My OH are in our mid 20's. we got married 18months ago and would very very much love to one day become parents to children of our own. However, given the current financial climate, hubby's professional loans from his barrister training days and the mere fact I'm currently slightly over half way through a PhD, we think it's not yet the right time for us to start trying. A down side of this is that I am as broody as people come- my PhD is on the transition to parenthood and I'm a neonatal nurse so it's difficult to imagine someone else who loves babies more and who yearns more to be a mummy herself. I've started doing some shifts on neonatal units alongside my PhD but now hubby and I are considering fostering- not long term or even short term fostering but "just" short break or disability break fostering where a kid would come to stay with us one or 2 weekends a month to give their parents a much needed break so that they are able to stay within their natural network most of the time.
We always thought we'd foster one day but kind of expected it to be way off in the future but now we think "why wait"? As a children's nurse and a lawyer I think that one day we'll (hopefully) make good parents so why wait until we've had the experience of having our own brood when the foster services are stretched to capacity and need volunteers now and we'd like a kid (of any age) in our home on the odd occasion now? We've seen lots of adverts lately for fostering and each stress that fosterer's can come from all walks and stages of life.
And so we have the social worker coming tonight for our first assessment- eeek! Does anyone know what we might expect from such a visit?
Thanks!