Any other adopters out there?

[suejonez]

I'm in the process of adopting internationally. Hoping to be matched by Sept. Anyone else?

Thanks v much. When I get my letter to travel I will probably be begging for spare things to take to donate to the orphanage. Unlike China, I will get to spend a while visiting the orphanage before I can apply to get custody. I will spend 1-2 months in Kazakhstan in all.

Hoping my evening class Russian is up to it!

Sue,
Feel free to start a thread when you're ready to roll!

I'm sure many of us have plenty of quality clothes and things that the orphanage can use.

:)

Missed this cus Ive been a bit busy just lately...Im an adoptive Mom...2 boys...biological full siblings...have lots of family members who are adopted and three are going through the process to adopt. My sis has just been approved for two same sex children and had details of twin boys aged 9 months earlier this week.
Good luck with your adoption Sue...its just the best thing ever.

Hi jayzmummy we adopted through ss and it was very hard thay are so overworked and understaffed like you say we felt sorry for them.
some of the rules seemed a little inconsistant from case to case we got a happy end but i will have to say the process is very tough .we didnt know of any other independant organisation to approach so just went direct to ss we are hoping to adopt again in a couple of years we are so happy with our daughter she is the light of our lives absolutely adorable but i definately dont want her to be an only child

Firstly it is so good to see an adoption site on MN. MN has been my saviour following the stillbirth of my little boy and also two IVF attempts - both resulting in pgs and both ending in m/c. I feel that some of my cbyer friends have been much better friends to me than some of my RL friends, paricularly when the going has been toughest.

Secondly it is so good to see so many happy mums and soon to be mums from the adoption route. I know that adoption is not an easy option but the reward at the end must be fantastic. I can only hope that some day in the future we will know that happiness and joy of becoming a complete family.

We have made initial enquiries into adoption both at local Health Trust level and also from a voluntary agnecy. We have an information evening with the voluntary agency tomorrow night and start our preparation course with the local HT on the 8th June. Following the prep course we will then decide who we are going to make our formal applcation to.

I am also interested in adoption from overseas - simply because I would love to do all the baby things that I feel I have been denied but then again at the end of the day all I want to be is a Mummy and I know DH is desperate to hear someone call him Daddy. More thinking to do on that score.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow night although I have just read that using a voluntary agency which may be quicker from application to approval may not necessarily be the best option as often these agencies work in conjunction with SS and have the more difficult to place children on their books. Oh well we will just have to wait and see.

Take care everyone

Hi Wendy - I went down the adoption route after 3 IVF and a few years of other milder forms of treatment. Ex DP and I split partly as a result of him not wanting to adopt and so I am now single and adopting from overseas.

I found the adoption process very healing - it made me face my infertility and move past it. I will always regret not being able to become pregnant but it seems much less of an issue than it did a couple of years ago. I'm really excited about the possibility of bringing a child home sometime this year.

Adoption is not a solution to infertility (some people around you will treat it like it is, like evrything is "fixed"), it is a solution to wanting a family. It's a bit like being divorced then meeting another partner and being happy with them. You don't become un-divorced, the pain you went through at the time doesn't disappear but it does gain a degree of perspective and increasingly becomes a less important part of your life.

If you move on to adopt, the difficulties you went through will make you a much better parent to a child who has also lost their birth family.

Sermon over for today!

hi sue you made some very good points about people thinking that adoption makes everything ok or fixed as you put it we were so happy about our daughter but still had some feelings of grief over the babies that we could never have that sounds bl##dy selfish i know but i am being 100% honesti felt embarresed about feeling this we were so lucky to get her . i love her so much i cannot ever imagine life without our daughter its like our real life has just started i cannot remember what we did with ourselvs before she came home to us

Just wanted to say I think you are all wonderful -I was adopted at 6 weeks and my mum has been the best mum in the world - I have a better relationship with her than alot of my friends have with their natural mothers - I have lost count of the number of times friends say they wish there mums were a bit more like her - I think it because if you are adopting for whatever the reason your children are very much wanted (not saying that natural children arent I have my own) but my mother was forever telling me how lucky she was to have me and that I was "special" I have never had any doubts about how I ended up where I was and I will be eternally grateful to my parents...........she is my mum and my best friend and I hope for all of going through the process it will be them same - I would love to adopt by DP just wont go there (but he is one of 6 siblings and just cnat get his head round it..... :(
Do start a thread when you go to China - I will defintely get some bits togethe for you. Good luck it will be worth the wait. Good place for stuff is the NCT nearly new sales.

