play with you.”  They learn to compromise (if often a little late).

It feels safer when they are together, because they look out for each other, so I relax and give them leeway, to stay in the park on their own for a while, to grow to their capabilities (rather than being limited by my fears).  Sometimes their gang of two isn’t open to me, and yet as much as I pout, they are growing faster together.  They need me less and less, because they have each other as a co-adventurer.

GROWTH

With a big sister, Nibbles has run to keep up.  Sometimes literally, sometimes with his words, with behaviour, eating, skills and play. He wants to copy her and she loves to help him with his reading, or things he struggles with (it used to be zipping his coat up), getting washed or showing him how to dry up a sharp knife without hurting himself.

After years of waving her off at at the door, he couldn’t wait to start school, to do the things she has done.  And one day, as I keep hinting, he will be faster than her.

SPEED

We always wanted a family, Andy and I.  Not just a child but a family.  And by adopting siblings, we created a ready-made family overnight.  It wasn’t easy, but it’s what being a family meant to us.  Andy and I were a little family; Nibbles and Bubbles were a little family; and then we became a new family of four.

Within six months, we had got over the early wobbles and were finding our feet. But when they ask you at Matching Panel why you want to adopt siblings, don’t say “because it’s quick”!

CONNECTION

They share their very DNA.  They don’t look the same, yet there is something in their make up, a connection beyond skin, beyond looks, beyond shared experiences.  They will always have someone to talk to about being adopted (I might want it to be me, and it might not be).  Someone who understands what it is like to be them.  Nibbles and Bubbles know they belong with each other (and now with us), and they ‘get’ each other in a way that only siblings can.

Being with each other, feels like home.

AND MORE…

The way they play with each other is infectious and before you know it, I am shouting “giddy up” as we canter to school on the back of imaginary unicorns.  They might be double trouble, but they’re also double the hugs, double the happy-tears of pride in their achievements, double the joy, double the giggling at jokes too. With a child in each hand, I feel balanced, rooted through their touch to my life at a whole new level. They have multiplied the love and laughter in our home many, many times over.

It wasn’t until I wrote this list, when I sat down and really thought about all the magical and incredible ways that these two lives, these gorgeous people have added to my family that I really understood what it was that we did when we adopted siblings.  I wouldn’t change it for anything. They are my family and I am their mummy and I have never been prouder.

Happy tears.

Adopting siblings is the best thing I have ever done.  Maybe you could consider it too?

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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)

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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…

 

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