Strictly Professional

69: Perfect

ELLE
Late Night Talking-Harry Styles

No matter how much he loved our daughter, Niall never shied away from expressing how much he wanted our family to grow. Even long before we were married and we'd lay awake late at night talking about our future, he'd always mentioned how he'd love to have a big family consisting of three or four kids. That used to make me nervous. I used to believe that we wouldn't be able to raise more than one. But in recent years, after seeing how incredibly dedicated he was to raising Stella, after witnessing him willingly give up his chance at building a new career for the sake of me building mine, I had started thinking about things differently. I began considering the prospect of bringing a new baby home once Stella had gotten older, so that it would be easier for both of us to handle both. So, when I was sure I was ready to take on a new responsibility, I began looking into adoption.

Weeks of excessive and thorough research made me realise two things. One, that Niall was right when he said it was our best option for growing our family. It took me a while to understand why he was so set on it, but I was finally able to understand it. Adopting was even more rewarding than having a child biologically. There were so many children that were abandoned in orphanages, most not even knowing life outside such a facility.

Two, adopting was a long, long process. I always assumed that it wouldn't be easy, but I never actually realised how challenging it was going to be until I agreed to it, until Niall and I both felt ready to bring a second child into our home.

We waited until Stella was old enough to start primary school, where she'd be gone for half the day to make it easier for Niall. I was still spending most of my day in the office, so he had to be the one to take that task up like he had done with Stella. But he was excited, he wanted this more than anyone. He decided to push his original plan of going back to coaching a few years back, so that he'd be able to take care of Stella and the potential new baby without having to worry for anything else.

We had spent countless evenings talking about it, discussing the prospect of me working from home for some days to help. With the company growing the last few years and the two new team members I have hired, it was definitely doable. The workload wasn't just on my shoulders anymore, though I still had to look over and oversee everything. This type of work never really remained in the office, following me home after hours and on the weekends. So I figured that it wouldn't make much of a difference if I stayed at home every now and then. It would give me more time with my children, more time with Niall.

After we initially applied for adoption seven months ago, we were asked to submit a whole lot of information. That included our bank statements, our real estate and property holdings, our monthly income statements for the past two years, as well as our medical history. Almost a month later, we were called to attend a psychological evaluation, which was just as nerve-wracking as it sounded. Niall couldn't stop from fidgeting and moving, which the psychologist realised was due to his anxiety pretty instantly. We were there for about an hour, and were later called back separately for one on one sessions.

When I was alone with the psychologist, he mostly asked me questions about Niall. He asked about his everyday routine, and I explained in detail how he was the one caring for our daughter most of the time. He asked about his injury that ended his career, how it came about and how he recovered from that. I knew that I couldn't sugarcoat things, so I didn't hold back. I told the doctor all about Niall's mental health struggles during that time, how he had been told he was nearing depression because of it, but managed to avoid it thanks to the treatments he was given by his therapist.

I was asked about Niall's life before me, and if I thought his past struggles with marriage and losing a child still affected him today. I answered truthfully, saying how I felt he was viewing our marriage as a second chance to be better, and how he would never really be over the loss of his daughter with Shannon, but has learned to live with it. I mentioned the fact that when Stella was old enough, we told her about her half sister and how she was an angel watching over us now, telling her that the reason she wasn't with us was because she was too good for this world. It was the most gentle way we could explain loss and death to a child, and the psychologist reassured me we handled the situation well. When my appointment was over, he asked me not to discuss what we had talked about with Niall. I assumed he was told the same when he went there himself a few days after.