Has anyone adopted after birth of first child

[Gingernut81]

DD is 8 weeks old and I've always wanted at least 2 possibly 3 children. There's nothing to say DH & I couldn't have another child/children but I can't help but feel that there are so many children out there in need of a good home and we could provide one. I know its early to be thinking about extending our family but i'm conscious that the adoption process can take some time. Has anyone out there adopted in similar circumstances? What were your experiences & if you could roll the clock back would you do it again?

Yes lots have - if you do an advanced search in adoption for adoption with birth children you'll find several threads.

I haven't so I have no comment except that I doubt any council would take you on until your child is at least 2 and there are not "so many" children out there needing a home that are appropriate for you as you will be likely to be restricted to a child at least 2 years younger than your youngest existing child. So you will be looking at a very young child and there is currently a slow down in adoptions with many more approved parent waiting than younger children needing homes.

You won't be able to adopt an older child or a sibling group when you already have a toddler so I wouldn't worry about starting too quickly. You'll just find you'll end up approved for way too small a range which might mean you wait for years to be matched.

I think you will probably need to think through your motivation more than you have a good home and there are children that need one (I realise you might be paraphrasing) as generally you won't find that a strong enough reason to get you through the process.

there are actually a lot of adopters waiting for children at the moment and very few suitable children being placedfor adoption.

I have a birth son and have now adopted a son. My birth son is 16, adopted is 22 months! We were told our BS had to be 10 before they would consider us for adoption but ever local authority is different. In hindsight I wouldn't have quite such a big age gap. BS is forever being asked if he is the Dad!!! Lol

There's no reason why you shouldn't apply to adopt if that's what you want to do, there will always be a need for more adopters as different children require different families but with an 8 week old baby you're looking at 2/3 years before any agency/authority would take you on and you would need to think seriously about the impact that adopting might have on your birth child.

A good thing maybe to start doing now is to read up on trauma/attachment etc to get an idea of what many of the children who are to be adopted have been through, how it might affect them and their behaviour. All children in the care system have suffered trauma and you need to be comfortable with impact this will have on them before adopting. Reading up now would give you a good basis on which to make any decision about adopting in the future.

Adoption processes take a long time but for good reason and you need to be in the right place to adopt right from the very start of it rather than thinking 'we'll apply now because it'll take ages by which time we'll be ready'. With an 8 week old baby, at the moment and possibly for the next few years you won't be in the right place. It's not about you, it's about the needs of the child of that makes sense.

As Kew says - search this site because there are lots of threads with a similar theme. It must be one of the most popular titles/themes.

Nigel is right - a LA/VA won't take you on for probably 3 or 4 or maybe 5 years. I have a 4.5 year old AS and have been rejected by 4 authorities because my son is too young and there won't be a big enough age gap. They want at least 2 years and the average age at the moment for children with placement orders is something like 5. It's gone up.

Expect also to be challenged as to why you don't want to expand your family by going down the usual route of pregnancy.

Anyway - all this can change. The number of placement orders could suddenly rapidly increase but that might take a while. Courts are still very much following re B-S.

We are just starting the process with a 3 year old birth child. As others have said there had to be at least 2 years between any child you already have and an adopted child you take on. Alot of agencies rejected us as they dont have alot of children in that age group but luckily we found one that unfortunately have alot of children in need of a family and quite a few in the age bracket we require too. I would see how you feel in 12 months as if you want a close age gap it is easier to have another yourself if possible - this wasnt for us. Maybe you would be better suited to foster caring when your baby is a little older.

We adopted with a birth child. We were told to wait until she was 5, that was a long time ago. In that time things have changed a lot during that time, one thing that changed was the time to be approved seemed to get shorter, and for us we were very lucky and were matched quite quickly. But I have heard now that things have changed again and there has been a big slow up of things.

I think it would be very wise to look at why you want to adopt, Gingernut81, there are lots of ways of helping children without adopting. You could foster or provide respite care for a disabled child once a month, you could get involved in lots of things that help children.

If the desire really is to adopt (and I say this because I wanted to adopted in my twentys but it was not until we had fertility issues that we actually did it), read around the subject, look at old threads here, google attachment issues for adoption, and then when your little one is a bit older get in touch with your local authority and see what they say.

Just as an example they may require you to take precautions against getting pregnant while going through the process of adoption. Plus if you would like three children might the third be a birth child or an adopted one? The general opinion is that the adopted child is the youngest in the family. I can say more if you want to ask. All the best.