Adopting after a late term miscarriage

[Yobbie]

My husband and I looked into adoption a few years ago, we both grew up in disadvantaged house holds and are very aware how lucky we are to have the life and the means that we do and to give not only that, but all of the love we have to give to a child in need really appeals to us both.

When we began the process we ended up discovering I was pregnant so it all stopped. We had a child who is now three years old. Unfortunately we suffered a very late term miscarriage recently for a much wanted baby and both feel very upset that our family isn't growing.

We've spoken a lot over the last couple of weeks about whether we would try again or not, and both agree that what we both want is to grow our family and whether it is through pregnancy and birth or adoption is by the by for us. Our local county adoption service has specified on their website they have a significantly higher than usual amount of under 1s looking for homes. This is ideal for us as our child was expecting a baby to come home at some point, and we feel would cope better with a younger child than an older. We would be happy to adopt any age under 5 as we would like our kids to be in a similar stage of life.

I'm just wondering if this is a positive thing, that we are channelling heartache into giving a stable loving home to a child in need - something we had considered before what has happened. Or if it's too raw, I'm grieving and this is a red flag that I'm keen to enquire about this so soon?

Obviously it's a long drawn out process with no guarantees, but I don't want to even start the process if it isn't the right thing for the child who would possibly be matched with us.

Has anyone any experiences or thoughts on this?

They will want you to be at least 6 months past your miscarriage and probably to have gone through some counselling. You may well find you need more than 6 months. The adoption process is emotionally stressful, you need to have healed.

They will want any child you bring home to be at least 2 years younger than your current child (or more). No way could you adopt a child the same age or older.

You will need to understand this isn't a 'playmate' for your birth child, but a person in their own right who my well have additional emotional or other needs.

We waited 12 months after being told IVF wouldn't work to start the adoption process (which was after a miscarriage).

We didn't speak at all about babies etc in that time, and we needed time to heal, mourn and also reconnect as a couple.
I was planning to chat about adoption on a holiday we had coming up, but then an advert came on the radio and my OH said 'Why don't we go to that evening event?' so it was fate in a way.
But when we did decide to start the process it took 9 months to complete, which I have heard is quite quick.

As someone previously mentioned, you will need a min of 6 months after the miscarriage, probably more as it was late term, and I think you should have counselling as it will only be a good thing.
So realistically you would be looking at maybe 15 months minimum if you waited 6 months and it took 9 month to get approved. And then you have to be matched, which can take 2 weeks or 2+ years.

Also, you mention you have still been discussing having another baby the last couple of weeks, so if you plan to adopt this will need to be put to bed and the adoption agency would need to know you are 100% not going to have a birth child.

I’m so sorry for your loss. Of course you’re still grieving and I expect that process will take a while. Looking at adoption as an option at this stage is fairly natural given you want another child and of course need to think about whether another pregnancy is the right thing for you or whether you look at alternatives, it’s part of the process of change and loss.

It’s too soon to move forward with the process though. Give yourself time to heal physically and emotionally, and see how you feel down the line, adoption will be an option for you whenever/if ever you decide it’s right for you but just now give yourself time to mourn your loss.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

I've had 4 miscarriages now (early not late so I can only imagine your grief) and we're considering foster to adopt now.

We spoke to our regional adoption agency and they've advised us to take 6 months to grieve, move on from a birth child, research adoption, early permanence etc.

What we've learned so far (and we have a lot more to learn!) Is that we absolutely cannot go into adoption thinking it's 'the same' as a birth child. Absolutely there are challenges parenting any child (Inc birth child) but adoption opens a whole new list of possible challenges. I've suddenly started noticing that when I take my son to the Dr they always say "any family history of xyz" and of course with an adoptive child I'll need to say that we don't know, also drugs and alcohol in pregnancy are very common in babies that are adopted at a young age and this raises a lot of things we need to research too, did the mother take folic acid in pregnancy? Was the hearing checked at birth? did they have all their baby vaccinations in time? What about whooping cough vacc which is given to the mother towards the end of the pregnancy? Also a birth child there are no "hoops" to jump through to prove you can be a parent, no spare room needed, no financial planning, no assessment of you as a couple in anyway yet with adopting (right so!) This is a massive thing.

All this said we're still naïve ourselves and researching a lot, absolutely no experts at all. We still want to go down the foster to adopt route despite all the possible difficulties and I wish you all the very best with everything, sorry again for your loss, it must be true devastating

(sorry i should add that my birth child is also 3 🙂)