How We Became a Family: Fran and Sammy Share Their Family Story
Hi, we’re Fran and Sammy. We’re a two-mum family living just outside London and we want to share our family story. The team at Jigsaw Adoption helped us achieve one of the biggest goals in our relationship – having a family.
Could Adoption Work for Us?
Fran’s aunt used to be a foster carer. So, adoption was not a brand-new thing for me when I was growing up. I remember meeting fostered children when hanging out with my cousins. Some of those children were adopted. We thought they had a happy ending.
We’re not sure when exactly adoption became a more realistic thing for us together. Being in a same sex relationship meant we’d be looking at sperm donors. We hadn’t considered that IVF might not be an option due to our health. I have PCOS which makes pregnancy difficult. When we were looking at clinics, we also discovered that Sammy had early onset menopause.
It took us over a year to come to terms with the idea that neither of us could carry a child. As two women, we always thought the odds were in our favour once we had a sperm donor. It didn’t work out that way though.
We decided to go on a long walking holiday when Sammy was between jobs to see if we wanted to adopt. Sammy is a resident doctor in the NHS. She needed the break for her health. And we wanted to see what life might throw at us next.
Researching Adoption
We started to look into adoption and talked to so many people. My aunt had retired from fostering. She was worried about what we might be taking on with adoption as we didn’t have children already. What a catch-22.
Our research into the process and the results people get didn’t reveal anything about success rates.
This led us to spend some time falling down the rabbit hole of gloom, which is one of the problems with adoption research. Some of the detailed stories focus entirely on failures, while others only highlight bad service and the stress this creates.
Stories that were happier still talked about how hard our lives would stay after we adopted. We spent time going back and forth.
Should we plan for a different life, and be childfree? But what if we regretted doing that? What if we changed our minds in a few years and it was too late for us?
Sammy knew a number of women who had become single parents. When talking through it with them, it really brought things home to us. Not one of them regretted being a mother. We met one who had adopted five years ago and her only advice was that finding the right adoption agency was really important.
Choosing the Right Agency
Being in London we started with our local council services, and discovered there was a waiting list for the service. There was even a waiting list for the information evening presentations.
We waited! We can still remember the first presentation and messaging around it. Adoption will be hard for us. It will be too hard and many of the people attending would not have a successful assessment. Sammy called it the deflation day.
We used the government portal to find other agencies and tried Google. We came across independent adoption agencies and called three agencies for more information.
Jigsaw was the only agency that offered a private meeting instead of an adoption event. We had an online meeting and felt very shy about sharing our history.
We learned about how they worked, including an adopter app to help with the assessment. Their follow-up emails after our meeting proved useful, and we discovered important information about how they work with birth parents and handle the legal aspects.
We sent emails back and forth and always found the information we needed.
By now it was July and we took another break. We decided we had to do this. If we failed then it wasn’t meant to be.
Our Assessment Journey
So many people told us the assessment would be too hard. We didn’t find it like that. We put blocks of time in our diaries to make sure we did work on our assessment every week. I did more of collating the paperwork because Sammy worked long shifts at the hospital.
Our Stage 1 went smoothly. In Stage 2 we met our social worker. She wasn’t what we expected. We thought the assessment would be very formal. Some people told us it was like having a friend come over. We’d be advised by the manager to be as open as you can, the more information the better.
We took that approach and we felt it worked well. Our social worker told us afterwards that our assessment had gone so well because of how open we had been. When she challenged us on something, we paused and thought about it.
She said many people get defensive and shut down instead. Then you’re stuck.
We had four days of training and met other adopters. There were 8 of us in the group and we set up a WhatsApp group to keep in touch. Our training host Pearl was amazing. No other word for it. We were so nervous on our first training day and by day 4 we felt so much better. We learned a lot about what we were doing and about ourselves.
Adoption Panel Day
Everyone told us that we’d be so nervous at our adoption panel, and we were apprehensive. However, we also told ourselves to trust our social worker, trust the agency.
They must see something good in us if we’re going to our panel.
It rained all day on our panel day and our journey that day was a nightmare.
The panel asked us some questions, things we hadn’t planned for. Our responses went on for so long that everyone fell quiet after we finished.
We had our positive recommendation and cried. On the way home, it was still raining and then we saw a rainbow. A perfect end to our day.
Matching: When the Bureaucracy Really Starts
Our agency told us that can be the most stressful part of the process. It’s hard to believe this when you get your adoption approval letter. You feel as though you’ve climbed a mountain only to learn you might need to scale a taller mountain after that.
We agree with other families that the approach Jigsaw takes with matching works so well.
For those of you doing online research this the social workers call it ‘family-finding’.
We had our first profile the day after our panel so our excitement levels were very high. Sadly, the social worker for those children took leave and things were left open-ended. Khalida advised us that it was sensible to move on rather than holding out. Our second profile progressed and suddenly things moved fast.
Reports, a home visit, a visit to meet the foster carers, more meetings and a matching panel. More reports, this time for us to complete as well.
It felt like a work project but with much more emotion. If you’re a planner type personality the peaks and troughs of activity keep you on your toes.
Instead, we built a picture – through reports, updates, videos, and nursery notes. Jigsaw supported us through every meeting and every home visit. At this point in the process, you have the least control over timing, and it’s easy to wonder why everything takes so long. But looking back, we can see how much preparation went into making sure the match was right.
We bought a car, having not needed one before. We bought the car seats, ready for a trip up the M6.
Becoming Parents
Our children’s foster carers were the most empathetic people you could meet. We saw how much care and coordination went into helping us with introductions.
This local authority had introductions for three weeks and this felt very long. We told ourselves we had to trust in the process and focus on bringing the children home.
Although we were entitled to shared parental leave from work, I took the year off. Sammy had started a new job and it was easier to plan for me being off than her with the NHS.
Life After the Order
Our children came home with us in January and it was the coldest, darkest time of the year. January takes on new meaning now.
We make a point of celebrating. Birthdays, when we first met your day, moving in day and adoption order day. It might just be pizza and cake. But these dates were so poignant for us as well as the children, we need to recognise and celebrate them.
Of course, we remember our life before the children! But we prefer not to. We waited so long to become mothers. The setbacks with our health tested us. It tested our relationship. But when we’re asked, it was all worth it.
A Message to Families Considering Jigsaw
If you’re reading this and thinking about adoption, here’s what we’d say:
- Work as a team – There are many ups and some downs. You need to work as a team to get through it
- Trust your agency – It’s hard to place all this trust about your future with a single organisation but you have to do it. If you can trust them, your adoption journey will be better
- Get your paperwork sorted – It’s worth locating all your important documents like marriage certificate, rental agreement, adoption leave policy from work. This way
- Practice using your car seats on soft toys before you meet the children – it’s nerve-wracking the first time you do it with your children.
So finally, this is us. The advice we’d give you is to find an agency who gets you. For us, this was Jigsaw. Thank you for everything you did.
Fran & Sammy
