I'm seeking them. Several of them, the main ones at the moment seem to be "how long will we have to wait to be parents", "will anything go wrong between a match and a placement, and between placement and finalisation" and "will our child love us, will we love them, will we cope as parents, and will they have such difficulties that our life won't be the same again". Secondary to that is "is there any point in our stopping using contraceptives after a placement".
Someone should tell me to stop seeking answers on the internet. Of course I can no more do that than fly to the moon.
What is interesting (and probably partly what makes me keep looking) is the differing sets of answers you find depending on where you look. One UK adoption board, and some "adoption situations" sites (similar to adoption facilitators) seem to give the answer to the first question as "really quickly, it's magic" (with the addendum by the second group of sites of "if you have lots of money"). The other main UK board, and the main US board I read, give the answer "not for years and years and you might end up giving up or changing route". Well, at least we've already done the changing route thing.
The UK adoption message boards generally suggest that nothing will go wrong between match and finalisation unless (and it's a big unless) the social workers are truly incompetent. But the US board has lots of horror stories. In contrast, there's a lot of stiff-upper-lip, kids are resilient, even those that have come through foster care, sure we can't leave our 13 year old alone for a minute but we love him, on the US boards and blogs; the smaller of the UK boards has a lot of sunshine, roses, and toddlers with "normal toddler tantrums" but the larger UK board can be really depressing. If you are considering adoption, steer clear. Or at least try and work out that the people who can spend lots of time posting are those with school age children who have such significant needs that the adoptive parents no longer work.
On the final question, one of the UK boards is linked to fertility treatment boards. So their answer is, pray hard enough and you'll get enough fairy dust that despite your great age you will have a healthy pregnancy. Even though I still have the wobbles, as in the post of the other day, I'm no longer sure I want to be pregnant. I want to have a baby, but I don't think I want to be pregnant.
3 comments:
I can completely understand that!
So can I!
I don't tend to visit forums I have to admit, partly due to time constraints and partly because i found fertility ones to be fairly depressing and a stark reminder that there are thousands of women out there going thru it which isn't necessarily comforting. Never thought of looking for adoption forums though, I'd like to think that they were full of happy parents totally in love with their kids than adoptive parents haivng difficulties that are more extreme than what biological parents have.
The internet it so evil. Really.
The real answer is, it depends. Every situation is different. I know you know this logically, but it's really true.
Me, I'm a happy adoptive parent. I have a beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous almost 2 year old boy. We couldn't be happier. (I know you know this too.)
I know it's hard, but the internet only brings out the worst in humanity. Try to ignore it if you can.
I hope something happens for you soon. The waiting is the worst part of all, I think. Hugs.
Post a Comment