It's not as simple to adopt as it used to be but RNZ's Katy Gosset finds that for the lucky few, the rewards are worth waiting for.
It's not as simple to adopt as it used to be but RNZ's Katy Gosset finds that for the lucky few, the rewards are worth waiting for.
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When Michelle's* daughter, Ella*, was four she asked, "Did I grow in your tummy?"
Michelle replied: "No, you grew in your birth's mother's tummy."
And just like that, they opened the discussion about Ella's adoption into the family.
"She already had a relationship with this nice woman that came around two or three times a year. It was just simply no big deal."
Under the Adoption Act 1955, there is no legal obligation for adoptive parents to maintain contact with their child's birth family.
But it is encouraged.
Oranga Tamariki care support manager Paula Atrill said adoption peaked in New Zealand in the 1960s and had declined steadily since.
Government figures show, in the year ended June 2018, just 132 children were adopted.
Other children might be placed in permanent guardianship or Home For Life arrangements.
But Ms Atrill said those who did adopt were urged by staff to help their children keep in touch with birth parents.
"We find that that helps enormously in terms of kids growing up with an intact sense of their identity."
For Michelle, it came about naturally when her family moved to the same city as the birth mother.
"We have a really neat relationship with the biological mother. We see her a lot. We're pretty close. We've navigated a lot of good times and bad times together."
Some of those bad times have involved grappling with addiction.
"When someone puts a child up for adoption, there's a reason for that and, in the case of our daughter, both her parents were drug addicts."
Michelle said this meant they could be unreliable, failing to front for meetings or to visit their daughter.
"They have so many problems just coping with life so they, to a degree, have become our problems...we have to explain why all this is the way it is for our daughter, so she understands why she was given up for adoption."
Yet Ella's birth mother delivered when it counted, after Michelle invited her over to help explain the adoption to their daughter…