It’s been a very productive summer, and I shall now begin updating  you with some of my exciting news.

A few weeks ago I met one of the most inspirational mothers ever.

Baroness King of Bow, better known as Oona King, is like me an adopter. Only she is mixed raced and hence had the honour of giving two children in this country a loving home.

Like me, Oona is committed to improving the system of adoption here in the UK so that more children are given a proper shot at life.

I was massively pleased at the first thing she said to me: “I just came back from my summer holiday during which I tend to read the only one book a year I manage to read. This summer it was your book Mexican Takeaway and I loved it.”

Whilst we discussed how badly damaged the system is and in need of reforms, I must admit it’s the wonderful mother she is that I was so honoured to meet. She is a committed, passionate, sensitive woman who gives her children all the love they deserve and is prepared to put her head above the parapet to improve the lives of so many others.

Oona suggested becoming the patron for my campaign, Adoption With Humanity, and if that becomes reality I will be truly honoured.

Chapter 2, Does Your Cat Speak Spanish?
“Do I look OK?” Rick said as he came into the bedroom, wearing his cream suit and his best tie.
“Uh oh. Cream?”
“I don’t want to wear a dark one. It doesn’t seem friendly enough; too businesslike. They might think I don’t have time for children if I wear that.”
I’d never seen Rick this anxious. He was normally so calm and composed about absolutely everything.
“I think I want to marry you all over again. It means a lot that you’re going along with me on this.”
“Fra, I believe in adoption too. I am not going along with you just because you are stubborn, which you are! I can totally see the point, but I want to know more and see if it is for us. I’m our left brain, remember?”
I collapsed in giggles on the bed. Rick bounced over and gave me a huge hug.
“Careful, you’ll crease the suit.”
“Shut up, you.”
We kissed, then lay there just holding each other close for a while. I had opted for a more casual look than Rick. Smart jeans, a long blue cardigan, and a pair of boots instead of recycled shoes. It was freezing again. In the car, I asked him: “Where do you think you are in your heart, Rick?”
“I find it frustrating that they have to decide for us that we cannot adopt locally. It’s not like there are no children who need a family here in London.”
“I mean what about adoption? How do you feel about it now?”
“I think if we decide it’s worth a shot, we should start the adoption and try to have natural children at the same time.”
“And then let the Universe decide which one is right first.”
“I knew you’d say that! You and your Universe!”

There were times when Rick’s pragmatism and my spiritual outlook clashed, but on the whole our combination worked. We filed into a room with the other couples who were doing the training. There was tea, coffee and biscuits on offer. Everyone seemed very shy. This wasn’t surprising, since for most couples choosing adoption is a public admission that they can’t have children.
We were invited into a room and directed to a circle of chairs. I chose to sit next to a woman who appeared to be alone. Rick sat on the other side of me, munching a biscuit.
“This is what it must be like attending a twelve-step programme,” he whispered.
“Sshh! Someone might hear you!”
The two trainers arrived and introduced themselves. They were both women, and they exuded warm energy. One had an endless mane of hair and wore a long hippie skirt. With her big eyes and enormous glasses, she reminded me of a cartoon character from A Bug’s Life. The other woman wore a suit and smart flat shoes, and sported an elegant short bob.
“Hello everyone, and well done for arriving on time in such bad weather. It shows this means a lot to you. We are trainers for this course, and also we are both international adopters. I have two Bolivian children, and Susan has a Chinese girl as well as a natural one.”
“Oh, good,” I whispered to Rick. “They’ve actually done it.”
“At the end of today you will have understood more about the process, and we will file a report for your council to say whether or not we feel you are ready to start the Home Study.”
No pressure then. We were asked to introduce ourselves and say a little about why we were there. I realised suddenly that we would be putting ourselves on show in public for the first time. Amongst the couples talking about their fertility problems, multiple miscarriages, and failed attempts at in vitro fertilization, we would stick out. God, what were we doing here? Did we have a right to be in that room? I felt slightly ashamed when it was my turn to speak.
“For all intents and purposes we can conceive, but we feel strongly that adoption should play a big part for various reasons.”

