The time has finally come for me to share us starting to adopt and what that looks like for us so far. I know I have been hinting at it for a while but we wanted to talk in-depth with our parents and take time to process all the information first. We of course have mentioned it to our families a few times before but once we had our first phone call with our social worker M we had more information to talk to them about. As much as it’s us adopting this decision affects our family and as much we are set on our decision and its the best fit for us to grow our family we wanted to hear our parents out for any of their concerns.

Before our call with M, our parents expressed their concerns for how we would cope with a child who wasn’t biologically ours, how Baby bear would react to having a sibling join the family, and what would happen if we did fall pregnant again and got a living child out of it. We of course tried to answer these questions with the knowledge we had gained and what our hearts were telling us, which was we would love them just the same as they will be our child, and our desire to grow our family is stronger than wanted biological children. This isn’t to say if I did fall pregnant we wouldn’t be happy of course we would but at the point in our infertility journey, we are at the understanding that that is very very unlikely and not something that will realistically happen for us. And as for Baby bear coping we are aware he may struggle to adjust at first as he has had mummy and daddy to himself for the past 5 years, all his life he has ever known us 3. This being said I think it will be no more or less than if I gave birth to his sibling, and I think he is old enough and we have spoken a lot about bringing another baby home and he is so excited.

So you may be wondering what happened in our call with M, it was a very long phone call with a lot of information which threw us both a little but at the same point, we have done a lot of research into the process that we were prepared, well somewhat. Since we decided this was defiantly the route for us I have fallen in love with this little girl (yes we have been approved for a little girl) who I don’t even know yet, and the momma bear in me just wants her home safe if she’s even here yet. So I was kind of hoping to have her home for Christmas this year which I thought was doable really as we registered our interest back in February and had our interest call in March which moved us onto being assigned with a social worker. However, due to covid, there has been some delay so that goal isn’t possible now. If I’m being honest this was the first letdown of this process and I know there will be many more but we are here for it and nothing will stop us from bringing our little girl home.

M talked us through the process which I can do a separate post going into detail if you want but basically we have our first home visit in June. We can then put our official registration paperwork in September to then do our 3-day training in October. We will also complete our 8 home visits which are 5 together, 1 meeting each separately with M and then 1 where M will observe how we are with Baby bear. We will also need to have a DBS and medical check is done before going to pannel. We knew this would be an intrusive process but we wasn’t ready for how intrusive it will be.

As you can see we have a long way to go yet but we are excited to be starting to adopt and are 1 step closer to being a family of 4. I will of course keep you all updated as we make our way through this journey sharing what we can along the way and please keep your fingers crossed it goes smoothly and we have our little lady home very soon.