Sense checking assumptions ?

[cleannottidy]

Hi,
I was hoping to get a steer from collective wisdom here.
I want to add to my family and am concerned exploring one option may cause issues with others.

I have a 3year old biological son with my ex husband and when the marriage ended 2 years ago found myself mourning the "obvious" future family rather than the husband. I want my child to have siblings, but I'm keen he remains the eldest.

I assumed its very difficult to adopt young children so I'd have to explore if donor fertility treatments are an option to expand my family now or wait till my child was maybe 5 to explore adoption?

Is there anything to stop me potentially (extreme stars aligning) having a donor child then adopting a child with an age between my son and the donor child.

(Apologies if any of the terms are incorrect I'm still early on working out the words and worlds)

There is no reason why you can’t explore adoption now. Normally social workers would expect a minimum of 2 years between a birth and adopted child so if you started now its likely that your existing child will be around 5 anyway.
Its not seen as a great idea to adopt children out of age order so yes I think you would probably find it difficult.
But it you are exloring donor conception, if it works why don’t you just have 2 that way. Or just crack on with the adoption route and have 2 adopted children.
It isnt that difficult to adopt young children, But what I would say is don’t adopt to give your child a sibling. Most adopted children will have some level of trauma and additional needs - it may not result in the sibling relationship you are imagining and parenting an adopted child will be a very different experience for you.

We have a 5 year old and are approved for age 0-3 now, and the process has taken a long long time so dont worry about time too much. There had to be a 2 year age gap below the youngest child so i dont think you could have another and then adopt in the middle but would need to adopt 2 years below as far as I know.

Hi cleannottidy we had fertility treatment prior to adopting. We have a birth child who was nine when our three year old adopted son joined us. Between having her and our son joining us we had several rounds of donor egg IVF. Please tag me in if you want to ask any questions, you can do that by typing @ and my name, @cleannottidy (I'm just saying this in case you are new here!)

Anyway, in terms of the ages of your children, the best situation is probably for your adopted child to be the youngest. This will be because the adopted child may well be emotionally or educationally younger than their chronological age. This is not always the case! But broadly speaking your adopted child will most likely put the biggest strain on things and will require your attention in a certain way. So it is helpful for them to be chronologically the youngest and to go to bed earlier and allow you to spend time with your other child or children.

In terms of the donor treatment you could use your eggs and donor sperm or use a donated embryo. If you use your own eggs, your age will be a potential factor. So leaving the fertility treatment to later is not a good idea, if you have decided to do it.

So in your shoes, if you wish to proceed with donor treatment, and can afford it, I'd do that before looking into adoption.

I’d echo either having children via donor and/or adoption is fine but I’d expect the adopted child to be the youngest. There are good reasons for not changing birth order within a family so squeezing and adopted child between two birth children is likely to be tricky but you could start the adoption process now and have a 2/3 year age gap if that’s what you’re aiming for.