Nickey, Nickey and Tony, Page, Fiona, Sarah, Louise, Kerry, Hollie, Roddy and Alex, Jacqui and Robert, Julie and Nick, Lucy B, Simon , Avril, Kim, Segun and Seyi , Kerry and Amerjeet, Diane and James, Collette and Adam, Zoe, Robert and Marilyn, and Avril and Simon mention love
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“I forget that I didn’t have her when she was a baby”
“At the end of this visit I remember picking my daughter up, giving her a massive hug and I was crying, in fact crying isn’t the word I would use, I was sobbing and she just looked at me and she just threw her arms around me and hugged me ”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“In fact, in some respects, I think I probably love her more because I feel so honoured to have been given the opportunity to be a mum. Whereas, you know, many people kind of fall into motherhood.”
How would you feel if your child wanted to see their birth family in the future?
“I would try not to be jealous, and try to be quite grown up about it, but, you know, I’m sure there will always be, there thinking ‘Oh, I hope she doesn’t love them more than me’.”
How is adopting children different to birth children?
“...the bond developing and the trust developing, and the love developing between a new born baby and the birth parents… And that…and I always feel quite envious, and quite jealous that…you know, that we missed out on doing that with our children, bu”
How was it when you first met your child/ren?
“They’d told me he liked football so I’d got him a football and he’d got me some flowers.”
How is it being a single adopter?
“I love him enough for a mother, father, aunty, uncle”
How did it feel having your child taken into care?
“I sat outside the hospital for twenty four hours hoping to catch his parents walking in and out. But of course I wouldn’t know who they were”
Have you thought about your child since they went in to care?
“Just the wondering, the wondering if I’d passed him in the street, or, had he gone to the same school as my son? Or…Just not knowing.”
How did it feel having your child taken into care?
“I actually went insane when I gave him up because I do love him so much”
Have you decided to look for your birth family?
“I met my dad at about sixteen years of age. I lived with him for a while but I’d rather not see him anymore because he was so nasty to me”
Do you know why you were taken in to care?
“I know why I was taken into care, it was because my mum was a druggie and a alcoholic and she doesn’t know how to look after children”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“I think it’s easy to get hung up about biology. Just ‘cause this child is not related to you by blood doesn’t mean that you can’t love them as much. That’s completely rubbish, you know. You just, you have a child, you care for that child, you lo”
Is adoption what you expected it to be?
“We’re a little community and we hope to build that community with another adopted child in the future”
How is it adopting a child with special needs?
“...little Jonny followed by little Jenny, running around in a grassy meadow. Life’s not like that. There is a lot to gain by adopting a special needs child.”
What are the brilliant things about adopting?
“‘Oh wow, so we’ll be like normal children’, and it suddenly dawned, dawned on me that our children didn’t feel at that point that they were like all the other children because normal children don’t have a social worker and don’t have to have a”
“ I learnt all about adoption and the fact I could adopt despite being single and also I could give up work and there would be an adoption allowance to help me adopt.”
How long did it take for you to bond with your child?
“ I was lying down on the sofa and I thought what on earth am I doing with somebody else’s baby here – it just seemed completely wrong, you know I had no bond ”
How did it feel having your child taken into care?
“I actually went insane when I gave him up because I do love him so much”
What is it like waiting to be adopted?
“I was old enough to understand what was going on and I felt like nobody loved me.”
Are you pleased you were adopted?
“I finally felt like I was loved by someone. Although it… didn’t necessarily need a court hearing and the words ‘you’re adopted’, to say… it was just more I needed to be settled into a family”
What do you think are the issues adopters face?
“...that they can love a child for no matter what’s happened to them or how they behave but always be there for them.”
How did your adoptive parents help you to come to terms with being adopted?
“My parents helped me overcome my trauma of before my adoption by always being there for me, and never giving up on me, and always loving me.”
How do your emotions over your past play out?
“...now that I look back on it, I feel like I could have behaved in a more positive way, but I don’t recall… I don’t recall…you know… I needed help. ”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“I think that love is… a thing that is special for each person. And it doesn’t, to me, as a foster carer, as an adopter and as a birth mother, I’ve loved each child for who they are. ”
What is the hardest thing about adopting?
“What it was like to just be left on the floor and not fed and not given toys and not given love.”
What are the brilliant things about adopting?
“But we went in and they were asleep and their beds were next to each other with their arms round each other. And that was fantastic to see and now they’re best friends.”
“It was better for her to be adopted rather - to have a mummy and daddy rather than have guardians for the rest of her life, which was the decision to go ahead and adopt. ”
How long did it take for you to bond with your child?
“It was really difficult in fact it came to about the seventh day I got home I was emotionally exhausted I cried all night I thought he didn’t like me”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“Yeah right now I would say without any doubt in my mind that I can love them both – I don’t love our adopted son any differently”
What would you say to anybody thinking about adoption?
“So I would say go for it, you are going to give a child a life, a home and love and I don’t think there is anything more than love ever in the whole world”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“I’ve also got a birth son who’s grown up and I don’t’ feel any differently towards these 2 than I do to him not in the slightest there’s absolutely no difference. ”
What would you say to anybody thinking about adoption?
“And don’t wait, don’t think we’ll put it off and we’ll wait for a few years, just do it!”
Is it strange to ultimately look after someone else's child?
“ ...you don’t look at it as somebody else’s child. I never, I never did. It was strange, it was just immediate bond with both of them”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“ I can honestly say hand on heart we do love him as much as we do our own. Obviously in certain ways because of their ages, one will drive you mad one day, and one will drive you mad the next, but the bottom line is they are loved both the same definitel”
Is it strange to ultimately look after someone else's child?
“...when you get a child of 8 months who you’ve only known a few days, you don’t know them in depth, but you soon do. We know, it’s just as if he’s been there from the beginning you know, crease on his face, little pimples, so all of a sudden you t”
How did your adoptive parents help you to come to terms with being adopted?
“but I think in my experience no matter how much they loved me there was still always some sort of gap or emptiness”
“When the youngest of our oldest children went off to university, Marilyn got a very bad case of empty nest syndrome. ”
What are the brilliant things about adopting?
“ And the younger girl too. She, she often cuddles us and says ‘I love you’ and that’s... In fact, although I, I’ve spoken about them having a lot of behavioural problems, in some ways they are quite loving, and very polite and quite perfect childr”
How did your adoptive parents help you to come to terms with being adopted?
“I don’t think I knew how to react to it properly. Everything that had happened and now the fact that I.. I was settled and had something and, you know, I had love, and… you know, a family. ”