NAW 2012 Day 4: Our Adoption Story by Maryam Lane
We spent 7 years trying to have a child. But in the last 15
months we have become parent to 3 children through adoption. This is our
story....
Writing this all down is actually the first time I have done
this although I have been blogging about our life since we adopted for a while
now. My husband and I met over 10 years ago and got married after a couple of
years. We were young but not too young to know that we wanted a family straight
away and were ready for it. Like many people who have suffered infertility, we
spent a long time waiting and hoping each month would be ‘the month’. It never
was and we embarked on medical investigations which took a long time as well.
Eventually, 6 years after our wedding we met the end of that road whereby we
were told we would never be parents naturally and that all means to help us
medically had been exhausted. This was a dark time for both of us and we took
another year or so to recover, all the time surrounded by friends and family
who fell pregnant time and time again at the drop of a hat. We grieved for lost
dreams and licked our wounds.
We had discussed adoption previously but now we sat down and
really considered it properly and felt that yes, this was something we wanted
to do. Adoption doesn’t appeal to everyone but I can honestly say that it did
for us, perhaps because our culture and the way we were both brought up really
encouraged fostering and adoption. We chose a Voluntary Agency and embarked on
the Home Study process – but not until we had been on the Preparation Course of
5 days. It was at this that we really fully understood that adoption is not
about you becoming a parent but about a child (or children) finding parents. It
is not a fix to the desire to mother, it is an opportunity and process whereby
the needs of the child come above all else particularly due the background they
may have come from. We were Approved in December 2010 and luckily found our
children at the end of January 2011.
Finding your child is a funny process – its rather like
‘shopping’ for a baby...you are presented with profiles and of course your
heart tells you to take them all. Especially when you read their background and
see their faces. But you have to put your emotions aside and be realistic...you
have to consider properly the type of child you could parent which is something
you investigate at length in the Home Study process. People also talk about how
when you see your child’s photo for the very first time, you ‘know’ they are
the one. Well in our case that was true....I went to an Exchange Day and their
photo was pinned to a board amongst hundreds of others and hand on heart, it
jumped out at me. I don’t know why – their faces, their names, their details, I
felt a connection. I still remember it
now.
Our eldest son and daughter moved in with us in the Summer
of 2011, aged 13 and 25 months. The first few months were really hard. We were
first time parents and they were in chaos – not just because of the move and
change but because of other personal factors. Attachment was hard with both but
different. Dear Son 1 (DS1) resisted all attempts at attaching with me but
clutched on to my husband. He was volatile, aggressive and violent at times.
Dear Daughter (DD) was desperate and needy and angry. I didn’t know a small
baby could feel such fury. The first 2 months passed in a bit of a haze as they
and we found our feet. We instilled a routine and used therapeutic parenting
techniques to help with attachment and we began to build bonds. Somewhere
around month 3 we turned a corner and bit by bit we became a family full of
love and it felt like they had been here forever.
When they had been with us 7 months we received a bombshell.
Birth Mother had had another baby. We were shown a photograph and asked if we
would consider taking their full sibling on too. We spent a couple of months
agonising over this – it was so soon since DS1 and DD had been placed and we
worried greatly that it was too quick. We wanted more children – but hadn’t
anticipated it being this fast! We worried also if it would be too much for us
and if we could manage. But no matter the practicalities of it, which we were
fortunately able to sort out, we kept coming back to the fact that this was
their brother and they should all be together. So we proceeded with a fast-tracked
Home Study and Approval, less than a year since DS1 and DD had moved in. We
couldn’t believe we were doing it again!
A few weeks ago, DS2 arrived. We are now parents to a 3 year
old, 2 year old and almost 1 year old. 15 months ago we had no children and now
we have 3! So far, things are going great, he’s settling in well and DS1 and DD
have taken to him amazingly well.
Adoption is an amazing thing. Sometimes I have to pinch
myself that this all really happened. Life has changed so much from how it used
to be but we love it. There is a happy ending in it all for everyone in our
case but its not the happy ending most people imagine when they think about
adoption. We have attachment issues we still have to take account of, contact
with social workers and massive question marks hanging over all their heads for
the future because of their genetic and personal backgrounds. Like all adopters we have also had to accept
that we ‘share’ our children with their birth family and yet we have
safeguarding concerns to be aware of. Sometimes people praise us for what we
have done but it makes me uncomfortable. Yes we deal with and have dealt with a
lot. There are all sorts of things that we have missed out on and all sorts of
issues that we have to deal with that biological parents will never have to
consider. But we aren’t amazing super-humans, we just did what I believe most
people would have done in our situation. And for all the stress and tiredness and the
fact I don’t sit down all day, life is good. We aren’t a conventional family
but we are a family and whatever the future throws at us, I think we will
manage somehow.
You can read more about Maryam and her family at: www.maryamlane.blogspot.co.uk
If you are interested in finding out more about adoption then visit
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