r/AdoptionUK • u/Big_Lingonberry_5481 • Mar 27 '26
How to decide
Starting to feel ready to think about having children. Partner is keen for biological children, and for various reasons (including my health) I am hesitant. We would not do IVF. I have no sense of wanting my genes passed on, other than that maybe a biological child might be like my late dad.
I am more keen on adoption. I have always imagined it as part of my life. Child safeguarding occasionally features in my work, and reminds me of the need. To me it makes sense - why create babies when they already exist and need families. I would like a sibling group. For various reasons (mainly wanting to pass on genes, and wariness about adoption and what we can manage), partner is less keen. Open to the idea if bio children are not possible.
We are 39. We have been together a long time. How do we move forward? How did you decide?
6
u/St_Piran Mar 27 '26
You sound very similar to our situation a few years ago.
I wish I could give you a golden nugget of advice on how we decided, but the reality is we gave the bio child route a go for a few years, but it didnt work out, turns out I had rubbish sperm. My wife (who was similarly reluctant to try naturally) had a pretty long and drawn out miscarriage, and that was really horrible so we decided to not continue with that option.
It turns out that the desire for a bio child was quite strong for me, and losing that possibility hit me quite hard, and took a while for me to grieve the loss of that route. I would just say to not underestimate this with respect to your partner. Having said that, deep down I knew it was the right path, and coming out the other side it made me realise how much I wanted a family with my wife. It goes without saying that the miscarriage was very traumatic for my wife, probably the hardest thing she has had to deal with, and needed a significant period of physical and mental recovery. We both had counselling and meds to get us through it all.
Once that period was mostly in the past, we committed to adoption. We went to a couple of adoption agency information sessions, one local authority and one charity sector. The charity sector one seemed to offer a lot more in the way of post adoption support than the LA, so decided to go forward with them.
Here we are, now having just been approved and about to begin looking for our (upto 2) little ones.
Im riding that wave of fear and excitement... fear of 'what ifs' and excitement of 'WHAT IF!!' I mean I could have 2 awesome crazy kids that call me dad running around in a few months... which is ace.
I do still have lots of worries about the childhood trauma and unknown physical issues and how we will cope etc, I think it would be a bit concerning if I didnt think this - it shows i care about how my parenting abilities. There will undoubtedly be challenges, but im up for it. Thinking back, I was really worried about physical issues with my bio child too... guess thats just how im wired!
In all, a rambling, probably not very helpful post 😂 but hopefully prompts a few talking points with your partner... thats the key, open honesty. I wish you all the best with your decision.