open adoption website of Frances and Mat for birthmothers seeking open adoption


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About Mat

In Frances’s words:
Mat is calm, kind, thoughtful, fun and sociable. He has a wry sense of humour, and likes gently teasing family and friends. When we first met, he kept surprising me - he seemed formal, but then kept doing things which were slightly off the wall, or just didn’t fit his image - being the first to jump enthusiastically into a freezing river on a rafting trip; letting my 6 year old nephew dress up in his smart blazer and hat, then eating ice-cream with him and crawling backwards through hoops on the lawn; getting up at 3 am so he could watch the shooting stars on his way to work. He unexpectedly decided to come to Lourdes with me (a Catholic place of pilgrimage in France where people help disabled people – he’s not a Catholic) – and then was wonderful with mentally and physically disabled and ill people, just getting along and having a laugh with everybody. He told me he wasn’t keen on hiking, then came for a 3 day walk through the Alps, and carried my pack the whole way…. (and changed his mind about hiking, luckily). Mat is inventive, and enjoys fixing things for our own home as well as for other people. All the children who visit really enjoy seeing the workshop and his model steam trains (his specialty), and love helping him fix things. He is a natural with small children, and seems to understand what they might be thinking or feeling much more quickly and instinctively than other people, he understands and relates to them, so they feel at home and comfortable with him.

Mat has two sons from his previous marriage, Adrian, who is 20 and is studying at the University of Vermont. Laurence is 17 and lives with his mother in Costa Rica. Mat’s marriage broke up when the children were still very young, and, sadly, they moved with their mother to Costa Rica. However, Adrian decided to come back to England to go to school, and has just recently transferred to the US to join his girlfriend in Vermont. Both Adrian and Laurence are very mature now, and are warmly supportive of having a younger brother or sister. Mat has spent a lot of time in Costa Rica, as well as other Latin American countries, and speaks fluent Spanish.

Mat’s parents are both British; we visit them regularly along with his sister who is married with four children, and lives in beautiful countryside on the edge of Wales.

Mat is an engineer and entrepreneur. He is a director of an engineering company, and works on other business projects mostly in food manufacturing. He works a lot from home so he looks forward to being a very involved father.