I have a seriously busy day ahead of me but I’ve neglected this blog for so long that I wanted to give it some attention this morning. I can’t say why I’ve stayed away over two months. I’ve sat down several times to update you but for the most part I end up staring at the blinking cursor and moving on.
So much has happened the past few months.
We are almost through with the foster parenting classes that we’re taking through the state. As I told one of my girlfriends the other day, I leave every class both really excited and scared to death, wondering what I’m getting myself into. The source of the excitement is obvious. There are beautiful children who need loving homes and the kind of stable family we want to provide. The fear . . . what’s NOT scary in the process of fostering-to-adopt?!?!
Number one, there is the very real prospect of taking a child into your home, your life, and your heart for months or even years and then having a social worker pull up in your driveway one afternoon to take them away forever.
Number two, these children have often been through unspeakable things and come with serious baggage. Will O and I be able to deal with the aftermath of abuse and neglect, never having experienced it ourselves? Above all we don’t want to fail a child who has been failed over and over again already.
Number three, they tell you going into these classes that the state’s number one priority is to return a child to its’ biological parent(s). You have to be on board with that. The parent may have been abusive (sexually, physically, emotionally) or neglectful, but the state is going to do everything in their power to return the child to that parent. This is one of this things O & I are having the hardest time with. Yes, we understand that sometimes really good people make bad choices in a moment of anger or fall on unbelievably hard times and simply can’t care for a child properly. But there are some people in the world who are just sorry – who take drugs and beat the crap out of their kids and leave them to starve. In my opinion, they don’t deserve to have their kids returned to them. Ever. So we are going to have to work really hard to put those feelings aside.
Number four, even if a child can’t be returned to its’ biological parent, the state does an exhaustive search (and I mean exhaustive) for a blood relative, no matter how distant, who might want the child. Through the classes, I’ve come to understand why this is really important, but again it increases the odds that we’ll have a child we’ve fallen in love with removed from our home. We’re not in this to foster. It’s a wonderful thing – an INCREDIBLE thing to do, but we want to permanently add a child to our family. So we’re going to have to be really vigilant about only accepting situations that are in line with what we want for our family. It’ll be hard. I know myself well enough to know that I’ll want to jump at the first opportunity to help a child in need, whether he or she will ever be available for adoption. I have to remember that if we take a child into our home who can’t stay permanently, there will be no room for the child who can.
Number five, if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you may remember two instances where we had to give away cats. The first was a cat we’d had for two years who was perpetually stuck in trees and had to be rescued by bucket trucks three times in one week. The second was a tiny kitten that we found on our porch and kept for a few days until O drove her to my friend in Kentucky who adopted her. You may also remember that I was really upset on both occasions, and that was about CATS! I don’t even like cats. I’m a DOG person! So I can’t imagine the absolute heartbreak of adding a child to our family only to have it taken away. How do people survive that? I know they do – I know I would, somehow - but I truly have no idea how.
All that being said, O and I are still convinced that this is the right path for us, so we’ve been working like crazy to get our home ready.
We painted one of our guest rooms a bright yellow, only to REPAINT it a softer, buttery yellow. (I’m not good at picking yellow paint – never have been.) It looks wonderful. The walls are covered with prints by my new favorite artist – Low*ell Herr*ero. He paints wonderful pictures of cows and cats and a few farm scenes. I thought that since we live on a farm, that that would be appropriate. The animals he paints are fun and whimsical and perfect for a child’s room.
O and I finished sanding and staining the bed that was made for his mom when she was 3 years old. It’s been in one of our barns for 50 years and needed some TLC. We also had to have a mattress made for it because it’s a ¾ bed – between a twin and a full. It’s perfect for the room.
We also sanded and stained an antique dresser that was O’s uncle’s, filled the bookcase with books, games, and stuffed animals, and I finished the quilt for the bed. It all came together just as I’d imagined.
We borrowed my SIL’s crib and put it in the room too, just in case we get an infant. It’s so strange to walk past and see a crib in our home. Sometimes I’ll go in and sit on the bed and look at everything in wonder. It all seems so out of place here, yet it’s something I’ve dreamed of nearly my whole life. I try to imagine a child running around the room, sitting at their little table coloring or playing games, or crawling into be to be tucked in at night. At the same time, I just wonder if we’re setting ourselves up for yet another heartbreak. The honest answer is that I don’t know. All I can do is pray and prepare as best I can.
