She was four at the time and knew that some of her friends had become big brothers and sisters. But their mummies had all given birth. Although she knew she didn’t grow in my tummy, she struggled to understand how the process was going to work for her. Having a book to read about it would’ve really helped.

When Holly Marlow asked if I’d like to review her new book, I was delighted because it’s exactly the book I wish we’d had for our eldest daughter. Holly’s new book is called “Adopting a Little Brother or Sister”. And, as the name suggests, it explains to young children what happens when they become a big brother or sister through adoption. I was kindly gifted an electronic copy of the book so I could write the review.

What I liked straight away about the book is that the front cover is very different. The whole of the book has a black background which may sound odd, but works beautifully to showcase the brilliant illustrations created by Holly’s daughter, Zoe. I think the front cover will connect with the book’s young readers and help them feel that the book is for them, not the adults in their lives.

The story is about a little boy whose family are adopting a little brother or sister. It explains the stages in an age appropriate way, introducing people like social workers and the role they have.

I think our daughter struggled to understand what our social worker did. She remembered our original social worker from when we adopted her, because she’d seen photos of her in her life story book. Meeting a new social worker was confusing for her. Being able to read a book like would’ve really helped.

The book looks at what the social worker’s job is and the types of questions they might ask. This part really resonated with me because I can remember our daughter being asked how she would feel about sharing her toys with her little sister. She said she’d be happy to share them, as long as her little sister looked after them and gave them back.

The story then moves on to look at what happens when a child finds out about their little brother or sister and the mechanics of bringing them home. There’s some great questions at the end of the book to use to start conversations with your child about becoming a brother or sister through adoption.

The book is perfect for biological and adopted children to read to help them understand the process of becoming a sibling through adoption. It’s also a great read for their friends so they can understand it too.

Adopting a Little Brother or Sister is available to buy from Amazon. If you’d like to find out more about Holly, click here to read her article about her first book, “Delly Duck: Why A Little Chick Couldn’t Stay With His Birth Mother”. If you’d like to read more reviews of adoption and parenting books, click here. 

This review includes an affiliate link to the book. That means if you click on the link to the book, and then buy it, I get paid a fee from Amazon.

For a number of reasons, the assessment for us to be approved for little sister has been far from smooth. Suffice it to say it has been incredibly stressful. We were due to go to approval panel last week, but our DBS checks have still not come back so the plan has had to change.

We were initially told an additional panel would be convened so we could do approval before matching. I don’t know whether it’s because of the summer holidays, but that plan has been scrapped. Summer holidays meant our eldest came home a month or so later than she could have, so it would seem that fate is influencing things this time around too.

So, we’re now in the unenviable position of having to do approval and matching at the same panel. And then introductions starting a week or so later. On paper, it shouldn’t be a problem. We’re parents to our eldest and have been for over 3 years. There are no concerns about her or our parenting.

We’re only being assessed as parents for her baby sister. Surely the local authority wouldn’t do things this way unless they were sure we’d be approved? I can’t put my finger on why, but this week I’ve started to worry that we’re not going to be approved.

In the lead up to approval panel last time, I was really nervous in case something had been missed and we weren’t approved. We didn’t do anything to the nursery in case we were tempting fate. This time though, we can’t do that. It’s just not possible to do the work needed on the house in the time between panel and introductions. Creating her bedroom involves doing work on two or three other rooms to move everything round.

I didn’t let myself start to get excited and buy things for our eldest until we’d met everyone involved in her care. This time with about seven weeks to go before introductions are due to start, we haven’t read anything about baby sister, spoken to anyone involved in her care or seen a photo of her.

We’ve had to start her room and start buying things for her. I can’t help feeling that by doing this, everything will go wrong and we won’t be approved or matched.

I know that’s completely ridiculous. Adoption panels don’t work on fate and chance. They make decisions based on facts and evidence. Our agency wouldn’t be wasting their time and resources on us if there was any doubt about us being approved and matched.

We’re giving baby sister and our eldest the chance to grow up together. We’re good parents (even though we are most definitely winging it most of the time). Baby sister’s social worker knows all about us. She’s told birth parents that the plan is for baby sister to live with her big sister. She wouldn’t have told them if there was any doubt about our suitability.

So, I’m trying to push the doubts and concerns to the back of my mind and enjoy the preparations. We won’t have this time again. Our eldest won’t experience preparing to be a big sister again.