It turned out the single woman next to me, who was a Spanish journalist, had also decided on adoption, even though she could have children. At the end of the introduction, one of the trainers gestured towards us and said:
“The three of you are called preferential adopters. This means that you have chosen to build your family via adoption and not because of fertility issues. The rest of you are traditional adopters.”
“What if we wanted to adopt and try and have natural children too?” asked the Spanish lady.
Thank God she asked that one.I was dying to know but didn’t want to appear too radical or anything.
The woman from A Bug’s Life answered.
“You can’t do that. If you happen to fall pregnant during the Home Study you will have to stop the adoption, have your baby, and wait until he or she is at least three years of age before you can start the process all over again. If you have a miscarriage, you will have to wait for two years to grieve and overcome the trauma.”
Two years to overcome a miscarriage! How did they work that out?
“How do you even know if we are trying, anyway?” I joked.
“Your life will never be the same, my dear, once you say yes to the adoption process. Believe me, it’ll feel like a crowd of people are watching you having sex.”
Laughter from around the room. “Seriously, guys, your entire life will be scrutinised every step of the way. Nothing will pass unnoticed.”

Later, when we were let out for lunch, we sat with the Spanish woman and three other couples in a nearby deli, conducting a post-mortem on the morning’s proceedings.
“So which country do you think you would like to adopt from?” asked the Spanish lady.
“We would like to adopt from Russia because my husband has blond hair and mine is dark, so we figured that whether the baby is from the eastern or western part of the country, it will look like one of us,” said one woman.
“We’re going for China, as we want a baby girl at any cost, and all babies for adoptions are girls,” said another woman.
“Anyway, as if I’m going to stop trying in the meantime!” said
Michelle. She and her husband Simon had already attempted I.V.F. a few times.
“What was that all about? What gives them the right to be all Stasi-like about sex?” I said.
“No disrespect to you guys,” said the single Spanish lady, looking around the table, “but it seems almost as if adoption is an industry for infertile people. Unlike those of us who choose, often in your cases it’s a second best, right?”
She may as well have thrown a hand grenade. It was clear that at least one couple were taking her comment personally. The table went quiet.
“Oh, look at the time,” said Rick. “We’d better get back.”
The rest of the day was spent in various exercises, scenarios, and conversations about the pitfalls and challenges of the adoption process. At the end of the day, one of the trainers looked around at us all and said: “It won’t be the same for all of you, and some will handle it better than others. But it’s neither an easy ride nor a short one. You have anything from two to four years ahead of you from this moment. But I am sure you will all be fine. Good luck.”
I felt like I do when my Chinese doctor sticks a million needles in my face, tummy, ears and neck, then calmly says, “You can sleep now till I am back.”
Really?

Pretty soon everything we did seemed to lead to the question of  having a family and how we should do it. Watching documentaries about disaster or famine, seeing the faces of children who were starving or homeless or orphaned by war, was a cue for me to put forward my views.
“There are just so many children out there reaching out to us. You are right,” he would say.
“And?” I’d say, hoping for some definitive answer.
“Sometimes I want to take them all home with me. But we’re still not going to solve the world’s problems by adopting one of them, or even two or three.”
“Look, I am sorry. I hope this hasn’t become an obsession. I agree with you. It’s just a very small way of giving something back.
But then, as Gandhi would say, you have to be the change you want to see in the world, right? And I think we can be that change.”
“We can’t jump to such a decision. It’s just not that simple. Perhaps we should do both.”
“What? Adopt and have a baby? One has to come first.”
The reality was that the experience of pregnancy and natural birth did appeal to me too. But the need to adopt was overtaking my biological desires. I can’t explain it any other way than to say it felt like the right thing for me to do.
One night, early in January of 2008, Rick asked me to take the next morning off work.
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you. It’s a surprise.”
“Oh, sure. Tell me you have a surprise late at night and expect me to sleep. Come on, out with it.”
I’d seen him hiding away in his study and being quite secretive.This just wasn’t his way. I worried. I thought maybe he was ill, and was working out how to tell me. We got into bed, but every time he looked like he was about to fall asleep, I’d wake him up and beg him to tell me what was going on. Finally he sat up.
“You always ruin surprises, don’t you?”
“Sorry, it’s just that I need to know. I can’t sleep with this tension. I am worried about you.”

