Mumma, Mummy and “The Po Po”: Grace and Elsie Share Their Adoption Story

An Adopt London South couple are sharing their adoption journey to encourage more LGBTQ+ people, particularly solo women and same-sex female couples, to consider adoption.

For Grace and Elsie becoming parents was a conversation that started soon after they met in 2012. More than a decade later, they are Mumma and Mummy to sisters Emily and Nina, and they wouldn’t change a thing.

Their story, now featured in Adopt London’s Adoption Stories series, offers an honest, heartfelt and often humorous insight into life as a same-sex adoptive family.

At a time when  LGBTQ+ people have more family-building options available than ever before, and when adoption can sometimes be overshadowed by negative misconceptions, Grace and Elsie wanted to share the reality of their experience.

“We would encourage LGBTQ+ adopters to go for it,” they say in their story.

The couple describe a journey that included years of preparation, waiting and perseverance before they were matched with Emily and Nina. Looking back, they believe every step led them to the family they were meant to become.

Today, their home is full of the everyday moments that make up family life: nursery graduations, sibling squabbles, bedtime tickles, family visits and plenty of laughter. Their account is refreshingly honest about the realities of parenting.

“We are permanently exhausted,” they write. “Parenting is not for the faint hearted.” Yet the love they have for their daughters shines through every word.

One of the most moving parts of the story is their reflection on sibling adoption. Having always imagined a family with more than one child, Grace and Elsie speak about the special bond Emily and Nina share and the joy of watching them grow together.

They also describe some of the moments that adoptive parents treasure most, including the day the girls stopped calling them by their first names and began calling them “Mummy” and “Mumma”.

Alongside the emotional moments, the story is packed with humour and relatable parenting wisdom. Among their top lessons learned:

• Routine is your friend.
• So is CBeebies.
• Never promise something you can’t deliver.
• Tell children about exciting plans no more than a day in advance.
• And perhaps most importantly: don’t refer to the police as “The Po Po” unless you’re happy for your children to repeat it directly to a police officer in public.

The couple are also candid about some of the more complex aspects of adoptive parenting, including supporting their daughters to maintain relationships with their birth family and helping them make sense of their life story as they grow.

Importantly, they speak positively about their experience as a same-sex couple throughout the adoption process.

“We do not feel we have been treated any differently than a heterosexual couple,”

they explain, adding that they found support through Adopt London South and would encourage other LGBTQ+ people considering adoption to take that first step.

For many prospective adopters, stories like Grace and Elsie’s provide something that statistics and information events alone cannot: a real-life picture of what family life can look like after adoption.

Their story doesn’t shy away from the challenges, but it also reminds us that adoption is ultimately about creating permanent, loving families for children who need them. And as Grace and Elsie’s story demonstrates, those families come in all shapes and sizes.

Read Grace and Elsie’s full adoption story

Discover more about their journey to parenthood, adopting siblings, family life, support networks and their experience as a same-sex adoptive family by reading their full story in our Adoption Stories section.

Could you provide a loving, stable home for a child? Find out more about adoption with Adopt London.