Preparing to be a parent, however it happens, is a rollercoaster. I’m sure everyone has doubts and concerns. I just have to take a deep breath and have faith that we’re good enough.

Care and placement orders were made weeks ago so whatever happens, little sister can’t live with her birth family. Fingers and toes crossed she’ll be coming to live with her big sister.

First published August 2018

When we started out on our adoption journey, we knew we weren’t up to adopting a sibling group straight away. We couldn’t imagine being able to cope having two children placed with us of different ages and meeting their very different needs adequately. I couldn’t imagine that at all and didn’t think we were capable of it. Lots of people do adopt sibling groups and I completely take my hat off to them. I think they are utterly amazing. As is any parent who has more than 1 child.

Part of the adoption process is to accept and know your limitations and be honest about what you can cope with. We knew ours and despite our social worker’s best attempts, we stuck to our guns and asked to be approved for one child initially.

However, I always thought we’d adopt again. A full sibling in the future would obviously be ideal. But we definitely wanted a sibling for our little girl.

It’s funny how you dream about something happening and you think you know how you’ll react. And then the reality is the polar opposite.

About 14 months after our daughter came home, I got an email from our social worker to say birth mum had turned up at hospital 35 weeks pregnant. It was the beginning of December and the week after I’d gone back to work following a mostly wonderful  13 months adoption leave getting to know our little girl.

She’d started nursery a few weeks before and was really struggling with that. She loved being there once she settled, but leaving her was awful and I often ended up in tears driving away.

I instantly went into auto-pilot after I read the email, telling myself this was exactly what we’d hoped would happen. At that stage the plan was for baby to be placed with us from hospital and we’d be fostering to adopt. That meant the new baby would have as little disruption as possible.

Unfortunately, birth mum’s circumstance hadn’t changed at all since she had agreed to our daughter being taken into care the day after she was born. It was therefore pretty inevitable that the plan would be adoption for the new baby.

The next few weeks were emotionally the hardest of my life. I was trying desperately to convince myself being considered for the new baby was what we wanted and the right thing to do.

It would be a newborn baby. How on earth could we say no to that? I had long ago given up the dream of getting pregnant and was at peace with that. But having a tiny baby placed with us would be amazing. Wouldn’t it?

Christmas that year was a bit of a blur. I was going through the motions while I was desperately trying to battle with what I knew in my heart was the right thing to do. At that stage, I just didn’t have the courage to accept it.

I was ill and made myself worse while I battled with my conscience. Throw a horrendous panic attack in the middle of one night into the mix and I knew I had to be honest with myself. I had to accept that what I thought was our dream actually wasn’t.

At first I felt like a really bad, selfish person for feeling that way. Accepting that it wasn’t the right thing for us as a family to take on the new baby was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

To everyone on the outside, it probably seemed like the perfect way to complete our family. At first I really struggled with what I thought others would think if we said no.

It wasn’t that nature had made the decision for us that we couldn’t give our daughter a sibling. By saying no, we were making a conscious decision that our daughter wouldn’t know her little brother or sister during her childhood.

How could we say no and effectively take away the chance she had of growing up with her sibling? Surely she has a right to that? She already has other siblings she won’t be able to grow up with. What right did we have to deny her this chance to grow up with another sibling?

Just because on paper it’s a perfect solution, doesn’t mean it is in reality. I’m in my mid forties and my husband isn’t far off his mid fifties. Some agencies wouldn’t have let us adopt a child as young as our daughter was (she was nine months when she came home). It really felt like we’d be pushing our luck too far in taking on a newborn baby as well.

Our daughter makes our family feel complete. We want to make sure she reaches her full potential, whatever that is. It didn’t feel like we’d be able to help her do that with another baby with us so soon.

At first I felt I was letting our daughter down so badly by saying no. In my heart though, I knew it was the right decision for her and for us.

We don’t know what the future holds in terms of her development. No-one knows how their kids are going to grow. But we knew that she was unsettled and struggling with the changes that nursery brought. It felt like she needed us to herself to be able to get through that.

If we said yes, the new baby would’ve come to live with us early in the New Year. That would’ve been about 15 months after we met our daughter. We felt it was too soon. Too soon for our daughter and too soon for us.

Once I let go of my guilt, particularly about what others would think, I started to feel better about our decision. Just because others can cope with a second child quickly after the first, however it happens, doesn’t mean that we could. And there was no shame in admitting that.

Our social worker was, as always, lovely and didn’t question our decision or try to persuade us we should reconsider. That meant a lot to me and helped me accept we were making the right decision.

