I always dreamed of having a family despite two heartbreaking miscarriages when I was young, I hope grew stronger and she eventually welcomed a beautiful daughter with my husband.
After getting engaged in New York by the Rockefeller Christmas tree in December 2015, I fell pregnant with my daughter. Seeing two lines on a stick at home was exciting for a moment, but soon turned to complete terror. For 9 months, I was on edge, constantly panicking, and in fear of losing her. I detached from the pregnancy completely, not allowing myself to bond with her in case the pregnancy didn’t go well.
There were complications with my blood having conceived straight after losing our previous baby. I was rhesus negative blood type, so after my last miscarriage, I was given an injection to stop my body from trying to attack any future rhesus positive babies. As I fell pregnant straight after, the doctors struggled to identify if my body was producing these cells to attack my daughter or if they were identifying what was leftover from the injection. I was under consultant care and had to be monitored throughout my pregnancy, which made the anxiety ten times worse.
In September of 2016, my husband and I were at a family wedding outside of our local town. I remember going to the toilet with my sister-in-law and seeing blood. I remember my palms sweating, my heart racing, and the ‘fight or flight’ instinct washing over me. I ran to my husband and we drove to the nearest hospital, running through the corridors in my sparkly dress and high heels, trying to find the maternity ward. I was induced that night in a place I didn’t know and what followed still traumatizes me to this day.
A very short labor led to an emergency C-section after the doctor told me, ‘Your baby’s heart rate has plummeted and we need to get her out now.’ My mind just shut down. Everything I had been preparing for was happening and I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is it, Molly, you can do this because you’ve been preparing to lose her for the last 9 months.’ I was rushed into surgery without my husband, who luckily was able to join me just as they began emergency surgery.
Fortunately, my daughter was born perfectly healthy, but the following year was a painful and emotionally distressing time trying to recover from this experience. I knew then and there I never ever wanted to go through that again and I swore to myself I would not let myself be pregnant to protect my own mental and emotional health. My husband said to me, ‘I won’t make you go through that again, there are always other options like adoption.’
After struggling with baby blues and feeling detached from my daughter i slowly bonded with her at 18 months. After addressing personal issues, we began our adoption journey in 2019 to grow our family.
We attended our adoption training in March 2020 and met lots of other wonderful adopters. The process was going amazingly well. Then the Coronavirus pandemic hit and we didn’t know if we would be delayed and the process would have to stop. Fortunately for us, our agency adapted so quickly and we were able to continue the final parts of the assessment online. While we were adjusting to life in lockdown, thanks to the pandemic, the most amazing thing happened one April morning.
I was at the supermarket when my phone notification buzzed and I saw an email from our social worker with the subject line ‘baby profile.’ I dropped my bags and instantly opened it to see the most beautiful baby boy. I didn’t even go to the supermarket. I got into my car, drove home, and shouted for my husband to come and read the profile with me. We read two sides of A4 about the little boy and felt butterflies. My husband said, ‘Could our child really be the first profile we see?’ I remember thinking, ‘This is my little boy’ while my heart was racing.
We emailed back our social worker, saying we wanted to know more. Later in the week, we received his full 90-page report and his medical notes. We read and reread them so many times and fell more in love with him. At this time, our social worker shared our report with the little boy’s family finder and social worker.
In May, we were approved as adopters and later matched with a little boy. They journey was full of joy nervous and unforgettable moments as we prepared to meet him for the first time.
His foster carer came in the room with him in their arms and said, ‘Look, it’s your mommy and daddy.’ The next hour was a blur. We cuddled, played, and could not stop smiling. We didn’t want to leave him, but we knew the next day we would get more time with him. Our introductions were 2 weeks long and 13-hour days. We spent the time gradually getting to know our little boy, hoping he would feel more comfortable with us before placement day.
Placement day was filled with joy and sadness, as we brought our son knowing that he was leaving his foster care adoption has been life changing , full of love and losing, healing.
He isn’t lucky to be adopted or to have spent time in foster care. He isn’t lucky to have been separated involuntarily from his birth family, who I’m sure he will mourn at some point in his later life. His little self had no choice in the matter of being adopted, whereas we consciously chose to adopt him. While adoption was the best outcome for his circumstances, there is no luck about his journey. However, there is so much luck in ours. We get to be his parents, and this is the biggest gift of all.
