I have been mulling over this story for a while. Now I’m ready to tell it.
My husband and I came together late in life. we have four children between us, ranging from 25 to our youngest who is just 6. I was 40 years old when I gave birth to the wee one, but we still somehow felt like we had unfinished business…our flock of individual, unique and dearly loved children was simply not big enough.
It has been a three year journey of on-off discussion that has led us to the topic of Adoption. It has been our itch that we have been unable to scratch.
I would like to include our adoption story in this blog for one simple reason – it is quite simply the biggest life decision we will ever make as a family. It will be knitted in to the fabric of our future (assuming that we are successful in being accepted as adoptive parents) and must be acknowledged as an episode of our lives, even if we are not.
Step one has been to tell the children. I was nervous. This is not the same as announcing the prospect of a birth sibling via maternal pregnancy. The child or children who join us are likely to be pre-schoolers, forcibly removed from their birth family for their own safety and well-being. Their view of the world will be significantly different to the way our four relatively spoiled and cherished children see it. There may be no natural bond, in fact there is a high probability that the children we adopt may suffer with some kind of attachment disorder.
We are filled with many fears, although as the weeks progress these are dissipating gradually. Knowledge is power, as they say. Can we successfully mix our birth families with adopted children, without exposing our kids to disruption? Can we cope? Do we have the time and patience to re-parent a child or children that has been exposed to the worst kind of start in their short life? Will our apparently ‘unusual’ new parenting tactics lose us friends, at the time in our lives when we need them most? Will we be able to love and give to 6 birth-step-adopted siblings in equal measure?
These fears are not uncommon, of course. We would not be the first adoptive couple who have found themselves socially isolated by their friends who simply cannot see beyond the poor playground behaviours and the lack of traditional disciplinary tactics. Most couples coming to adoption do so because of infertility. Perhaps this is why I can see curiosity in the eyes of those friends I have told of our plans. Is it my paranoia, or are they really looking at me as though I’ve finally and spectacularly lost my marbles? That would be understandable. Coping with your own kids can be trial enough.
But, we are entering this with our eyes wide open. We are intent on scratching our itch, and our trump card is that we are six. We have four beautiful children to help us along the journey, so let the adventure begin!
Oh, and we’re going to need a bigger car.