A lot of people said it was just not the right time for us and to start off with I agreed with them. Actually though, it might never be the right time. We were meant to be parents to our daughter and perhaps we were meant to be a family of three. It feels right just the three of us. We’re a team looking forward to the adventures that lie ahead as we explore what the future holds.

I’ll always feel guilty about our decision though. Not because I feel it was the wrong one. It was absolutely the right decision for us all. Our daughter is getting the best of us and our full attention. I feel guilty because we decided that she couldn’t grow up in the same household as her sibling.

When she’s old enough, we’ll explain to her why we made the decision we did and why it was the right one for our family. I hope she agrees.

First published April 2017

I’ve always been very honest about the fact that life story work terrified me. It felt like a lot of pressure to get it right and that there’d be no second chances with it. We needed to get it right first time. As with a lot of things, I put way too much pressure on myself. And in the end, it was a lot easier than I’d expected.

Eldest knows she didn’t grow in my tummy. We started to introduce this to her when she was about two so it’s all she’s ever known. That’s always how I’d hoped it would be. Adoption is clearly a massive thing, but I didn’t want it to feel like that to her. I want it to just part of who she is. She has two families and they both love her dearly.

We started with talking about her growing in her birth mum’s tummy. Then we introduced her life story book when she was old enough to understand it. I think she was about three. She’d started asking why she didn’t have a sister, so it seemed like a good time to start.

She dealt with it a lot better than I thought she would. Finding out she has brothers and sisters didn’t phase her. She took it in her stride and that’s the way she’s dealt with it ever since. When she wants to ask questions, she does. We answer them as honestly as we can. Sometimes that leads to further questions or a conversation. Sometimes it doesn’t. We don’t push her, we’re guided by what she wants to know. As she gets older, obviously, we’ll explain more.

At the moment, she’s happy to accept that her brothers and sisters live with their families. She knows that some live with their forever families, and that some don’t. At six she’s still too young to really understand what that means, but she will as she gets older.

I’ve also written about how I find it hard to write the yearly updates for letterbox contact. I do it because I know how important it is, but getting the tone right is always hard. I’ve read some great blogs and posts in the last year with advice about how to write them, so I’m hoping it will be easier this time. Eldest has said she’d like to do a picture so that will be a lovely thing for her to do.

Unfortunately, last year we didn’t get any responses to our update at all. We normally hear from two siblings, but got nothing back from them. Our agency amalgamated with others in our area so I’m hoping that it’s there somewhere, just filed in the wrong place. I haven’t chased it up yet but I will do.

Adopting her sister has really helped eldest understand things a bit more. She knows she lived with foster carers (they both lived with the same carers four years apart) after she was born until she came home. Books like Blanket Bears and The Family Fairies have helped her understanding too. They’re such lovely books that explain things beautifully.

When youngest came home, with the help of her teacher, eldest did a little presentation to her class about getting a new sister. I’m so proud of her for wanting to do that. Meeting her sister prompted more questions about her brothers and sisters, but she hadn’t really questioned why they don’t all live together.

The last few months have been different though with a lot more questions about her brothers in particular. She keeps asking for a baby brother so I think that’s what’s behind the questions. She’s been asking when she can meet them and says that she loves them so much and can’t wait to give them a hug. Hearing her say that broke my heart. I’m so glad she’s growing up thinking about her siblings because it’s building the foundations for them to have a good relationship when they’re older. But I’ve got no way of knowing whether the feeling is mutual. Or even if all her siblings know she exists.

I really hope her siblings are doing life story work and know about her and her sister. It would be great for them to know that they thought about each other a lot as they grew up. We’re encouraging her to draw them pictures and cards. Hopefully she can give them to her siblings in person one day.

That’s why we’ll continue to write annual updates, even if we don’t get a reply. Learning about their birth history is so important. It’s part of who they are and will help to shape who they become. I hope they both always feel that they can ask us anything about it and we’ll give them all the answers we have. And when the time is right, they’ll be able to take their relationship to the next level.

We’d planned to tell little Miss she is going to be a big sister when we’re on holiday. We’re going away with my family and we thought it would be good to tell everyone then. I was therefore slightly panicked when our social worker said she needed to speak to little Miss about baby sister. We’re aiming for August panel so the report has to be complete at the start of the month. That means we had to tell her before we go on holiday at the start of the school holidays.

