The best thing we’ve ever done!

Elen and her husband have become proud parents to their little girl through adoption

Deciding to adopt

For me personally, I remember as a young child playing with dolls, and pretending that I had adopted my dolly so I can’t really remember a time when it wasn’t something I had considered.

As a couple, we have always talked about adoption as something we wanted to do. We felt completely settled and secure when we decided to progress our thoughts about adoption into action. Whilst we had read up on the process of adoption and what it entailed, we hadn’t considered that there were several agencies to choose from. We contacted our local social services and continued down that route.

The process

Social services sent us an information pack. We returned the completed form, and a member of the adoption team visited us at our home to give us more information. After that, we had to wait until an adoption course was available for us to attend. We attended this one evening a week for seven weeks. There were a number of families on the course with us. The evenings were very informative and helped you examine a variety of aspects associated with adoption. It helped you consider your own personal views, your partner’s views (if you had one), your joint approach to parenting and the needs of the child. What surprised me is that you also learn so much about yourself, and about what it really means to adopt. Whilst the professional views were useful, what was most insightful was the opportunity to meet adoptive parents: it gave us a glimpse of what life might be like.

After the course, the assessment comprised of a number of social worker visits, interviews individually and as a couple, interviews with our nominated referees, police checks, health checks, a mountain of paperwork and a final approval panel.

Being approved

Honesty has been very important to us. We worked in partnership with our social worker. It felt strange at first to be so open with a complete stranger, but we firmly believe that this has made the process of assessment, and more importantly the process of matching, so successful.

We had said at the outset that we would take it one step at a time – but despite trying to take each step at a time, the wait can be emotional at times. I cried when we went to panel. It just felt so overwhelming to have reached a milestone that sometimes felt so out of reach. You learn so much about adoption and what it entails, and nothing can quite prepare you for the journey.

It was three months between us first contacting social services and when a course was available for us to attend. It was a further six months until a social worker was available to assess us (and we were the first from the course that we attended!). We were approved by the panel seven months later. The mobile phone bill was huge that day!

Waiting to be matched

When we first embarked on this journey of approval, the panel was the major event we were working towards. However, the highs of panel approval are short-lived, with the feelings of high being replaced with “when will we be matched?”

From our first enquiry to being matched took exactly two years.

One thing to bear in mind, is that you are warned about the wait but, despite the warnings, you’re not really prepared. The challenge for me, was to learn patience (I can’t say I learned it though, it was more of a case of dealing with it!).

We heard nothing for seven months (until just before Christmas) when they first told us about our little girl. How did we spend that Christmas not knowing if we were matched? I don’t know. We were matched with our daughter in January and didn’t get to meet her until the April. We thought that the approval process took a long time, but that was nothing compared to the wait to be matched, and even that was nothing compared to the wait to meet her once we’d heard about her!

Reading our daughter’s profile was very emotional. We didn’t get to see a picture of her until the morning we were due to meet her. We fell in love with her the moment we saw her – nothing can prepare you for the surge of emotions that engulf you at that moment.

Becoming parents

I can’t begin to tell you how wonderful it was to welcome our daughter home. We had put together an album which the foster parents read to our daughter every night before she met us, with a picture of her ‘forever’ mummy and daddy, her bedroom, her garden and her new dog! This helped prepare her, and resulted in her first words to us when we met her which were “Hello Mummy”. We will never forget that moment.

When she came home, we showed her round each of the rooms, and she recognised her bedroom straight away from the album. We kept her routine very similar to the foster parents’. We used the same bedding, clothing, foods, and we even used the same bath products and washing powder. Familiarity, where possible, helped.

What we have learned, is that you can (and we did!) buy hundreds of books about what to do/what not to do/how to do it/how not to do it but there is no panacea. What we have both learned, is that you will intuitively know what’s right. There are many suggestions (many contradictory!) but take from the wealth of information what feels right to you. Ask for advice from friends, family, social workers and you’ll filter what you think is useful.

Family and friends have been incredibly supportive. We have put in our application to the courts to legally adopt our daughter, and whilst it’s a formality, to know for certain that she’ll be part of our family forever, it can’t come quick enough for us, and for our friends and our family.

Our daughter may not have made up her mind about us yet, but we’ve decided to be the best ‘forever’ mum and dad that we can possibly be. She deserves all the warmth, patience, love and understanding that we can give her.

Adoption, for us, has been incredibly rewarding – we have both said it’s the best thing we have ever done. Our daughter, has, and continues to teach us, just as much as we are teaching her.

Elen

Elen’s name has been changed to protect her confidentiality.

• Find out more about adoption
• Find an agency to assess you
• Attend an information event near you

Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in November 2011.

This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666.

Last updated: 28 October 11

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