Hi MFer - its always lovely to hear a succesful adoption story. I know two men who are now adopting (as part of a couple) both of whom were adopted themselves and I think it does give them extra insight. But some people so find it difficult to get their head around it.

Someone I know is at the very early stages (pre homestudy and her mother has said that she doesn't understand how she could possibly love a child that wasn't "hers"!! Her mother! Can you imagine it. I think I would have shot my mum if she'd said that to me!

My biggest concern is post adoption depression - its such a long hard journey I can imagine that it must be tough having to deal with the reality of a small child who doesn;t know you and needs time to bond. Apparently 65% of people suffer from PAD - did you find it a problem, MamatoHoney?

That should be two married men as part of two seperate married couples!

wanted to add - my brother and sister-in-law adopted 3 siblings 2 and a half years ago - 6m, 2 and 6.
They are fantastic - really lovely children and their Mummy and Daddy are doing a great job

Jayz that is soo sad - she will miss out in the long run - my beloved nanny loved me from the moment by mum picked me up from the Childrens home - she was so pleased that my mum finally had a baby of her own to love as thats all she ever wanted to be...... and without my mum adopting she never have been a granny - just because we are adopted doesn't mean we are not the next generation do you think there's more to it than that - maybe she needs to talk to someone about how she feels in order that she can get over it and learn to love your children as she would her own???

Crikey, Jayzmummy what were you doing up at 2.55am!

I can see why you have such a problem with your mum, it must be heartbreaking. I hate hearing people described as "adopted children". I notice it when famous people died who adopted their children ... "survived by their adopted children" or "they had 2 children and an adopted child". AAAARGH! I have told my family that if my child/children are described as my "adopted" children at my funeral I'm going to come back and haunt them all.

People don't decribe their husbands as "by marriage". I know its because adoption is still relatively uncomman in the UK so people feel the need to comment on it but it's like describing your birth children as my daughter by drunken accident, or my son by caesarian section. Winds me up a treat as you can tell!

My mum started off just by being happy for me - ie whatever makes you happy is fine but has become progressively more excited as time has gone on and has taken to buying me bargains at charity shops (mostly baby books, what to feed toddlers etc) and recently bought herself a highchair and is looking for a travel cot (when asked why she needed a travel cot she looked at me like I was mad and said "well they'll need somewhere to nap as they'll be over here so often"). So sweet that she's recently got so into it. Hope we can all be patient enough to wait for a match now...

Good luck going for number 3 - what council are you in?

Jayzmummy - that is sad.
I fell in love with my (adopted) nephew and nieces the moment I met them - as I have with all my other nieces and nephews! All four of their grandparents adore them and their cousins and Aunties and Uncles!

Our son was placed with us in July 2004 when he was just a week off 6 months old. We went through SS and adopted in England. It was a long drawnout process, but very much worth it in the end. There is a website called Adoption UK, which is really useful for particularly adoption related stuff like bonding and how the process works. There is a really good chatline on it and I found it really useful in the first few months after we adopted.

I've not read all of this thread...just answering the question, really. My brother and SIL have two adopted little boys, aged nearly 3 and nearly 4. They had DS1 placed with them when he was 6 months and DS2 when he was 14 months. They are both gorgeous and hilarious and they are such a great family. Most of the time I forget that they are not blood related. The boysd are picking up my brother's character traits all the time which is really funny. The process was long for them, too, the first time round. Not so long with DS2 cos they had been approved for a sibling. But they are quite unusual as they are a mixed race partnership so had to wait for children who matched their ethnicity. Is cool cos they look as though they all belong together.

Hello everyone

Information evening was great but an awful lot to take on board. I keep remembering things we were told. There were about 14 other couples there and it was so different to our IVF clinic where everyone looked at the ground and didn't speak to each other - at least we could all have a smile and a chat for each other.

We have also made enquiries to the Church of Ireland Adoption Society who are having an information evening in July, together with the preparation course from SS which we start on the 8th June means we will probably not make an official application to any agency for a month or two.

Jayzmummy - thankyou for making it clear about the interaction betweeen SS and some of the independant agencies.

