Lies and hearsay and the people that changed our lives
We believed that we would not be allowed to adopt.
1) I was diabetic and overweight
2) We had dogs
3) We lived in a poorer area and our house is horrible (read- doesn't look like a picture perfect normal house)
4) We had some debt and we had no savings
1) I had heard from someone I barely knew that they were turned down because they were overweight and it might cause health issue in the future. This seemed grossly unfair and draconian and I felt we had no chance to adopt as I was over weight AND had a life long health condition. If they couldn't without a health condition there was no way I could.
2) Dogs are seen in the media as vicious baby biting buggers that terrorise neighbourhoods and if they get one sniff of a child they try to tear its face off. Having one might have been acceptable but having two, surely would be a huge no,no. Of course anyone with dogs will tell you how loyal and loving they are and how gentle they can be. I, of course, would never leave a child, especially a small child, alone in the house with them, but the perception of dogs 'told' me that we wouldn't be allowed to adopt because of them.
3) Part council estate, part owned but mainly council estate. Apart from the fact I grew up on a council estate that was the same, though a bit more owned than where I am here, I decided the area was not affluent enough to be considered for adopting a child. Then came our house, not well decorated (we hate decorating) and full to the brim with years of stuff and generally not a showhome. Who would let someone live here?
4) We had debt- not huge but we had some. We had again heard that a couple had to work two jobs each to build savings for a year before they adopted. We would never manage that with the hectic job of me being a teacher. The thought of gaining savings seemed like a mountain we couldn't climb.
All in all, through things we had been told we constructed a view that we wouldn't be allowed to adopt. I won't mention some of the other things we had been told but none of it was positive.
We discussed if by 40 a miracle hadn't happened we would look into fostering as they were less stringent in their rules...again, not sure where we got this information from- somewhere in the ether.
I had contacted our local authority regarding fostering and exchanged a few emails but no more.
So, we settle on this information and became convinced that we were not eligible to adopt so never thought of trying. The thought of fostering was there and was to be a plan for after 40.
At 39 our lives changed due to a wonderful couple, very good friends of ours, who had just had a baby...
Revelations
We visited our friends and their newborn of a month or so to spend the day with them and spend time with their little one. Theirs was the first baby I had held for a long, long time. They didn't know that when we first met their little one. I spent a lot of the day holding them and this was a inner revelation to me as I had avoided other people's babies somewhat. I was being encouraged to hold and this was the first time any parents had done this. They didn't know this. Up till now Karl and I had been the ones to avoid in some unspoken rule. The last time I had held a baby before this was a friends child- almost 8 years previously. The fact that these two wonderful friends instinctively trusted me was a revelation.
I had been around little ones before, don't get me wrong, I had run an infants drama class for 5-7 year olds quite successfully but that was 'work' even though I enjoyed it, it wasn't quite the same.
The conversation turned, I think, to why we hadn't looked into having children further (they knew already that I couldn't conceive). I reeled off the reasons we couldn't adopt and how unfair they were and talked about fostering at a later stage. Then we were asked the most simple of questions that no one had ever asked before:
'Have you ever talked to someone involved in adoption about this?'
'No'.
No. no we hadn't. we took the hearsay and skewed stories told to us and run with it and drawn our own conclusions.
That night, on the way home, we had a long discussion about it, not hopeful at all as it was ingrained that we were not suitable. It was agreed that I would contact some local authorities and test the water.
It is fair to say that these friends and their little one have changed our lives and given us hope. We are eternally grateful to them for being the only ones to ever ask us this question. Alongside being very good friends, this is one of the reasons we chose them as referees for us as we wanted them to share in our journey as they started it. The journey is not over yet, far from it, but I hope one day we will be doing family things together with our children (even though ours are likely to be older). I look forward to the day when we can all sit down together and complete the circle that they started to draw for us two years ago.
1) I was diabetic and overweight
2) We had dogs
3) We lived in a poorer area and our house is horrible (read- doesn't look like a picture perfect normal house)
4) We had some debt and we had no savings
1) I had heard from someone I barely knew that they were turned down because they were overweight and it might cause health issue in the future. This seemed grossly unfair and draconian and I felt we had no chance to adopt as I was over weight AND had a life long health condition. If they couldn't without a health condition there was no way I could.
2) Dogs are seen in the media as vicious baby biting buggers that terrorise neighbourhoods and if they get one sniff of a child they try to tear its face off. Having one might have been acceptable but having two, surely would be a huge no,no. Of course anyone with dogs will tell you how loyal and loving they are and how gentle they can be. I, of course, would never leave a child, especially a small child, alone in the house with them, but the perception of dogs 'told' me that we wouldn't be allowed to adopt because of them.
3) Part council estate, part owned but mainly council estate. Apart from the fact I grew up on a council estate that was the same, though a bit more owned than where I am here, I decided the area was not affluent enough to be considered for adopting a child. Then came our house, not well decorated (we hate decorating) and full to the brim with years of stuff and generally not a showhome. Who would let someone live here?
4) We had debt- not huge but we had some. We had again heard that a couple had to work two jobs each to build savings for a year before they adopted. We would never manage that with the hectic job of me being a teacher. The thought of gaining savings seemed like a mountain we couldn't climb.
All in all, through things we had been told we constructed a view that we wouldn't be allowed to adopt. I won't mention some of the other things we had been told but none of it was positive.
We discussed if by 40 a miracle hadn't happened we would look into fostering as they were less stringent in their rules...again, not sure where we got this information from- somewhere in the ether.
I had contacted our local authority regarding fostering and exchanged a few emails but no more.
So, we settle on this information and became convinced that we were not eligible to adopt so never thought of trying. The thought of fostering was there and was to be a plan for after 40.
At 39 our lives changed due to a wonderful couple, very good friends of ours, who had just had a baby...
Revelations
We visited our friends and their newborn of a month or so to spend the day with them and spend time with their little one. Theirs was the first baby I had held for a long, long time. They didn't know that when we first met their little one. I spent a lot of the day holding them and this was a inner revelation to me as I had avoided other people's babies somewhat. I was being encouraged to hold and this was the first time any parents had done this. They didn't know this. Up till now Karl and I had been the ones to avoid in some unspoken rule. The last time I had held a baby before this was a friends child- almost 8 years previously. The fact that these two wonderful friends instinctively trusted me was a revelation.
I had been around little ones before, don't get me wrong, I had run an infants drama class for 5-7 year olds quite successfully but that was 'work' even though I enjoyed it, it wasn't quite the same.
The conversation turned, I think, to why we hadn't looked into having children further (they knew already that I couldn't conceive). I reeled off the reasons we couldn't adopt and how unfair they were and talked about fostering at a later stage. Then we were asked the most simple of questions that no one had ever asked before:
'Have you ever talked to someone involved in adoption about this?'
'No'.
No. no we hadn't. we took the hearsay and skewed stories told to us and run with it and drawn our own conclusions.
That night, on the way home, we had a long discussion about it, not hopeful at all as it was ingrained that we were not suitable. It was agreed that I would contact some local authorities and test the water.
It is fair to say that these friends and their little one have changed our lives and given us hope. We are eternally grateful to them for being the only ones to ever ask us this question. Alongside being very good friends, this is one of the reasons we chose them as referees for us as we wanted them to share in our journey as they started it. The journey is not over yet, far from it, but I hope one day we will be doing family things together with our children (even though ours are likely to be older). I look forward to the day when we can all sit down together and complete the circle that they started to draw for us two years ago.
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