“Be Patient With The Process, And Be Patient With Yourself”

“Adoption has always been on our mind. Our first daughter is a biological child and when Matt and I wanted to have another child, we thought, why not adop- Six months ago when we brought Maya home, everything just aligned itself, it seemed like the perfect choice for us. I just feel so complete right now. And I owe it all to adoption” said Namrata Asthana, Co-founder, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters on her decision to adopt.

Asthana received a lot of questions about her experience of adopting a 2-year-old daughter after having a daughter through birth. And the fact that there are several families that walk this path, and many are concerned about the unknown challenges lying ahead, she decided to share her journey as an adoptive parent with Her Circle.

“Be Patient With Yourself, And Have Very Few Expectations”

For her, even after being a mother to Noor, adopting Maya meant learning to be a parent for the first time. “Patience doesn’t end when the paperwork is finalised. Once you bring a child home, you need to be patient with yourself. There’s going to be a lot where you learn about yourself, there’s going to be a lot that you learn about this new child.”

Asthana strongly recommends going into the process with a completely open mind, “When we adopted Maya, she was two and this is when separation anxiety sets in. They know who is a stranger and who is not and we were complete strangers to her. For adoptive parents, it’s always a little bit trickier because you have so many questions. So have very few expectations of what the child you are bringing home will be like. As a parent, you just have to roll with the punches and sort of figure out what the need of the child is at the moment.”

The Long, Almost Unendurable Wait And The Galloping Urgency To Bring Your Child Home

The Supreme Court recently issued notice on a petition seeking simplification of the process of adoption. The plea submitted that less than 4,000 children are adopted annually in the country out of the three crore orphan children in the country. A total of 3,559 children were adopted in India between April 2020 and March 2021, as per official adoption data. In the previous year, 3,745 children were adopted.

Child adoption is yet a stressful and time-taking procedure that can take a few months to years, “There’s a lot of paperwork and procedures involved. We were always told that the process would last for over a year and a half, for us it lasted for 3 years because of COVID. The shelter agency you pick will come and do all the necessary research on you. When we were adopting CARA (Central Adoption Resource Authority) reinstated new rules and these rules took a while to trickle down to other adoption agencies across India, for us, this delayed the paperwork further. But what I’d like to think is that with these new rules the processes have begun to move faster now.”

As the second-most populous country in the world, there are many children in India waiting to find their forever families.

If you're considering adoption, here is where you can start:

Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) – CARA ensures smooth functioning of the adoption process from time to time, issues Adoption Guidelines laying down procedures and processes to be followed by different stakeholders of the adoption programme.

Online communities:

For and Of Heart Babies - https://www.facebook.com/groups/ForOfHeartBabies/files

People's Group for Child Adoption In India - https://www.facebook.com/groups/pgcai

Children's books:

In My Heart by Nandana Dev Sen

I Wished For You by Marianne Richmond

Tell me again about the night I was born by Jamie Lee Curtis