We hadn’t planned on adding to our family but now that we are, I obviously don’t want anything to go wrong. I’m a cautious person and didn’t want to tell little Miss until we were as sure as we could be that it was going to happen. Having to tell her now felt like we’re tempting fate. What if we don’t get approved or matched? She’ll be heartbroken knowing she has a sister but she can’t come and live with us.

So, we’ve had to take what feels like a giant leap of faith and trust that we wouldn’t be asked to tell her if there was any doubt about our suitability. Little Miss asked to look at her life story book last Sunday and asked a lot of questions about her little brother. That seemed like the perfect time to tell her she was going to be a big sister.

I wish I’d taken a photo of her face when we told her because she was sooooo excited. She looked absolutely thrilled. She’s told pretty much everyone she’s seen since then that she’s going to have a baby sister. If we needed any reassurance that we’ve made the right decision saying yes to baby sister, that was certainly it.

It’s very easy when you’re a parent to over think things. Add adoption into the mix and it’s even worse. Little Miss doesn’t care one jot how baby sister comes into our family, all she cares about is that she is. I think we’d got so wrapped up in worrying about the assessment and what could go wrong, we lost sight of the basics. Whatever happens, little Miss isn’t going to have this time again. She should be able to experience the excitement of preparing to be a big sister. For her, it’s as simple as that. It’s been so lovely to hear her talking about baby sister and how she’s going to help daddy paint her bedroom.

So, despite our initial thought that it was too soon to tell her, it has been exactly the right time. We just have to make sure we don’t mess up the rest of the assessment! Now there really is no going back.

The initial plan was fostering to adopt from hospital. However, the local authority overlooked the fact that we’d need to be re-assessed for this plan to work. That takes 4 months, we were told around 6 months into the pregnancy. They also overlooked the fact that they needed to re-assess birth mum. And the fact that we’d said last time we wouldn’t do fostering to adopt as too much uncertainty for little miss. So, after initially telling us about the pregnancy they took 2 long months to come up with a new plan. The plan now is the usual care and placement orders and then placement rather than foster to adopt.

I’d assumed that our lovely social worker would be doing our assessment. She knows us inside out and we get on really well with her. I’ll never be able to put into words how grateful we are to her for finding us our little girl. Unfortunately, she’s very inconsiderately decided to retire. As the adoption team at our authority are already short staffed, we’ve had a very long wait to be allocated a new worker.

You’d think that by now I’d be used to being patient and waiting for things to happen in adoption land. Clearly though, I’m not. Waiting to be allocated a new social worker has been torture. Little sister was born the week the planning meeting was held. Waiting to start the assessment the first time round was completely different. All our hopes and dreams about becoming parents were handed over to our social worker. I don’t remember feeling any pressure though. I knew our child was out there, either growing in their tummy mummy, or waiting patiently for us to be ready for them. Knowing there is an actual baby waiting in foster care for us to tick all the boxes and jump through the hoops is very different. Far harder than I thought it would be.

This time the stakes are so much higher. We are only going through the process to be matched with little sister. That feels like a lot of pressure. What if our new social worker doesn’t think we can cope with 2 kids? Our old one did but what if the new one doesn’t agree? She might think we’re too old. What if she thinks having manageable debt means we shouldn’t be approved? If we don’t get approved we’ll have let little Miss down. We’ll have messed up the only chance she has of growing up with one of her siblings.

At the moment, the only way I can keep (relatively) sane is to shut off any feelings and thoughts about little sister. I hope that doesn’t mean I’ll struggle to turn those feelings on when it’s the right time, but it’s the only way I can get through right now. We haven’t seen a photograph of her yet but I’m sure it will get harder to put my feelings about her to one side after that. I’m trying to take it one step at a time and just concentrating on what is immediately ahead of us. We’ve met our new social worker so the assessment starts this week. The first hurdle to get over for that is finding my passport. I need it for the DBS checks and can’t find it. Anywhere. Anyone any idea where it is??

It does feel like we’ve made the right decision for our little family, but the timing sucks. Little Miss is starting school in September and it’s hard to know whether it would be better for her to meet her little sister before or after she starts. That decision has been taken away from us as the assessment won’t be done in time for it to happen before, but I am worried how she’ll cope. On top of that, her granddad has terminal cancer so she’s likely to have the trauma of losing him to cope with soon too.

