A First

Written by eklastic

On 6 June 1991 South African laws changed and allowed adoption across the “colour bar” as it was called. Exactly a week later we had a long meeting with our social worker at her home and after several hours we proceeded to the Princess Alice Adoption Home where we were told six baby boys waited for parents. Would we like to pick one? (Explanation: this was NOT standard practice by Johannesburg Child Welfare but several mishaps along the way had led to that unique situation.)

This is my husband and one of the social workers with two of the babies.

Two days later, we were parents! And 15 months later, we adopted a second boy.

FOWC with Fandango: Adopt

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6 thoughts on “A First”

    1. It works like that: You go in a room and see six babies. You start looking at them and are critical: this one has big ears, this one has a lopsided face, this one … This lasts for about 10 seconds. Then you start thinking: If we add two more rooms to the house, possibly a third, hire a fulltime nanny in addition to a fulltime cleaner, sell the car and buy a minibus, we can take them all six! — Somewhere along the line you leave and start talking. There was one baby that you fancied but felt guilty about. Turns out your husband reacted in the same way to the same boy – almost like love at first sight. Still in the car you phone the social worker and after a bit of procrastinaton she admits that they had decided on a certain baby for us before giving us the choice (because of reasons), would we think about their pick (there were reasons). Turns out – their pick and our pick was the same. But it was an impossible choice. [We kept in touch with Princess Alice and we know that all of those boys found families soon after.]

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