Thread by @MetroUK

As soon as the social worker called and uttered the words ‘are you sitting down?’ to me, I just knew what they were going to say. Baby number three, Ben, was on his way so my husband Adrian and I had a decision to make 🧵

#NationalAdoptionWeek

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We’d already adopted Ben’s two older brothers so we were asked if we’d be able to give a forever home to a third child. The answer to us wasn’t so simple – especially after initially having to put the whole adoption process on hold because of my cancer diagnosis.

But we couldn’t deprive Ben of his brothers, and we had enough love for another child, so we welcomed him into our home too.

Now, I can’t imagine a life without all three of them, and I wouldn’t change a thing about how it all happened.

When Adrian and I first started talking about adoption, we didn’t really have a plan. We just had a strong feeling that it was the right thing for us to do.

We loved the idea of foster-to-adopt because it put the child’s needs right at the heart of the adoption process.

Once we’d had our initial visits from our allocated social worker, our adoption journey started in 2013. It began with a lot of paperwork.

This took about six months in total to complete.

With all of this completed, we decided to go travelling too.

We spent four weeks in Vietnam and Cambodia and our plan was to have a lovely time travelling together before coming back to the UK and carrying on with our adoption journey – hopefully resulting in a family.

Unfortunately, after we got home, I wasn’t feeling well and found it increasingly difficult to eat or breathe. Initially I wasn’t too concerned, I just knew that I wasn’t feeling quite right, but put it down to something to do with the travelling.

I went to the doctor’s a day or two after our return, only to be whisked straight into hospital. Many tests later – and once malaria had been ruled out – I was told that I had cancer, Splenic Marginal Zone Lymphoma to be exact.

This is a rare non-Hodgkin lymphoma (blood cancer) that was based in my spleen, which is your body’s antibody factory, keeping you safe from disease and infections.

At the point of my diagnosis, our journey was put on hold so I could get well enough for my spleen to be removed.

After my spleen removal surgery, I had six months of chemotherapy and two years of further treatment, which consisted of monthly hospital visits for a further specialist drug treatment and three-monthly checks on my blood count.

The whole experience made me appreciate living in the moment. Having had to navigate showers and baths with a permanent PICC line in my arm – a long, thin tube inserted through a vein in my arm – made me promise myself that I’d never take anything for granted every again.

The pause for our adoption journey during my recovery felt like the sensible thing to do, but it never felt like the end of it completely – just an inconvenient happening that pushed us off course for a while.

Thinking back, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment we both felt that we were ready to start again. What we do remember is that we both had an overwhelming feeling that it was the right time, and we still had much to offer, so we jumped back into it in the spring of 2016.

With our life stories re-written and updated, we were ready for stage two of the adoption process. My health was in the spotlight – and rightly so.

With this stage successfully navigated – with both of us remaining fit we were finally accepted as prospective adopters in 2016.

In October of that same year, the long-awaited phone call came. A baby boy had been born and the social workers felt that he was a great match for us. His birth mother was sadly not in a position to be able to provide a stable and safe home for him to live in.

We met our son Jamie when he was six weeks old. He snuggled into my shoulder and fell fast asleep.

It was love at first sight. We got to know our baby boy through a series of visits and then finally he was ready to come home with us to stay when he was exactly 10 weeks old.

With foster-to-adopt, the legal process to being adoptive parents can be a bit of a bumpy ride. At some point, a birth uncle stepped forward to be considered as a suitable adoptive parent, but it didn’t go anywhere.

It wasn’t a happy thought that our dreams of a lovely family could be ripped apart at any moment.

We tried to focus on what was right in front of us – a tiny baby relying on us to care for his every need and not to be distracted by something we could do absolutely nothing about.

Thankfully, by the end of that year, the papers were signed and we had the most fantastic celebration day with all our friends and family around us. It was such a special occasion to have everyone together to hear from the Judge and to welcome Jamie into our family.

Just as we were starting to think about a sibling for our two and a half-year-old son, we had another phone call from our social worker.

Birth Mum was pregnant and a baby brother was expected. They asked us if we would consider having him as a foster-to-adopt placement.

We didn’t have to think twice, with Michael coming home from hospital at 12 days old. We were pretty clear about the process, so it felt familiar and easier the second time around.

It felt amazing to give our two little boys the chance to grow up together as part of our family.

When Michael was around 10 months old, we had another call asking if we’d consider adopting baby number three, Ben.

This felt harder, but I’m not sure if we were just kidding ourselves. Deep down, I think that we already knew that we were going to say yes to him.

I think that we would have felt very uneasy being the reason that the boys were separated and couldn’t imagine how we’d explain it in the future.

Our decision was based on love and not on things like money and bedrooms.

We knew that we’d find a way to give them all a happy and loving home. Ben came home to us from hospital at 12 days old and he is just brilliant.

When you watch them together, they are such a happy trio and they bring us an inordinate amount of joy.

Our adoption journey is almost at an end. With two of our boys adopted and the final court hearing for Ben just days away, it feels like we are the luckiest people on the planet.

What a great privilege it is to be parents to such a gorgeous trio of boys.