I sat up too.
“Well… we have an appointment with the council to discuss adoption. I figured that way we’ll both know more about it, and we can get closer to deciding what to do. Call it my New Year resolution.”
“Wow. Oh, Rick… I didn’t think you were listening!”
“Ah, well, you don’t know me as well as you think. The appointment is at nine o’clock, so you have four hours to get some sleep.”
He drew me towards him, gently turned me so we were like perfect spoons, and wrapped his arms around me. I lay there most of the night with my eyes open. In the morning, I was frantic.
“God, I can never get it right!” I yelled.
“What are you talking about?” he said, coming into the bathroom. I showed him my smudged and smeared fingernails. It was my third shot at painting them, and probably only the fifth time in my life I’d bothered doing it.
“You look great. You don’t need nail varnish, and anyway it’s not you. Let’s get going, or we’ll be late.”

He strode out and down the stairs. I quickly removed the offending polish and ran after him. It was an icy winter morning in London, which meant we were late to our appointment.
At the council office, we were met by a woman with a no-nonsense short haircut and just a trace of a smile. She was, however, wearing a pair of funky red spectacles. I wondered if this was a good sign. They were just the kind of glasses I would buy for myself.
“Good morning. I’m Anne, the adoption team leader. Please take a seat.”
She wasted no time giving us our first reality check.
“You can’t adopt in the UK, I am afraid. You are too white,” she said.
I didn’t know whether to laugh at such a ridiculous statement, or cry at its implications.
“Too white? What is that supposed to mean?” asked Rick, before I could.
Anne answered in the jaded tone of someone who’d done this many times before.
“Well, there is a cap on the number of white couples who can adopt in this area of the country, because most of the children for adoption are black. That’s the way it works in our local council.”
I was shocked.
“Surely it should be up to us to choose,” I said.
“No, it isn’t. Not much in this process is up to you, I’m afraid,” she said, peering over her spectacles. “You could think about registering for international adoption.”
“How?”
“You enroll in an introductory training course to learn about the mechanics of the process, so you can make an informed decision. At the same time it allows us to establish if you’re suitable candidates for a Home Study. The next available spaces for training are not until April, I’m afraid. This is the number you need to ring to book yourselves in. The centre will contact you directly if you have been successful, so you don’t need to contact me any more.”
Then she checked her watch. “Look, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I have another matter to deal with right now. I wish you the best of luck with it all.”
Seven minutes. Done. Now run along and take your hopefulness with you.
“Wow, that was quick and nasty,” I said as we got to the car.
“And look at this! We have a parking fine, too!”
Rick grabbed a yellow plastic envelope from the windscreen and dangled it.
“By the way, did you realise you were wearing your recycled shoes? I couldn’t stop looking at them.”
I looked down. I was indeed wearing my prized recycled black trainers, made from car tire waste. I must’ve picked them up in the rush—they were pretty much a habit these days, and I was rarely without them.
“Oh, no. How embarrassing. Did they look really stupid with my dress?”
“Yep.” Rick ran around to the back of the car and pretended to hide.
“Bastard.”
That seven minutes had drained us, but had also provided a lot to think about. And call it luck or fate, but a vacancy for the initial adoption training suddenly became available at the end of January.

This book is based on true events. However, the names of all persons connected to our adoption are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The opening instalment from the first chapter, Too White To Adopt.

