5 month old sibling en route!

[Derbyshirelady]

Stunned following a meeting with adopted DS sibling's social workers - DS sibling is coming home to us in a matter of weeks while we do concurrent approval. We've known this baby was due and likely to be removed since last May but this was the first time they've been to see us. So frustrating.

ANYWAY - the JOY!

DS is 3.3 and came home to us at 10 months. Help me. I:

a) can't remember what babies do or how to look after one :)
b) don't know what a 5 month old needs or does!
c) need to do an Aldi wine order
d) might have a big cry

Also my DS has development delay and I need to think about how to prepare him for his little brother arriving. I think he will understand if we show him pictures of a baby and show him the bedroom/cot etc. Any tips on this front?
Adding cot to the list!

Would request pre contact for you and your child too help with baby's transition, if it is at all possible , will help baby with separation and loss issues. No harm in asking be open minder and none judgmental have too except if they say no. their will be the usual intro's but will be worth a try.

Good luck

congratulations !

Cot, clothes and baby book! Def get a baby book!

At 5 months, a playgym type thing for floor time would be good.
I would recommend a good baby carrier/sling, they're good for bonding with baby by keeping him close and also useful for 3 year old as you can have arms free to play with him while baby is still having cuddles to bond. A wrap type is good, or look up ones that are good for hip positioning by supporting the thighs.
I hope all goes well!

Wow how exciting/ terrifying for you! Wonderful news I was also going to suggest a sling, there's probably a sling library near you where you can try a few different styles. Great suggestion too regarding the baby gym for little one to lay under. I've got some more suggestions too, I'll PM you tomo when I have a bit more time.

Good luck!
A buggy board to attach to the pram would be good!

Definitely a baby carrier - I run a sling library in a nearby county to you, have good links with the fostering and adoption teams here - if you'd like to hire a carrier, just PM me and I'll sort it out for you :-)

Would visit local community midwife health worker get new baby info pac's. enquire , about new red book if needed, quite often new one needs too be issued. will inform you of safeguarding issue's, safe sleeping , length of safe time being in car seat, inoculation's, and lots more.

Congratulations! Our DD's birth brother is coming home next month and will be seven months old, so we're in a similar position to you.

Congratulations. I hope you don't mind me asking, but you said it's a concurrent placeement. Does that mean that baby will still birthparent(s)? Or will you adopt him? I am Still learning about all this.

Wow thanks everyone - great info. We’ve got an ergo baby carrier from DS1 that we didn’t use but hoping to use that. Also have fab health visitor and hadn’t thought of her for advice.

Daisies - yes because we’re classed as “connected persons” as we’ve got the new baby’s sibling, they seem to be fast tracking us like we’d be foster carers and will continue with adoption approval and matching at the same time and ongoing following placement. It’s all a major rush and they’ve apologised as something has gone majorly wrong their end - they should have been talking to us months ago and to be honest I didn’t push it enough. I have got used to not hearing anything from social workers and treating it as normal. We had said we didn’t want to do foster to adopt due to the risk, but as it’s so close to placement order now I am more comfortable with it. We’d become guardians (they’re trying not to pay us the fostering allowance and seem to be expecting me to take unpaid leave from work as there’d be no matching cert so no paid adoption leave until formally matched) immediately after placement order. Which is in 10 days. And they told us yesterday. Honestly I could actually write a book about how not to do this. I know SW are severely under resourced, but adopters are absolutely at the bottom of the pile in our experience.
They left our house yesterday and we should have been crying tears of joy about a new little chap coming into our lives but instead we are just wrung out by the process and were questioning if we even want to continue.

Sorry! Started this thread for advice. Turned into a rant. I bought a lovely babygro today for the little dude

There is a book called Siblings Without Rivalry which has some tips for how to deal with toddlers getting a new sibling. I think it would be adoption friendly (in terms of behaviour management) as it's written by the how to talk people.

I completely feel your pain about feeling like the bottom of the pile. Similar cock-ups with our DS-to-be, meant it was all extremely late and delayed, and then went in that typical 'oh now we have deadlines to meet so we're just going to make the adopters meet unreasonable deadlines that we'll only tell them about at the last minute!' rush that social workers seem to really like.

The date of our matching and approval panel (same day) wasn't confirmed till just a few days beforehand and they seemed not to think it was a problem that we had to let work know, sort childcare etc at that sort of notice.

And panel were pretty annoying too, challenging us about stuff that was really down to LA cock-up.

I think I'm feeling crosser about all of this this time round. The first time, I was so desperate to be a mum, I'd have done anything. This time, I'm aware that the LA wouldn't really consider placing him anywhere else and now I can see how unreasonable and plain rude their treatment of adopters can be.

Anyway, sorry, now I'm ranting and hijacking your thread.

Yay to our new babies!

I see derby ,thanks for clarifying. Hope the preparations are going well.