# Mr & Mrs Borneo's Adoption Journey



## borneo123

Hi ladies

This is my first post so forgive my ramblings !! I've been inspired, I've laughed, I've cried but most importantly your blogs have given me fresh hope that I can be a mum and DH can be a dad ..

Our road like everyone's has been a long emotional roller coaster but we've called time on ttc and spent the last 2 years reminding ourselves why we fell in love and having fun 😃

So now we find ourselves getting anxious nervous excited all over again but hopefully this road will have a very different ending with us becoming someone's mummy and daddy .. 

We have our first information evening next week with a LA and although we're reading all we can at the moment I just wondered if anyone could give us some realistic insight into what we can expect .. Any questions we should ask .. Any more reading we should do .. 

Looking forward to sharing our road with you all
😘


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## Tictoc

Hi and welcome. Whilst I adopted nearly 3 years ago for the first time I am new to this site.

I am guessing you have probably picked this up from the boards but getting started can be quite hard. Make sure you know what you want in terms of a child ie do you want the baby stage or happy to skip this? If you want the baby stage you might well find it harder to find an LA to progress with you but trust me babies are still being placed so there is an LA out there who will work with you - we were rejected by 8 before we found ours - lucky I'm stubborn!!

Please ask if you have any questions

Ask how many children they placed in the last 12 months and how many approved adopters they have on their books. Really though you just need to get a feel for whether you want to work with them - from the first phone call I had with ours I knew they were the ones for us as they just seemed so efficient and upfront about what was difficult.


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## ciacox

Welcome! You'll find loads of support here and lots of happy endings. Looking forward to following your adventure. x


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## borneo123

Thank you both for replying so quickly .. I didn't realise you could apply to more than 1 LA that's really interesting.. Is that the same for VA's ?

See I told you we were newbies 😄


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## Tictoc

You can see as many LA's and VA's as you want but I believe it is when you get to registering your interest that you have to select one. defintely see as many as you can to make sure you get the right one.

LA's generally place the young babies though as they are easy to place with their In house approved adopters and the harder to place kids go to VA's. This is of course not always the case but you may want to bear it in mind. You'll also hear a lot about young children just not being placed these days but you can read on these boards about how young many of the children placed with us our. 

Look forward to hearing about your progress


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## borneo123

So tomorrow is our information evening at LA and then Wednesday we've one with a VA so I'm guessing by Thursday we'll need a lie down in a dark room !!

I'm trying not to fast forward my thoughts too far, I'm finding it really hard to stay in the 'here and now' but DH is doing his best to keep it realistic which I know is the right thing to do .. 

I suppose I just want to start our new journey !!


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## borneo123

Hi All

We went to our opening evening at our LA and were really pleased with how we felt afterwards, a little nervous a little excited but definitely still 100% interested to see where our journey takes us.  Then 2 days later we had a call from a SW who asked if she could have a brief chat with us .... An hour and 10 mins !!

I told her upfront that I'm on anti-depressants (was prescribed them by my understanding GP 18months ago when told for certain we would never have a BC) and said that I'd already got an appointment with my GP to talk about reducing my medication with a view to coming off them ... I just felt she wasn't very understanding she made me feel very insecure and like a failure for having to go on medication  URGH !!!!

Anyway, off to my GP regardless on Tuesday and hopefully she'll be a tad more supportive LOL !

Love to all
x


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## Tictoc

Borneo - don't let this get you down. You might find some LA's are very against anti depressants whilst others are fine as long as you are stable and recognising your triggers.

My husband is on anti depressants and has been since early twenties. One of the LA's we were looking at second time round were pretty dismissive when I told them about this - I later found out that some years ago they had placed a child with a single adopt or who was on anti depressants - she ended up killing herself and that LA (or at least certain people there) are very wary of them now. Anyway forced us to look elsewhere and we ended up with a great LA and our beautiful boy 9 months later!


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## borneo123

Thanks Tictoc, I'm glad there are SW out there who understand that anti-depressants are for a reason, not just because you feel a bit down ... I just felt she was too quick to put a big fat X next to my name without really getting to know me ....

Anyway, hopefully my GP will be more supportive tomorrow I'll let you all know !
x


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## borneo123

So 100% support from GP which is great, spoke to social worker who said she'd present us at her team meeting (with her manager .. yikes) and then will get back to us within a week .... So now we've just got to sit and wait which I'm guessing is all part of this wonderous journey we're hoping to embark on ...

x


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## borneo123

Don't know where to start .. We were turned down by the LA due to me being on anti depressants & our lack of experience with children with special needs !!

URGHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


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## -x-Lolly-x-

Really sorry to hear this :-( This wouldn't have happened previously, it does seem that as the number of children waiting for adoption has reduced agencies can afford to be more picky so they don't have as many prospective adopters on their books. Keep looking around, neighbouring LAs and VAs. Good luck!


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## Tictoc

Don't let a rejection be the end of it for you - we've had so many rejections along the way but I like to think it was all for a reason because without those rejections we wouldn't have the family we have now.


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## borneo123

Thanks ladies .. Sadly we've had to learn how to deal with failure over the years with but rejection is a whole different emotion .. But I suppose it may be something else we have to learn about ourselves in this new chapter of our journey !!

Anyway after a few days of feeling sorry for ourselves we've got an open evening then a 1-2-1 interview with one of the SW with a consortium (LA's & VA's) in a couple of weeks and not sure what to expect ?

Has anyone any experience of consortiums ? Any advice appreciated as always 

Love to you all x


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## borneo123

Hi all

Sorry not to have posted foe a while but we've been on holiday catching some warm sunshine .. But we're back now ready to kickstart our adoption journey again.

So just before we went away we went to our consortium meeting followed by our 1-2-1 with the SW which went quite well.  She didn't appear to be too concerned about me being on antidepressants which was reassuring compared to the last LA SW who was really quite nasty about it but she also brought up about my lack of childcare experience although having had it last time as well I was prepared for that !!

I said I was very happy to look at volunteering in nurseries/ sure start centres which she thought would look favourably on our application but she did suggest waiting a few months before submitting our ROI .. Urghhhh more waiting  

So my question today is about volunteering .. Does anyone have any advice on volunteering at nurseries or sure start centres ?? They'll obviously ask why I'm looking to volunteer so should I say it's for our adoption ??

As always any advice or comments much appreciated 
Love to all x


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