June 5, 2008
The queue in the customs hall at Heathrow was long, full of weary and bad-tempered travellers, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to be home. We stood behind the yellow line, waiting our turn to be called to the desk.
“Next, please.”
Rick went ahead and put our three passports triumphantly on
the counter.
The agent, her skin pallid, her brows wrinkled, peered at us over her spectacles with suspicion. I wondered if it was because our passports were each of a different nationality; his British, mine Italian, and Gaia’s Mexican. She looked down and then looked up again, this time with a stony visage.
“Where have you been?”
“Mexico,” I said happily.
“For how long?”
“Five months.”
“Why were you there for five months? What were you doing?”
“We were adopting our daughter. This is her,” Rick said.
“Adopting, were you?”
I sensed she was angling for something.
“Yes, we went especially to adopt a child.”
“Is she yours then?”
What a strange question, I thought.
“Of course she is ours,” Rick said proudly. “See? There’s our surnames on her passport”
She shot him a glare, then fixed us with a look that said: Here is another couple trying to cheat me.
“Did you visit the Embassy before travelling?”
“Of course we did.” Rick’s reply was clipped. The poor guy had been suffering food poisoning for weeks and barely had the energy to stand, let alone put up with an inquisition.
“We have all our documents here in case you wish to see them,”
I said helpfully. She ignored me and looked hard at Rick.
“Mr Bowden, I will have to detain this baby and yourselves.”
I gripped Rick’s hand. He looked at me as if to say, “I’ll talk.”
“What are you talking about? This is nonsense.”
The agent wrote something on a piece of paper.
Gaia, who was unsurprisingly exhausted after thirty-six hours of bus and plane travel, began to scream. I ground my teeth and tried not to cry.
“Didn’t you hear? I am detaining your daughter.” She handed
Rick the piece of paper. “Follow me,” she said.
We followed her to a tiny cubicle, where two Mexican girls had already taken up involuntary residence in one corner. They both looked scared. One of them was sobbing. We looked at the paper where she had written Gaia’s name. It read:
Gaia Polini, I am detaining you. I am also confiscating your passport.
“How can you arrest a baby?” I asked. She shot me a look of pure poison, then turned to Rick.
“Listen to me. There are a lot of things you are supposed to have done before you brought that baby into this country. You are supposed to have interviews with social workers, and something called a Home Study…”
I jumped up.
“But we did all that. I can tell you the name of our social worker, and even the name of the person we met today at the embassy before leaving!”
“I am not talking to you. You are not even British.”
This woman was pure bile. I wanted to scream at her, to shake her, to say, “Don’t you understand what we have gone through to bring this child here?”
She ignored the question and then began to address Rick as if he was intellectually challenged.
“Now, Richard. Let me tell you why I have put you in this little room. We are here to protect the welfare of the children, and you clearly haven’t followed the legal steps to get you here. There are
many people like you who try and bring babies illegally into the country.”
God, did she think we were child traffickers? I had to put her right.
“But… but…” I said.
Rick shot me a look that said, Please keep your mouth shut.
Gaia, meanwhile, was yelling at the top of her lungs, despite my best efforts to rock her to sleep. Her nappy was wet, and she was hungry, but I was too scared to say or do anything, I had run out of boiled water to mix with the formula milk, so I couldn’t even comfort her with her bottle.
“Now, what documents, if any, do you have with you?” she asked Rick.
“We have them all,” I said to Rick.
I started pulling them out of the trolley suitcase.
“Home Study…” I was spelling them out one by one to him as I was getting them out, knowing she would hear and realise she was wrong.
“References, CRB checks, finance checks, birth certificates, marriage certificate, psychology report, doctor’s report, certificate of eligibility, Gaia’s birth certificate, adoption order from the court of Colima, ticket of meeting with the British embassy.”
As I finished emptying the bag, a look of surprise appeared on her face. Then she turned to me and said: “I need your passport too.
I am confiscating that also.”
There’s a name for people like us who can have children but choose to adopt instead. We are called preferential adopters. How we got to that point is a result of my family background and political beliefs, Rick’s own beliefs about society, the desire to share our lives with a little one, and a hell of a lot of debate.
Rick and I had been married for two years, but we’d been together for six. We were happy and childless by choice. We were
the stereotypical high-flying couple with dream jobs that took us around the world, often in different directions. We commuted regularly to exotic cities, and for both of us the lifestyle was addictive… for a time. But the novelty had worn off. We began to feel like it just wasn’t quite enough. We had so much to give that it didn’t feel right to keep it all to ourselves. We had gone back and forth with the thought of starting a family. Yet something about having a baby just didn’t seem ‘real’.
