First step tomorrow - advice please

[lookatthemoon]

Hi all,

Tomorrow DH and I are going to our first meeting about the adoption process. I'm suddenly feeling a little nervous. This is the first official step.

We lost our baby only 6 months ago and I'm a bit afraid tomorrow might be a bit of a grief trigger. I have been really looking forward to it up to now and felt it was something really positive to focus on and would help me believe that we will be able to add to our family (already have birth DS who is 3).

Did anyone else feel like this? Any advice?

Hi @lookatthemoon,

Welcome to the boards and congratulations on taking the first steps. Adoption is fab, if not always easy- I hope it works out as the right choice for you.

So sorry to hear about your baby- it is entirely normal that investigating adoption will bring up these feelings again. The SWs will expect this and will want to discuss it (hopefully not too much tomorrow). I think you should take this process at your own pace and be willing to slow down at any point, if you need the time to unpick your feelings.

Once you have two kids it's a lot more demanding than one, and when this comes at the end of 6-12 months of having your life poked at and looking at matching profiles it can be a hard time- so be as ready as you can be.

I would also suggest you investigate a number of agencies before deciding which one to go for. Ofsted reports will give a bit of an idea, but there is no substitute for speaking to people (phone or in person) and seeing how they deal with you. I would meet with at least one VA and one LA in person.

Reading these boards can be very useful, do keep in mind that people tend to only post about when things go wrong. It's good to get an idea of the potential difficulties, but don't go thinking they are the norm.

Best of luck.

Thanks so much donquixote - that's all very helpful and hopeful! I'm looking forward to tomorrow again - hopefully it's just a gentle intro to the whole process.

It is OK to go to an information session, and then to say to yourselves 'not yet'. We did this, went 6months after final IVF, said 'not yet' and then waited a whole year before returning.
You'll need time to grieve for what you can't have and build up strength for the next step. 6 months might be enough, but if not that's OK too.

Thanks Sanders. It actually went really well, no triggers and had a lovely informative chat with sw afterwards. I feel relief and a bit of hope for the first time in a long time. Happy day!

Great update.

Hi @lookatthemoon just wanted to say we are at the same place - we submitted reg forms this week so just waiting for next steps so if you wanna chat through the process then would be great to have someone to talk to! X

Hi louise! Thanks for the msg - would be great to chat - I'll pop over to your 'starting the process' thread! 😊

I hope you went to grief loss therapy as that can help. I am awfully sorry to hear about your loss though.
Adoption is a very emotional rollercoaster just with more people involved. Don't worry too much about feeling emotional as it will be expected.
I went through a stage were I would burst into tears at a pampers ad but I do get a little dreamy/wishful/emotional now but I think myself lucky that I have a child now.

Hi.
New into to forum so just seen your message. Don’t let the triggers worry you too much. As part of the training days I went on there were several couples who had various back stories. A couple of times over the course of the training it was discussed triggers may be touched and not to feel bad. Just take a moment to yourself. A few times people left the trading session to have a moment and get a breath of fresh air. No one was judged.
I would however point out the process is very long and emotional. Don’t be afraid to take a break if you need to. During my stage 2 I took 3 months out to have some counselling due to a couple of emotional moments I had during my social worker sessions. I highly recommend therapy and it was seen as a massive positive in my panel that i had sought out some therapeutic help.
Remember you can do this at your own pace.
Good luck with the journey xxxx

Thanks Kimi and Finch - that's all helpful i hear. I did go to grief counselling for the first couple of months after baby passed and found it really helpful. Am slowly just getting through the application and all the paperwork now and am happy to go slow as I've come to accept that the first few months/year after a loss is not really the best time for major decision making. I'm not in the UK and the process can be quite slow here so am hoping the I'll have built more resilience back up by the time I go through training etc. Finch it's is very possible that I might go back for more counseling during the process - will see what sort if emotions come out!

So far adoption has actually had fewer triggers than anything else. Might sound weird but I find it comforting that if I adopt a child, both the child and I will have lost family but we'll find each other (and a new sort of family) through our respective losses.