SWEET CHILD O ' MINE

New Zealand’s adoption laws are more than 60 years old and currently under review to ensure they take into consideration modern values and practices. Sharon Stephenson talks to two people about their adoption experiences

In a tiny North Shore bedroom, dwarfed by shelves of colourful onesies and neatly folded cloth nappies, Rebecca Simpson* starts to cry. This is the nursery the 35-year-old and her husband Matt set up two years ago for the child they hoped to adopt. Instead, the room has become a shrine to the child they will never have.

“Being a mother was all I ever wanted, but after five miscarriages and a decade of heartbreaking, failed fertility treatments, we decided to turn to adoption,” says Rebecca.

The couple assumed they wouldn’t have to wait long for a baby: they owned their own home, had good jobs (Rebecca as an account manager, Matt as a senior public servant) and a bank account ending with several zeros.

But at their first information session with Child Youth & Family (now Oranga Tamariki), the couple’s confidence burst like a balloon on a bed of nails.

“They told us there were very few babies available for adoption in New Zealand because no-one puts their kids up for adoption any more,” explains Rebecca.

The social worker warned them they could end up waiting for up to 10 years. “And even then there was no certainty. They said birth mothers get to choose from as many as 100 couples so not to pin our hopes on it.”

Despite driving home that night in floods of tears, Rebecca and her husband of eight years filled out their profile and underwent the expensive and time-consuming process of medical and police checks.

And they waited. Rebecca says her husband told her not to get excited, “but I was obsessed with the idea of giving a baby a home. We have so much love to give and I know there are lots of kids out there who badly need it. It seemed like a no-brainer”.