It has been made clear to us that if we are looking for a child in the 0-2 year category that they will not even begin a homestudy assessment with us at this time as there are only 1 - 2 children in that range coming forward for adoption each year in Northern Ireland and they already have a number of couples approved for that age category, so we have not completley ruled out adoption overseas but an incident at our local primary school recently has made us stop and think. The son of friends who is 6 has been bullied because his ears protrude more that normal. It actually reached the stage where his parents have paid for him to have them pinned back rahter that put their son through the daily agony. If that is happening for sticky out ears what on earth would they do to a little coloured child as there are no other coloured children at the school.

Mfer - it is so good to hear positive stories like yours. It sounds as if you were loved very much and that in turn you have been taught to love.

Hope everyone else is well. Take care

Adopting averseas does not necessarily mean adopted a child of a different ethnicity to you (eg Russia). I know several couples in Northern Ireland who are adopting overseas who I can put you in touch with if you want more information. Bullying is not really down to just children looking different - children who look very different don't get bullied and children who (to the naked eye) look the same as anyone else can get terribly bullied. It's more to do with self esteem than appearance.

Overseas adoption is not the easy option (in fact can be more difficult) and is definitely more expensive. But don't rule it out if thats what you want. I can also probably find out who runs the local CACH group in NI (Children adopted from China) and let you know if you're interested, alternatively search for CACH on Yahoo groups thats where most adoption groups are.

Also don't rule out an older children - depending on their their experiences, older children (I mean older than 2!) can be very succesfully placed. I know it means that you have to deal with the loss of having a small baby but to be blunt you're unlikely to be able to adopt a very tiny baby anywhere so thats an issue you will need to come to terms with anyway. Ask your voluntary agency or SS to find you someone who has adopted say a four year old and talk to them.

Research, reearch, research - thats the key at this stage.

Good luck.

We have two adopted nieces who are just part of the family like everyone else but we do talk openly about them being adopted. Tilly's best buddy is adopted too and bizarrely all three of these kids resemble their adopted parents - weird!
Just wanted to say good luck and hope to see more news soon....
By the way Sue, you may soon find out why MNers post at 2.55am!!!

I'm an adopter, we adopted a little boy just over a year ago when he was almost 11 months old. We went through SS, initally we wanted to adopt from abroad but we were persuaded to go for a local adoption. The assessment part was fine, but I found the waiting afterwards really difficult.

In case any furture adopters are interested, my one piece of advice that I wished I'd been given is: build up your upper-body strength and make sure your back is in good condition if you're adopting a younger child. Birth parents start off with a lightweight little baby and build their muscles as the child grows, but when you adopt you go straight into carrying a heavier child. You'd have thought they could have slipped that little bit advice in with the huge amounts of training and information potential adopters are given, but no.

Thanks Bran - I'll get down the gym

My friend has adopted an SN boy with Downs who is about 15 months. I met up with them a months or so ago and obviously he's not as mobile as other 15 month olds so we did a lot of carrying. Blimey - he weighed a lot more than I was expecting.

A lot of my home study was pointless tosh (am I allowed to say that?), perhaps we should suggest that they add a section on testing upper body strength.

Any other suggestions of what you wished you been told before?

i will second that about upper body strenth my shoulders were very painful and across my upper back i thought that it was only me and that i must be so unfit our dd would be clamped to me for most of the day she wouldent go to my husband or would then instantly want to come back to me so when she went to bed i would flop on the sofa

Whizzzzesss in quickly to say glad it went okish Wendy.....my sister had a baby today....not the one whos adopting....my other sis...as you can imagine I am over the moon and so very happy to be an Auntie only downer was having the she dragon mother clucking away at how fab it is...which it is but when she said she now felt like a "proper grannie" I wanted to scream at her!!!Talk about rubbing mine and my other sis's nose in it!!! My sis , who is going through adoption process, has a home visit with SS tonight re the wee man she has expressed an interest in....still waiting for the phone call to hear how its gone....her social worker has a tendency to stay late....wish she would hurry up and leave cus Im shattered!!!!

I am up late most nights as DS2 has ASD and isnt a good sleeper....which also sadly means neither am I!!!!!

hi everybody we seem to have ground to a holt so i was thinking that i would do a little post to set us off again how is everybody what are you all doing this bank holiday weekend we are going swimming today then seeing some friends also with adopted children on sunday we are at a christening then on monday some friends are comming for lunch also with adopted children the children all play together its fab to see them the house is a total tip after thay have gone but thay enjoy it .
so quite a lively weekend talk soon