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…