Peter and Margaret

We're Peter and Margaret and we adopted two brothers Ryan, 5, and David who is 18 months old.

We had both been married before but neither of us had children. When we met we were in our mid forties so once we knew we wanted to be together we started trying for a family. Margaret became pregnant quickly but miscarried and despite many hospital visits she never became pregnant again.

We knew that we wanted a family and started to think about adoption but were worried that our age, by this time nearly 50, would rule us out. We saw that Salford were having an open evening, and even though we don't live in the area, decided to go to find out more. When we got talking to the team, we soon discovered that neither our age, nor living out of the area were going to be a problem. In fact, some children have to have adoptive parents from outside of Salford.

At the preparation groups we saw a DVD of Ryan, who was 14 months old then. He had developmental delay and because he was so young it was difficult for the doctors to predict how he would develop in the future. We talked to our family placement worker about him and she told us that because of his delay a lot of adopters wouldn't consider him.

We kept thinking about Ryan through all our preparation and once we were approved we decided we wanted to know more about him. We met with his social worker, foster carer and the medical adviser to find out as much as we could about him. The more we heard, the more he seemed right for us.

Eight months after we first saw Ryan at the open evening, we were matched at panel. He came to live with us just after he was two and although he hadn't started to walk, within a few weeks we saw him take his first steps. The main area of delay was his speech; he had no clear words and had really only just started to babble. Through the social worker and our health visitor he was referred for speech therapy and we were offered lots of advice on how to help him. It was a slow process but eventually he did start to speak when he was about three. We then realised that although not many words were coming out, a lot were going in and we had to watch what we said!

We have since gone on to adopt David who is Ryan's half brother and also has developmental delay.

We can honestly say that adopting both boys and becoming parents has been wonderful and we have found Salford to be a really good authority to work with.

This page was last updated on 7 March 2011