Our conversations fluctuated wildly between for and against. We’d talk about how exciting our life was compared to that of our friends with children, but how uninspiring, exhausting, and empty it could be. Relationships need to move forward, and frankly there are only so many weekend breaks you can have before you think: I’ve done this all before. There has to be more. That ‘more’ was a family.
Falling in love had happened relatively late for us, and we knew better than to take it for granted. We both felt we had been able to put the ‘soul’ in our soulmate relationship. We didn’t just like each other; we each thought the other would make a great parent.
When I hit thirty-five, I realised that I didn’t want young teenagers when I was heading towards sixty. For Rick, this appeared to be the signal he was waiting for. We began to discuss the possibility of children in earnest. For most people, that discussion would usually revolve around the woman taking folic acid, keeping track of exactly when her period came, and ensuring they had sex on the ‘right’ days.
“We are trying for a baby,” they would then announce to their friends.
Our methodology was more unorthodox. For a start, I had strong social and political beliefs, borne of the teachings of an intellectual trade union leader father and a savvy mother. My parents gave me a biological brother, but also an adopted
one. Growing up with Francesco taught me that not everyone in the world was as lucky as we were. I am sure there are many middle-class children in the Western World who would not consider having to share the sofa bed in the lounge with a little brother as ‘lucky’.
We lived in a tiny flat, and we had hardly any toys. But we had a family, and we had love, which my parents felt we could share with another, less fortunate person. They taught us that love is something you give away. The more you give, the more it grows, and this is how we help create a better world. They also taught us that a home is not a gigantic house or a bedroom to yourself, but a roof over your head, a nourishing meal, and plenty of cuddles. My views on social justice and opportunity were established well before I became a news journalist and saw the world in all its beautiful humanity and ugly despair.
Rick had also come from a very socially aware family. He grew up in a council flat in Scotland, with parents whose flower power ethics stayed with them throughout adulthood and influenced their teaching careers. He shared my views on home, family, and love. We were in perfect agreement: love makes the world a better place.
One lazy, rainy November weekend, after making love, I lay on my back while Rick lazily stroked my stomach.
“You’d look stunning as a pregnant woman,” he said.
“What?” I smiled.
“You heard me.”
“Really… I wasn’t necessarily thinking that’s how we would start our family.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are already so many children in the world with no love in their lives. You know I’ve always felt we would do more good by opening our hearts to a child who’s already here, whose life would be miserable otherwise.”
“So no baby with my eyes and your hair?”
“Is it so important to you to have a little mini-me? You men and your egos!”
“Fra,” he said. “You can’t simplify it like that. Humans have a biological and emotional need to procreate. You can’t just say that has to be put aside in order to help suffering children. You’re opening up a big Pandora’s box on the whole business of existence if you do that.”
But the more we talked about it, the more he became open to thinking beyond having a child in his own image. He was more curious about adoption than afraid of it. Initially our deliberations were abstract, but over a period of months they became more serious and specific.
“I am in two minds about it, really,” he said one night over dinner in our favourite local restaurant.
“I know you are. But don’t you agree that there are so many children in need in this world that we don’t need to necessarily procreate? Plus we have limited resources, and there are too many people on our suffering planet, right?”
Silence, while he pretended to read the menu. I turned to the waiter, who’d been waiting.
“What do you think? Do you have children?”
The poor guy had nowhere to go.
“Er, no, I don’t, but… I think adoption is a good thing to do if you feel that strongly. Can I take your order?”
I wasn’t listening. I was on my soapbox.
“It’s upsetting how in today’s supposed ‘developed world’ we just want, want, want. We want children, we want a boy or a girl, we want two or three or just one, we want them white, black or a nice mixture of the two. We want them to look like us. I guess I am no better as what I am really saying is that I want to adopt! Oh, it’s so complicated.”
Rick tried to change the subject.
“Fra, they’ve got your favourite risotto on again. Look, wild mushroom. Come on. We’d better order.”
“I just know…in my heart that it’s… right… at least for me…for us…”
Rick interrupted.
“Francesca is having mushroom risotto. I’ll have the halibut, thanks.”
He’d had enough for now. But I knew he was thinking about it.

