About Me

This blog is about me and my voyage to becoming a mummy. Ironically called “mummy in the baking” as together with my passion and obsession for all things cake related, I will never be able to have my own "bun in the oven." Years of fertility treatment have taken their toll and I now find myself on a new..eek, i hate this word...journey! The crazy train to adoption. I hope you will join me while I bake my way to becoming a mummy. I want this blog to be a source of information as well as a comforter. I hope it will inspire and help anyone who is considering adoption or who has in fact already bought their ticket for this..here I go again...journey. Cake makes me happy and I hope you will enjoy sharing my love of it. I want it to help lift your spirits and hearts through what can only be described as 'the trials and tribulations of the adoption process.' Along with my desire to be a family, I love my dogs, have an unhealthy love of sausages and chenin blanc, adore my land rover uber-nerd of a husband and continiously dream of balmy summer evenings. Baking in progress…..

Friday 28 October 2011

 

The infamous information evening....
We find ourselves 10 minutes early for the information evening and we try and sit quietly waiting for the meeting to start. We are both in real silly moods and looking back now, I can see we were both just nervous and that was just "our little way of dealing with it" I cast my eye around the room. A real strange mix of couples and I find myself wondering what each of their special stories or journeys have been like. But it seems inappropriate to just start randomly talking to anyone about their circumstances for being here, so we sit quietly, stifling our giggles.

The evening is short and informative, sadly with no cake. They talk about the psychological development of a baby's brain and the effects that trauma and attachment disorders have on them. Then we have a couple of adoptive parents in to give us the real life low-down on the adoption experience. A new young mum really catches my attention, she jokes about the two little terrors she has adopted . She says how she found the uncertainty of fertility treatments hard to cope with but with adoption, at least you know there will be a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. And that she still doesn't know whether that little pot of gold really doesn't like tuna or is just playing up. We leave feeling giddy...this feels so right but we know we have a long wait ahead of us. Due to previous miscarriages and fertility treatments, they want us to wait until June 2012 before we officially put in our application. I spend my time drooling over the pages of the Hummingbird Bakery book and test a new Coffee and Walnut Cake. Totally totally indulgent and lush and it feels good to put fertility treatments behind me and embrace the humble caffeine again.


 Coffee and Walnut Cake...
 






Saturday 1 October 2011

A short history of a very long story….
I was having far too much fun in my twenties to think about having a family. I loved being around kids but there was a whole world to explore and babies were the last thing on my mind.
I met my landrover uber-nerd (from now on referred to as LRUN) on a sailing yacht and after 7 years of lots of fun and worldly travels, I married at 36 and only then did we begin to think about starting a family. I fell pregnant pretty soon after we began to try and I will admit, we were both a little shocked but excited too. Sadly, I miscarried quite traumatically at 10 weeks and it took me a while to pick myself up and begin trying again. The trying then went on for a long time, each month the disappointment getting a little more hard to face. After 4 years, 3 rounds of IVF and another 3 miscarriages, we really had to stop and face up to the real issues here. How badly did we want a family? There was no doubting our desire to love and nuture a child and to be a family but did we really want to continue pushing nature to it’s limits? Perhaps we had been put on earth for a different reason?
We had thought about adoption a lot and it suddenly dawned on me one day that having a child was not all about the nine months of pregnancy or pushing a baby out of your noo-noo, it was more about the rest of your life being able to love, have fun with and care for a child. If everyone on earth was able to fall pregnant naturally, who would look after all the children who needed families? A friend said to me one day, “ I don’t understand how you could love and bond with a child that wasn’t your own." I realised then that that thought had never ever even crossed my mind and I knew right then that adoption was the right road for us. Besides, I can now look forward to being able to bounce on the trampoline with my kids for years to come, without the need for a Tena Lady!