Would you lovely ladies care to give me some advice?
We have a DBS (is that the correct terminology?), 9 months old.
Before he was conceived, before we started to TTC even, we were thinking about adopting. Kind of, because there are children out there who need loving parents, and maybe we could be that to them, and as we would really love to have kids, it would be win-win, wouldn't it? We figured we would at least strongly consider adopting a hard-to-place child, we'd have to look into it, maybe an 'older' child or even a sibling pair. We looked into processes and stuff but in the end decided to try for a birth child simply because it seemed 'easier' - the adoption process seemed like just about the hardest way to have a child, very daunting, plus having an adopted child seemed hard. We weren't sure we could cope, having never experienced parenthood yet. I guess we just weren't confident enough. For instance, we thought what if we adopt a child who already goes to school. That child would then have more experience and knowledge of the English school system than we have (we both grew up abroad). Wouldn't that make it very hard to parent?
Now DS is here and we love him so much, and our vision of an ideal future entails more than one child in our family, and there are still children out there who need loving parents. So adoption is again becoming a topic, a possibility, something we are thinking about.
Knowing about required age gaps (though I thought it was 3 years?) we have this as yet vague plan to try to adopt a roughly 3-year-old when DS is 6. (Having heard that after 3 years of age, children become 'hard-to-place') But, having mentioned this to friends, I have been told that that would be extremely hard on DS as he would have been a single child for 6 years and then suddenly have a 3-year-old sibling. I am kind of thinking that must be rubbish, if we had another birth child when he was 6 he would be expected to cope, yes of course it wouldn't be easy but getting a sibling can be distressing for the oldest child in a family in any circumstances. Am I underestimating something here?
What I really want to ask, would you think this is a more or less reasonable plan, that we can now lay aside for a few years, and then get back to it in good time? (Incidentially, what would be a good time?) Just like if we had a vague plan to TTC again when DS is 3, we wouldn't worry about it for now and get back to 'family planning' if you so will, in a few years. Or are there things to consider that we don't know about? Should we rather stay abreast, keep reading adoption info, already get in touch with agencies, or whatever?
I think I'm just a little worried because knowing how much can go wrong with planning to have birth children, that you can't just say 'oh we will TTC in 2 years' and then expect to have a baby at 2 years and 9 months, I'm sort of concerned that planning adoption like that could be equally doomed. In which case it would make more sense to say 'yes we want another child, yes we think adoption would be good, so lets start the process now and see where it takes us' (which also sounds attractive to me in a way, but would be sort of giving up on the idea of adopting an older child).
Any comments much appreciated, and thanks for reading through such a long post!
Please or to access all these features
Please
or
to access all these features
Here are some suggested organisations that offer expert advice on adoption.
Adoption
Planning adoption ahead?
9 replies
Meita · 26/05/2011 16:32
OP posts:
Please create an account
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.