a little advice for a newbie

[TinkerBlue]

Hello, I am totally new to these boards - still spending most of my mn time over on conception but would tentatively like to test the adoption waters as it were.

Dh and I have been ttc for 6 years. We are fairly sure ivf is not for us. Having been told I was probably infertile 12 years ago I always assumed that adoption would be on the cards at some point.

We contacted our la last winter and had an initial phone conversation and were sent the forms to fill in. We also attended a fostering open day to explore that option. Armed with relevant info we decided to take our time and give my body one last chance.

Unfortunately it seems to no avail as I am not pregnant and my burning desire for children seems to have well and truly taken over my life!
We are having a final round of fertility tests this month so that we have it clear in our heads exactly where we are with our fertility. Then it is decision time.

My heart tells me that adoption is for me, although I am a complete newbie to the process and the system. Even if we were candidates for ivf I have a morbid fear of miscarriage which almost rules it out.

Could anyone please advise on timescales between ttc and making an adoption application. I read that if you have had fertility treatment you are obliged to wait a year before you can be assessed? Or does this depend on the la or agency? Or type of treatment?

I will be in receipt of our fertility results by the end of this year and feel a need to have a plan of action in place, so that we can get the ball rolling asap.

I'm hoping there are ladies that might have been through similar that can offer their advice? I am reluctant to contact our la again at this stage as I'm aware how precious their time is and want to be making that call to say - here we are, ready to go. Rather than talking almost hypotheticals.

Many thanks in advance.

[Tinkletwinkle]

Great, thank you, found the workbook.

Good luck with telling your boss, hope they don't mind.

[Italiangreyhound]

Tinkle hi. I posted on your thead before. Our son has been with us over two and a half years and was 3 when he came.

I've got friends/acquaintances who have adopted children of all ages from small baby up to age six. We were told very clearly by out LA the types of children they had awaiting adoption when we started our journey. I think it does help to have a picture of the kind of children and kind of needs.

When we had our birth daughter (before adopting) I imagined when children grew older they were harder to love! The reality is the love grows. And for me it is not the biological/genetic link that makes things special but time shared.

So with ds we missed the first 3, almost 4 years of his life. I had wanted a baby, May be a girl (because that was what I knew!). So when we got ds details I had to think "ok we have missed the first three plus years but if we say no we will miss the whole of his life" he just sounded you good to miss out on, and has proved to be amazing, bright, funny, loving and adorable (and hard work) in equal measure!

So I would encourage you to be open where you feel you can be open, age, ethnicity, sex, disability etc BUT also to be realistic about what you can and cannot handle. Reading up on the types of issues and finding out about children in the care system etc so there are not too many surprises.

We has done some regressive stuff with ds, hand-feeding him when it wasn't' needed so that we filled in some gaps maybe of where he did not get such close care. He is having theraplay at the moment. Which is very helpful.

Good luck.

[Tinkletwinkle]

italian thank you. Your posts were very thoughtful and helpful way back when I started this thread.

At the moment we are discussing exactly which children we would like to seek approval for. We are a bit afraid to discount any particular group in case we miss out.
I think we might look at getting approval for f2a, individual children and sibling groups of two. Our la rarely place children over the age of 6 so that seems a good upper age limit.
We don't feel like we have the skills to parent children with disabilities.
It's such a terrible discussion to have, discounting children because they might not "fit". Our sw is very supportive though, she says most of her adoptive families hate this bit as it feels like "shopping". She has encouraged us to keep our options as broad as possible for the approval stage, then we can hopefully fall in love at the matching stage.