Young adoptive parents & where to start

[Mamarolls]

Hello,

This is my first post on the adoption boards, I have previously posted regularly on the conception board and have name changed after the hacker situation.

my husband and I are beginning to seriously look at alternative options for beginning our family. While we're still looking at the idea of IVF and other fertility options, we are really interested in exploring adoption.

I realise I sound quite naive but we haven't rushed into this on a whim. We've been considering it properly for the last year, and have both done a lot of soul searching and accepting our feelings. We have spoken to our friends who were adopted both as babies and older children about their experiences aswell as their parents, but we don't know anyone with recent adoption to speak to with our questions.

Any advice on where to begin in earnest would be greatly appreciated.

For information we are both mid twenties, both in stable careers (business analyst and solicitor) and we own (mortgage) our own home. I am so scared that we are going to get laughed at/ not taken seriously because of our ages.

Thank you.

You definitely won't get laughed at

You need to google your local council and on there, there will be info on who to contact regarding adoption.

Lots of
Luck
Xx

Thank you so much greatt!

I've sent out some emails today to our LA and a couple of local agencies so looking forward to getting some information back from them

We went through our local authority agency for adoption but I think you can choose another agency if you want to. I'm not the expert on that.

You also wouldn't be laughed at! Adopters come in all shapes and sizes. However, if you are thinking of fertility treatment then you need to fully explore that first before moving to adoption. I bang on a lot to people in RL about this but they are two very different things and the fertility treatment door needs to be firmly shut before you decide to become a family through adoption. You would be asked a lot about this by any assessing social workers too.

The other thing I would say early on is that either fertility treatment and adoption are both massive things. Make sure you have allowed yourself some time to grieve the baby you didn't make yourself before you make any decision on which way to go. It's a hard thing to move past it it's important and there's no shame in grieving for 'something you never had' as some people like to say. You might find that once you've allowed yourself that time to grieve the decision on whether to go for IVF or adoption becomes clearer as that's what it did for me.

Good luck whichever road you choose, we did IVF, didn't work but we now have our little man snoring in his cot next to me through adoption, and it's bloody fantastic :)

Can't agree enough with YouCant, you need to look into fertility treatment first as that is the most likely order of those two routes that most people go through.

Of course at your age you could try adoption first and if it did not work out for you then you could try fertility treatment, BUT most people do not get the chance to do this because they are older at the start of the process. And even if you were to go for adoption first if for any reason this was not the actual route that was right for you it is likely your fertility might be impaired by the time you started on fertility treatment.

www.babycentre.co.uk/a6155/your-age-and-fertility

I think it is really a case of what do you want to do to try and create a family. Do you want to try and experience pregnancy and have a child who is with you from a baby. If so then that needs to take priority while your health and fertility are at their optimum. If you are are truly not worried about experiencing pregnancy or having a small baby or having a child who is biologically related to you then of course do look into adoption first.

Please just make sure you and your partner are on the same page with this, it is easy for one partner to end up speaking for both of you, and really you do need to be on the same page for adoption.

It is also important to note that adoption is NOT second best to biological children or fertility treatment. I have a bio dd - through IUI - and a son - who joined our family by adoption.

Please feel free to pm me and ask me anything, we have had a lot of fertility treatment.

Don't let your age put you off applying. Me and my partner were 24 and 25 when we were approved and are now awaiting matching panel.

Our age has never been seen as a negative. Most of the social workers we spoke to see it as a positive.

One of the things mentioned to us was that most young people are told to go away and come back due to lack of childcare experience. Unfortunately that wasn't us. I have 18 nieces and nephews and my MIL is a child minder so that was good enough for them.

Good luck :)

Thank you all so much for you advice, I ( and husband pretending that he's not reading this over my shoulder) am really grateful.

I'm so glad that our age won't be as big of a deal as I initially thought! Sarahlux what sort of childcare experience is relevant? Neither of us have any professionally/volunteering but we have a close family so are quite hands on with mini relatives aswell as our friends little ones.

I think that should be okay. We havnt got professional experience was more friends children and well as family children. There were more than happy enough with that.

Noo I posted too soon!

Youcant and Italiangreyhound, thank you for your replies you've given us both some really good points to talk about.

We're both really open with each other, and I have absolutely no worries about one of us leading the other in a decision. We're both very similar in that we don't dwell on the negativity in a situation, we've come to a peaceful place mentally at the moment where we've accepted that yes it's ok that it's looking unlikely for us to make our family biologically, but that is no way going to stop us having one at all.

We're Definately both being swayed at the moment by the hugely positive and successful experiences our friends have regarding adoption. My husbands best friend was adopted as a toddler, my best friend has two adopted siblings, and we both have a mutual childhood friend who was adopted, so I think the fact that adoption has always been a normal part of our lives from being young children just makes this seem like a logical and lovely next step.

Neither of us are particularly baby crazy, I think the sadness for us would be if we adopted a child or children that we wouldn't have known them specifically and their little personalities from babyhood rather than being sad about a hypothetical baby and the general baby stage.

At the moment I feel like we're at the edge of a really big, exciting and terrifying cliff and need to decide which way to jump first. We're in a great place in our careers at the moment where we would be able to take the time to have our children young without losing where we are in our careers, while being able to jump back in and progress if we wanted to down the line, it's just funny that nothing ever works out like you plan in your head!

Gosh this is a massive rambly post! My apologies! Thank you all again for the advice!

I'm young by adoption standards, and haven't had my age mentioned at all, except in a positive light in terms of being healthy. Good luck.