Adoption Order Granted

WHAT.A.DAY!

Darran and I have been waiting for this day for a very long time. Longer than Pudding has been with us.

In many ways, Pudding has been our son since 6th Feb 2019, the day he moved in with us. There was 1 obstacle in the way, a massive obstacle! He wasn’t legally our son. He wasn’t our son in the eyes of the law. 8th January 2020 changed that.

HHJ Murffit officially granted the adoption order. 8th Jan 2020 will always be a very special date in the Lincoln-Shaw house. Its the day we legally became a family.

The Morning

Luckily on the day, I was working from home so we could all be together. Darran and I were full of emotions and anxiety. It was a weird feeling, a feeling we hope we never experience again. But we will, as we’ll be adopting again so will have to go through it all over again.

The court hearing was at 10 am. Pudding’s Social Worker and our Social Worker would be attending. We didn’t.

The reason why adopters don’t attend is that the birth family are given one last chance to contest the adoption. We knew from very earlier on in this process that there was a very slim chance that Pudding’s birth mum would attend and contest. That doesn’t stop you thinking what if. What if she did. What if someone else came out of the woodworks and come forward for Pudding. If that did happen, the judge wouldn’t have a choice but to delay the hearing to enable that person to put their case forward. This does happen and it happens a lot.

To keep ourselves busy, I worked a lot upstairs and Darran did a shit ton of Instagram lives lol and Pudding was just being a typical 3-year-old. No care in the world, watching TV and playing with his toys. That’s how it should be. We didn’t want how we were feeling to affect him.

Time is Passing 

It’s now just passed midday and no call! I pop downstairs to grab something and go back up when I see an unknown caller calling. I NEVER answer unknown callers, like never but I did. Something was telling me to pick the phone up.

It was only Pudding’s Social Workers manager on the phone. She attended court on her behalf.

I literally flew down the stair, I don’t even think I touched the steps. Darran was on an Insta Live which he ended pretty quickly.

The SW went on to say she had attended court this morning and quoted the judge as saying;

I have no doubt in my mind that this adoption order should be granted immediately. I feel that both Darran and Tim will be great advocates for Pudding until he reaches adulthood.

We couldn’t speak. We both broke down in tears. The whole process we had gone through (2 years) was finally over and we get to call Pudding our SON in the eyes of the law.

The SW went on to say we had to email the court to arrange the celebration hearing. Within an hour, the court had emailed back and gave us the date. 10th February at 10 am! We were expecting a long wait but oh no!

Oh, we also hit 30K too!!!