My husband and I have a 15 year old daughter who joined our family through adoption in the UK. It was a case of being in the right place at the right time that enabled us to adopt her when she was 3 months old.
Prior to adopting, our fertility journey consisted of several rounds of treatment. The catalyst for stopping the treatment, in my case, was my health; it became a choice between my health and our fertility treatment. At this point, we felt as though we had nobody to talk to - and that was the hardest part of our journey.
We launched ourselves into the adoption arena, knowing very little. We reached out and started talking to lots of people in the adoption field who were at different stages of the process. We received lots of great advice that helped our understanding. It is a challenging process but being resilient and never being derailed from our goal kept us focused. We started the process for international adoption and then with guidance from our Social Worker we converted to domestic adoption, not realising what underpinned her decision to persuade us to make this change.
We did a 6 day adoptive parent preparation course and finally, we found support from others who were in the same situation. For the first time in our journey, we felt we had somebody who understood us. We made friends and the support was just what we needed. Eight months later we had finished our paperwork and having been approved to adopt, we needed a holiday so we came to New Zealand and also Australia. We had only been back in the UK for two weeks when we had a call from our Social Worker saying she wanted to see us about a possible match. We met her and saw the profile of our lovely daughter who was only three months old. After seeing her each day for two weeks, she finally came home to join our family.
Since moving to NZ we have joined an adoption group. Our network of friends who have adopted has spread from the US to the UK, France, and NZ. Adoption has created that shared experience that has developed into great friendships. We have all had different journeys through adoption. Some have been much easier than others, but it is a great supportive community that is always there for us.