It is so easy to get swept away by the enormity of everything going on. So, small steps are what we’re trying very hard to focus on. Enjoying each day as much as we can and dealing with the issues as and when they come up. I know there will be days when I can do this and there will be days when I can’t. That’s life and how being on a rollercoaster makes you feel. We need to strap ourselves in, hold on tight and ride it out.

As an adoptive mum, Mother’s Day brings mixed emotions for me. I love celebrating the fact that I’m so, so lucky to have be chosen to be mum to my daughter. It’s also filled with sadness. Sadness that the woman who gave birth to her, doesn’t get to celebrate the day with all of her children.

This year has been particularly emotional as we’ve recently been told that birth mum is pregnant again. This will be her 8th child. I can’t begin to imagine what she must have been feeling on Mothering Sunday knowing that the life she is carrying inside her, won’t be coming home to live with her. For 3 of the last 5 Mother’s Days, she has either recently given birth or been pregnant. The plan for this child is adoption and we’ve been asked whether we want to be considered.

I know birth mum has had a very different life to me. One which I can’t begin to get my head around. However, I just can’t understand why she keeps on putting herself through this horrific ordeal, time after time. Her circumstances are such that mean it isn’t safe for a child to live with her. Why then put herself through another pregnancy? Another 9 months of carrying a child she knows she won’t be able to take home. Another rollercoaster of emotions that ends in her saying goodbye to her child. A child that she’s grown and nourished inside her body for 9 months.

Since I’ve known about her, I’ve felt very sorry for birth mum. I feel sorry for her because she is a victim of circumstance. If she’d had the type of childhood I had, there’s a good chance she would have been able to safely and successfully parent. I’ve tried very hard to understand her so that I can talk to little Miss about her.

The last few weeks though, my emotions towards her have changed. I feel very angry with her. Angry because her actions have placed our family in complete turmoil. We’ve been put in a position which feels like there will be no right answer at the end of it because every option has so many downsides.

We’ve been very happy as a family of 3. Little Miss is thriving and growing into a clever, funny, loving and independent little girl. She loves having our undivided attention but also adores the fact that she has 2 older cousins. For her, they are like sisters.

The benefits for little miss of us saying yes are obvious. She gets to grow up with her sibling. Together they will hopefully be able to help each other as they learn about their history.

We were asked just over 2 years ago whether we wanted to be considered when birth mum was pregnant with her 7th child. I’ve written here about how hard it was to come to a decision then as to whether we should add to our family. I do still feel guilty that we said no, but not because it was the wrong decision. It was absolutely the right decision for us as a family. I feel guilty because it meant little Miss can’t grow up with her brother. If we say no this time, we’re once again taking away her chance of growing up with a sibling.

It’s been over 3 years since our daughter was placed with us and she is very settled. Bringing another child into the mix will no doubt be very unsettling for her, particularly as she’s starting school in September. Is that a reason to say no? Would she agree with us in the long term if we said no because we thought it would be too unsettling?

Having another child hasn’t really been in our plan so we haven’t made financial choices in the last year or so that would support that. We’ve spent a lot of time and money on our garden. The debt we’ve incurred doing that is more than manageable, but it doesn’t put us in the best position to bring another child into our family. Is that a good enough reason to say no?

Our biggest fear is not being able to cope with a second child. Little Miss has been an absolute blessing for us and our wider family and friends. We have been very, very lucky. How will bringing another child into the mix affect that? How will we cope with sleepless nights? I’m whispering when I say this so I don’t jinx things, but little Miss has always been a very good sleeper. In the 3 and a half years she’s been home, there have been less than a dozen times when she hasn’t gone to bed without issue and slept right through. Could we cope with a child that didn’t sleep?

My husband is in his mid fifties. He has a physically demanding job and spends a lot of his time shattered. Could he cope with the demands of a young baby? Is it fair on him to ask him to? He’d be in his mid 70s by the time the child is 20. How would they feel about having such an “old” dad. I know times have changed and mid 70s isn’t really old, but it isn’t young.

So that’s why I’m angry with birth mum at the minute. Of course I don’t know what’s going on in her head. I have absolutely no concept of how her life is. I don’t know whether she had a choice in the act that got her pregnant. All I know is that she isn’t fighting with every fibre in her body to be able to have the chance to parent her child. From what we’ve been told she’s given up already. Her lifestyle hasn’t changed since the first set of proceedings.

And so we have to make the most difficult decision of our lives. I have no idea how we’re going to make it. It feels so different than it did last time. But I really don’t know whether it’s the right thing to do to become a mum again.