Is foster to adopt my only option?

[Whatarethechancesofthis]

I’m a way off actually starting the adoption process. I’d be amazed if I even got accepted.

I have DD (8.5 months) and am 14 weeks pregnant with DC2.

I’ve always wanted to adopt but as we will already have birth children, we would like to adopt a child as young as possible. Preferably a baby one year old or younger.

Is this even possible in 2019 and if so, would foster to adopt be my only option? There seems to be so many uncertainties with adoption especially foster to adopt...

As you say you are a way off. You'll need at least a two year gap between your youngest child and your adopted child so you won't be able to do anything for a while.

The age of the child you adopt will be in relation to your younger child so it really depends when you start the process. If you wanted to adopt a one year old you'd be looking at adopting in a few years. It's very hard to know what the situation will be when you look at adoption, and it may be that foster to adopt is not your only option.

There is an interesting thread on here somewhere about foster to adopt, which will give you lots more info.

You could use the coming years to read up a lot about adoption and hopefully when the time is right you will know the best route to go.

Good luck.

Congratulations on your pregnancy op. The assessing agency, be that social services or another adoption agency may want to have a wider gap between the ages of the youngest child and adopted child because they may not want you to have 3 under 5 as it were so if placing a 1 year old with you they may want your youngest to be 4 years old or so if that makes sense. I am an adopter and even though they say a minimum of two years in practice they like as big a gap as possible and more like 4 years imho.

As others have said, usually it's a min of 2 years between the adopted child and youngest birth child, so your new baby would need to be 2-3 years old.

Our son was 6 months old, and we did a straight adoption.

The agency we used said there were 'lots of babies coming through' after we'd adopted.
I think it will depend on the area you live in a lot.

There is nearly 6 years between my birth daughter and adopted son and honestly a bigger gap is better in some ways. Maybe not necessarily the 5 plus years we have (that wasn't necessarily planned) but bigger than two years probably.

Good point on the 3 under 5, Muminabun (I love the name)

Thank you Italian, I am bun shaped sadly.

You are right about the amount of uncertainly involved Op. I was wondering how you it might impact on your existing children if a child you were fostering went back to their birth family ?

There are lots of babies under a year in my LA who need families. Your existing children would need to be older though.