Let’s Discuss…The Joy of Completing Our Family

In order to talk about the joy of completing our family I feel it is important to firstly talk a bit about the sadness of our incomplete family!

We longed for a family for many years and after discovering that we could not conceive naturally we underwent a few painful, stressful and expensive years of unsuccessful IVF.

Longing for a child of our own was an excruciatingly painful, lonely time for us.  We are both members of big, loving families who adore children.  Infertility affects every aspect of your life.  At work you have to watch as other women seem to fall pregnant at the drop of a hat. Family events are all centred around the children. Your friends are all too busy and tired living their chaotic, happy family existence to carry on with their previous social life. I, personally, remember those years as feeling so very sad all the time and spent a lot of time on my own in tears.

From the moment we decided to adopt all of this changed. We could now look forward to a future as a family. After being passed as adopters we were sent our daughter’s profile and we knew instantly she was meant to be with us. After matching panel we really started to get excited! Getting her room ready, telling family and friends and organising a year off work. Those old feelings of sadness and being different and somehow not as good as everyone else disappeared.

Meeting our daughter was truly magical, amazing and terrifying all at the same time! She has been with us now for 2 years and 4 months.  It is such a cliche but she absolutely does “complete us.”   I remember the first few months pinching myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming and just feeling so happy.  We feel unbelievably lucky to be her parents.  It is very special being able to take her along to family events and see her fit in so well with her cousins.  Watching her grow and develop is wonderful.  I have never laughed so much or felt so deeply content in my life as I do now that I am a mummy and my husband feels the same.

Adopting our child has completely surpassed any expectations that we had of how good life as parents can be.  From the moment we hear her pitter, patter little footsteps coming to wake us up every morning we both have huge smiles on our faces.  She is so funny and makes us laugh out loud all the time.  Getting night time cuddles is just such a beautiful, lovely thing. My love for her has brought me to tears a few times: like when she stood up at playgroup and sang twinkle, twinkle little star perfectly in front of everyone. And recently when we went to watch her in swimming class and I was so proud I nearly burst watching her almost swimming by herself.

We are so excited about life and can’t wait to see how our little girl will develop.  She is very much her own little person and she has brought us nothing but joy!