This week is LGBTQ+ Adoption and Fostering Week and as an adoptive gay day of three it always gets me thinking about the journey we’ve been on to build our family. Honestly, it has been an incredibly exciting, magical, wonderful yet emotional, stressful and daunting road to parenthood.
Our story is not unique and there are hundreds of queer families across the UK who have been through the adoption process or battled through the complexities of surrogacy or experienced the ups and downs of their adventures in donor conception, fertility or co-parenting. As LGBTQ+ people none of us have an easy route to creating a family.
LGBTQ+ Adoption and Fostering Week aims to highlight the option of adoption and encourage people to explore this route, especially with over 80,000 children currently in care within England and something I am so passionate to encourage others to do.
I am not here to paint adoption as a super easy process as during our adoption process my husband and I went through a range of feelings and at times were severely fatigued by the system and emotional strain. In an upcoming episode of Some Families my co-host Lotte Jeffs and I discuss post-adoption depression with lesbian adopters Didi and Priscilla, which a very real, and medically proven, condition.
I cannot recall the number of interviews we went through but our first was via phone with our adoption agency following an information evening we attended. The stranger on the other end of the phone was the one who kicked off the in-depth probing that we soon got used too. I fell at the first hurdle and admitted to being a social smoker, with my last cigarette being three months previous. I felt I needed to be honest and open but it was like she had banged the Britain’s Got Talent red buzzer and we were denied moving forward till I was at least six months “clean”. We waited then “re-auditioned” this time moving to the next round, the face to face interview. What followed were months of in-depth interviews with our allocated social worker before we were ready to make it to the live shows, aka an audience of 12 who would make a jury decision on whether we were suitable candidates to adopt children. Our social worker had written a 50 page document for the panel, named a PAR (Prospective Adopters Report), which was basically our biography including all our thoughts and feelings on ourselves and the world including identity, religion and even our own sexual relationship.
This year, as we went back into the process to adopt our youngest son, I looked back through this document and felt so incredibly lucky to have it. Unless you are a reality star with a great book deal for Christmas how many can say they have their own biography ready and written. Our interviews were like therapy sessions, I discovered so much about my husband and vice versa. We challenged our preconceptions of parenting and we had to dig deep to work out exactly what we wanted in a child and be on the same page about it. The same is of course true for those going through IUI, IVF, surrogacy or other means, the conversations and in-depth thoughts around donors, surrogates and dealing with the realities of bringing someone into the world make us all stronger and prepare us for parenting in the modern world. The stressful moments ultimately make anyone going through these processes, gay or straight, a more considered, stronger and emotionally rich parent.
Whilst our reality show style auditions to become parents where at times testing the whole process only lasted less than a year. Before we knew it my husband and I were knocking on the door of our daughter and son's foster carer. The door swung open and there she was, our daughter. A 2 year old beaming at us with the cheeky grin and infectious laugh that are now part of our every day. We walked into the living room and she excitedly introduced us to her baby brother, our son. A seven-month-old gorgeous boy staring up into the eyes of his daddies. When you adopt one of things you understand through training is that you shouldn’t expect to fall in love with your children straight away. You need time to get to know each other and as with any relationship love doesn’t always come overnight, but in that exact moment my husband and I experienced a strong and forceful love at first sight. Fast forward 18 months and we get a surprise call that a sibling had been born and that he was in care. Suddenly, and for the second time, our lives changed again in a moment. There was no decision to be made. He was part of our family the moment we knew he existed and we worked quickly to get him home for his first Christmas which meant going through the whole process again but condensed into a month period.
The stressful moments ultimately make anyone going through these processes, gay or straight, a more considered, stronger and emotionally rich parent.
I love our family. Our children are simply wonderful. They are funny, clever, witty and so loving. We’ve had our difficult times over lockdown, like any family, and we are prepared for the road ahead as we begin to help our children piece together their life stories and understand the what, why and how of their early years. It has been a beautiful journey and I hope many more people look at this parenting option, LGBTQ+ or straight, and help the 80,000 children out there find a happy and loving home.
And my advice for those going through the process? Be patient in those quiet moments, take a deep breath during the faster moments and think of the end goal, the moment you lock eyes with your new child for the first time and potentially experience love at first sight.
Some Families is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.