Kristina and David both had a ‘heart for adoption’ and hoped to adopt a sibling group of two, under three years old. When a potential match came up to adopt through early permanence (EP) their faith helped guide them to make a life-changing decision. Kristina shares their story.
From a young age, I knew that adoption would be part of my route to parenthood. Early on in our relationship, my husband, Dave and I, had a conversation about medical issues that may have meant that conceiving naturally may be difficult for us. It was a very short conversation because we both had a heart for adoption.
I was no means ‘old’ but knew that if we adopted first the chances of pregnancy would reduce further as I got older. So, we tried, and it didn’t happen. Tests confirmed that without intervention, it wouldn’t. Fertility issues were secondary to our decision to adopt. In fact, I feel enormous guilt that we even tried, a feeling that I have since learnt is not uncommon for adoptive parents.
So…June 2020. We’d turned down a referral to a fertility clinic and started researching adoption agencies. One Adoption North and Humber felt like the right fit for us. We watched an information video and a few months later sent off our expression of interest. In the November, we had an initial assessment and after awaiting allocation to a social worker [due to the pandemic], started stage one of the assessment process in April 2021. Stage one is mostly a lot of paperwork and background checks, and we soon progressed to stage two, where our social worker interviewed us on an almost weekly basis to discuss the things that we had submitted during stage one on ‘Family Forms’ which ask questions about every aspect of your life.
At the end of stage two we were presented with our Prospective Adopters Report, and it reflected us so incredibly well. We went to panel and after speaking with us, they recommended our approval as adopters and shortly after we were approved by the Agency Decision Maker.
Then came family finding, the hardest part of the process with a lot of waiting - a much slower part compared to the intensity of stage two. We were open to both traditional adoption and Early Permanence, where you’re dual approved as foster carers and adopters and first foster a child, often at a very young age, before going on to adopt them, if the court decides that is the best plan for the child. We were aware that any child we fostered through EP may return to their birth family. We’d spoken about how we were hoping to adopt a sibling group of two, under three years old. We were told that it would need to be two boys or two girls as we only have a two bedroomed house and under fostering regulations, boys and girls couldn’t share a room. We were also told that it would be highly unlikely that we’d be able to do EP as older siblings usually have a plan of traditional adoption.
In February 2022, our social worker called to say she had a potential match. A 13-month-old boy whose plan was traditional adoption but due to circumstances, needed to go straight to his forever home under EP. She added that birth mum was pregnant and whilst there were currently no plans for the baby, it may be that the baby (gender unknown) would need to be placed with us as well. We had two hours to decide. As Christians we prayed and strongly felt that God was telling us that this was our little boy. The following morning, we met with the social workers and that afternoon we went to meet our son for the first time. We were excited, nervous, emotional but as soon as we saw him, we fell in love. We sat on the floor to play, and he gradually came to us and sat on our knees. He came home two days later.
Our son seemed to settle in immediately, although looking back at pictures I now see a sadness in his eyes that I didn’t see at the time. Night-time was a different story. He woke every 5-30 minutes for two weeks and so after a lot of research on sleep we removed the bottle he was using as a sleep prop. He continued to wake approximately three times a night for the following four weeks, so we worked with the health visiting team and used the gradual retreat technique to support him to sleep independently. It had been a very exhausting, emotional time!
As it was EP, our son still had supervised family time with his birth mum twice a week. His social worker asked us to meet her and then start dropping him directly with her at family time. We were so nervous about meeting her but after a rocky start, we really started to build a positive relationship and I will be forever grateful to that social worker for that opportunity. We even supervised some contacts and spent our son’s birthday together. She was reassured that her children were safe, happy, and loved and we can tell our children things about her that will be in no social worker’s report.
Four months after our son was placed, we picked our daughter up from the hospital at one day old. The social workers brought her out to us and whilst we were so happy for the arrival of this beautiful baby girl, we felt very sad both for her and her other mummy. Our son was fascinated by his sister at first but, as he had only been with us for four months, he felt threatened and didn’t like Dave holding her, trying to muscle his way in between them.
Not knowing if the children would be with us forever was difficult but we felt God had told us these would be our children. Our social worker talked through all this with us.
I was blessed to have almost two years off work with the children and this was a massive help with taking them to family time, as Dave was working full time.
There is no denying that the adoption process is extremely intense with big highs and lows but knowing what a lot of these children have been through, I don’t see any other way and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Without going through this process, we wouldn’t have our two incredible children. Our son still struggles with his story sometimes and will ask about his other mummy, so we get out his life story book and tell him all about her. Our daughter doesn’t remember anything different to our life now, but we suspect she will ask questions as she gets older, and we will always be honest with her about her roots.
Family life is complete chaos with two toddlers only 18 months apart! Our social worker was amazing throughout. When our son stopped seeing his birth mum, his behaviour changed, and she helped us get funding for an enhanced one-to-one adoptive parenting course. I read, A LOT, so have developed a good knowledge about adoption, trauma, and the effects on the child, as well as therapeutic parenting and my advice to anyone considering adoption is to prepare yourself as much as possible. It is not an easy process and with EP there is uncertainty which you must learn to manage. Be aware of what it entails and how long it goes on for. But for all that, I wouldn’t change it for the world.