A foster mom who has been helping at our classes every week made the suggestion that we start gathering a few pieces of clothing for each age/sex we’re interested in because very often there is little to no warning when you pick up a child, and you may get them in the middle of the night with only the clothes on their back. So, my mother-in-law being an avid “garage saler”, I tagged along to a few in the past weeks and am hooked. I’ve always HAD garage sales and knew that I sold really nice things at ridiculously low prices, but dang! So I now have a chest of drawers filled with really lovely, almost never (or actually never) worn kids clothes. I can’t tell you how strange it was to be folding laundry and run across a little sweat suit or a pair of Oshkosh jeans. Each time I’d stop for a moment and a little thrill of excitement ran through me. At the same time, I felt like an impostor. I don’t know – hard to explain.
The foster/adoption classes we’ve been taking are fantastic. I love love love the social worker who leads them, J. She is so knowledgeable and helpful, and seems to still have an enthusiasm for her job. Unfortunately, we had to take these classes in a county different from our own so this particular social worker won’t be continuing on and working with us to get licensed after the classes. We will be handed off to a social worker in our county who will do our three home visits and work to place a child on our home. There is good news and bad news re: our prospects.
Our county has zero foster homes available, so it’s pretty likely that we will have opportunities to take a child into our home pretty quickly. The drawback? Apparently our county doesn’t take many kids into care. I’m not sure why – that’s just something J mentioned to me one day. Of course when I learned that, I immediately started work on a “Plan B”. For this class we had to put together a scrapbook about us and our home, to show a child who might be placed with us. The idea is that knowing a little bit about where they’re going will make the transition easier. I spent several days on ours and filled it with photos of us, our home, the different rooms in the house, and shared a lot of the things we like to do. It was totally geared towards a child, asking lots of questions about his/her favorite things to do. I showed it to J, who has been with D*C*F*S for six years, and she said it was far and away the best scrapbook she’d ever seen. That made me happy! Anyway, my “Plan B” involves creating three or four more scrapbooks and distributing them, along with letters of introduction, to D*C*F*S social workers in the surrounding counties once we’re licensed. J already said she’d keep my name and number and contact me if something appropriate for us comes up. I figured there was no harm in letting other counties know that we’re out here, too. The problem? Our county has to “release” our home before a child from another country can be placed with us. The odds of them agreeing to release our home? About 50/50 from all I’ve heard.
Damn – can’t anything be easy?
Speaking of things not being easy, O and I had a very preliminary talk about possibly returning to IF treatments in the new year. We both want to feel as if we gave it a good shot before walking away and we don’t feel that way now. We never really got started, in fact. I have to admit, part of me is excited at the prospect. Another part – perhaps the bigger part, feels that it would just be opening up a nearly-healed wound. I can’t tell you how wonderful it’s been to be away from all that – blood draws, test results, negative pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, blah blah blah. I mean I don’t miss it AT ALL. No more feeling like a failure. No more scheduled sex. No more throwing good money after bad. Can you tell that I’m a looonnnnggg way from being on board with that plan? If we do decide to proceed with IF treatments, I’d do a few things differently . . . I would definitely find another doctor. While I feel like my doctor did everything she could to alleviate the fears her NP caused, I just have a bad taste in my mouth about the whole situation and wouldn’t be comfortable returning. Also, if we start cycling again I would not tell a soul. I don’t even know if I’d even blog about it. I’m not interested in input or opinions or expectant (no pun intended) looks. Mum’s the word (no pun intended, again!).
Also, we have stumbled on another option . . .
We asked a work friend of O’s to be one of his personal references. She was more than happy to fill out and send in the form for him. She also happened to mention that her cousin had a great experience with a particular adoption agency that really needs childless couples for birth parents to choose from. They apparently have a lot of prospective adoptive parents who already have kids but these birth moms prefer childless couples for the most part. From the time O’s friend’s cousin started the process, it was 9 months until they had a baby in their home. HOWEVER, this agency only sets up OPEN adoptions and I am frankly not sure how I feel about that at this point.
So much to think about.
Well, there is lots more to tell you about . . . our fall trip to PA and VA, my mother who keeps calling me with foster/adoption horror stories and telling me that I’m “obsessed” with having a child (let me just insert here, I do want to have a child in our home but I am the LEAST obsessed person you’re ever going to find re: that), the relative-by-marriage who was going through IF treatments and was chat-chat-chatty about it with me via e-mail only to completely blow me off – I mean COMPLETELY (We all know what that means!), Thanksgiving, the first anniversary of my TWO positive-yet-incorrect pregnancy tests (I still long to rake the boxes of Clear Blue Easy into the floor every time I pass them in Walmart.), holiday festivities, and on and on and on.
But I think instead of doing that, I’m going to just get this posted and come back another day. Thanks to those of you who are still checking in from time to time. Although I rarely comment, I’m still checking in on you too!
By the way, this photo was taken a couple of weeks ago on the banks of one of our ponds here at them farm. I guess drought has at least one benefit - it makes the leaves absolutely incredible in the fall!