More tomorrow …….

We also talked about my book, Mexican Takeaway which will finally make it into the stores on May 1st.

My involvement in this issue began with me deciding to write the book and use it as a vehicle to raise awareness of such a crucial issue and bring about positive change.Because of that, I am thrilled that even before it’s been released, it’s helping to make things happen. It’s funny how you start something and have no idea where it will go. Of course, we have much work to do but it seems now that the scandal and tragedy of the way in which adoption has been handled for so long in this country is about to become a major issue.

A friend recently asked why I was still doing this. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” he said. All this activity you’re generating. Surely you don’t need to worry now you have your children.”

That’s not the point. We didn’t set out to simply procure babies and move on. We set out to give a child a home because we believed then, as we do now, that all children deserve a stable and loving family situation. So if we follow through from that, then it’s not all about our cosy little family. While it might not be totally desirable for us to be in the spotlight, I know it won’t be forever. This is a phase, and then the campaign will move on to another one where I will increasingly be (hopefully) pushing and pulling behind the scenes.

I’m not going to change the world. But if my exposure helps to take adoption to a place where one, two or more children find a loving home, then I will have achieved what I have set out to do.

This is so complicated it is hard to know where to begin, except to feel dreadfully sorry for the couple. Turning to the general question of surrogacy, I will lay my cards on the table now and say that personally, I do have a problem with the concept. For me it is another example of a consumer world where anything is available at a price. For me surrogacy does not seem to be about wanting to be a family but rather about ‘wanting a baby.’

While I understand there are many ways to become a parent including adoption, IVF or remarrying someone who already has children I do struggle with the moral issues around surrogacy. Is it morally right to pay someone to be pregnant for you? I know I’m not the first to ask that question and there are better minds on the job, but nonetheless it is a tough call.

For me it isn’t, just as it wasn’t right for the corrupt Mexican lawyer we met during our travels to adopt our daughter, to organise payment for poor women to have children by the same father so that couples could adopt children who were already a ‘family’ and looked alike. This is explained in my book Mexican Takeaway.  Both situations are troubling because they are all about the needs of the parents and have nothing to do with caring for children. For the lawyer it was supply meeting demand.

It’s not just surrogacy that is the problem. It’s the fact that because it’s possible to buy something on the open market, then it is automatically assumed that it is okay to do so. You’re seventy, have money and want a baby? Sure, there’s an IVF doctor somewhere who will do it for you. Never mind about the child and their future past teenager hood with no living parent. Are you a wealthy single woman who has no need for a father but just wants someone with perfect genes? Get down to the clinic and for a tidy sum you too can have that perfect child injected into you.

What is right and what is wrong?  Have we crossed a line so far we can’t see that we’ve commoditised babies into a business?

This is what I know. I know that though I am not their birth mother, I am their real mother. It feels pretty real to feed and dress them, nurse them when they’re sick at night, watch them walk and grow. I am the one who takes them to nursery and wonders if it is right for them. I think about their future; about school, possible bullying, their interactions with other children and adults. I plan birthdays and picnics and feel my heart skip a beat if I think anything is wrong with either of them. I laugh (a lot) and if I go away with my husband overnight I miss them and rush through the front door to make sure all is well. As it should be.

Meanwhile I am very aware of the birth mothers, the women who carried them. I make sure they also know it by reading special stories to them, by telling them their life stories before we came into their lives. I know that the mothers will think of them on their birthdays, and that is just the way it is. But, like other adoptive parents, I have to be careful. There is far too much complexity to happily say, “oh wouldn’t it be nice to have them in contact with their birth mothers for occasions like this one.” Whatever I choose to tell them, and however we decide to manage this complex issue where there is no such a thing as doing the ‘right thing’,  our children have one mother and one father.

In our case, the women who gave up their babies did so not because they couldn’t afford them, but because adoption was the only way out of their respective situations. For their own reasons, they could not have these babies with them – ever. They had a plan for them, as all the mothers who were at the VIFAC Institute in Mexico did.

That is why they were there. They were not in a public hospital, laying there, undecided. They knew the Institute would ensure their children were adopted by a good family and had requested no further contact. This may sound odd to people who simply can’t envisage it, but they wanted to cut ties and leave.

There is no ideal way to do adoption, However, if they’d been abandoned or neglected until they ended up in the system, they may well have been stuck there. Rick and I don’t kid ourselves that we are birth parents. Why would we? But that doesn’t make our ties any weaker.

Pragmatism aside, yes there are days when I would love to reassure Gaia’s mother that this tiny baby has grown into an independent, strong, happy and laughing three-year-old. I would love to introduce her to Gaia’s friends and grandparents and show that she has established a life and now has a sibling to look after (and annoy).

On Gaia’s birthday she did as she has the previous year: she lay in her bed, in her relaxed, undeniably Mexican pose with her hands behind her head waiting for us. We came in with gifts, hugs, kisses and songs. It is our routine and one I hope that my children will have for a long, long time. I am so proud to be a mother and grateful that we are in a position to make a child’s hopes and dreams happen.

Gaia and her new brother Luca have a family who love them unconditionally and feel fortunate to have them. That is how real adoption feels. That is what being an adoptive parent feels like.