Anyone else choose adoption before TTC?

[user1479136681]

We're a same sex couple and decided to adopt rather than going the donor route. There must be other people who didn't try to conceive but I've never met anyone else!

They will always question motives but there are others who go to adoption rather than try to conceive.

I don't know much about epilepsy but imagine if controlled would be fine. Best to ask local authorities or voluntary agency.

By question I mean just asking. As a sane sex couple it is kind of obvious why this might be a choice.

You can always find ways to get experience with kids. We have a birth daughter and were still asked to get experience. Luckily, I had loads, dh less so.

Good luck.

@Somuddled

Good luck on thursday!

It’s so confusing re experience because in an ideal world we would be looking at ideally under 1.5 years old but getting experience seems like we would be looking at youth clubs etc (obviously difficult now!). I struggle to imagine myself parenting a pre/teenager right now but I understand that I would grow as they grow so by the time they are a teen I would be prepared!

I have limited experience through work (I’m in the NHS, mainly adult patients but we do deal with patients from NICU onwards) and my husband only really has the experience of his much younger half sibling when he was a bit younger.

I must admit that you @Italiangreyhound were asked for more experience!

@Fanciedachange1 I think the experience thing is not specfically experience of parenting a child. It is experience of being around childen who are ideally not part of your own family. Because adoption is about taking a child who is not part of your family and making them so. Yes, as a parent with a 7 year old I knew about everything from nappies to tantrums etc but i think what they wanted was to know was could we relate to children we did not already have a link with.

My dh had helped for many years at a club which did have some child members. The children were quite old and way older than our own child or the one we eventually adopted. But our social worker seemed happy with it.

@Ted27 did a great 'project' to get experience with kids. I would say that learning the right things from the experience/getting the most from it etc, is more important than just the age of the child/children etc.

@Fanciedachange1

Italiangreyhound:

Both myself and my husband are early 30s but have very little experience with children in a home setting (no nieces/nephews) and because we have no known fertility problems I just get the feeling that any assessor would think we would be better ttc and start a family that way.

I also have epilepsy (controlled through daily medication) which I worry would be a barrier although I know there are precautions that can be in place to help.

Not sure if this is helpful but my husband and I are also young(er) adopters with no proper childcare experience and we are going to panel in 2 weeks. Due to covid they accepted us not getting the voluntary experience with children, and we are going for 0-2 so it's definitely possible.

@Fanciedachange1 I said I'd update so, the meeting we had with a VA went well. I specifically asked about childcare experience and if they specify numbers of hours and she said they make a point of not doing that as it isn't a logical way of looking at it. We had explained that we had no experience at all outside family and godchildren but had tried to get some by joining the cubs last year. We have attended 3 poor zoom sessions with the cubs so it really isn't childcare experience in any sense. They were very understanding and said that the fact that we had tried counted for a lot. She said she would like us to try to do a couple of overnight care situations with children in family so that we had something recent to put down. We agreed we would do it on the condition that the parents actually needed it so that we were not artificially creating a situation for a child to potentially be distressed just to serve our needs. She said that was fine.

Somuddled good news.

That’s really good to hear, thank you for the update. Good luck to you so muddled and cherrypie!

Not a single sex couple and haven't started our journey yet. I have PCOS and I don't feel able to go through the pain and turmoil of IVF, even before I knew of my health problems, I had a strong pull to adoption there are so many children who need a loving home and if I can make that happen for a child then I will be complete.