Adding a biological child

Annie had been in our homes and our hearts for about six months when we learned that my wife was pregnant again.  I was scared to death.  I wondered how we would ever manage having two children who was that small.  I wondered how this would impact Annie.  To be truthful I wondered in some ways if I would love this little boy more, and then in other ways I had such great love for Annie I wondered if there was anyway I could love him as much.  Those sound like conflicting concerns and they were, but that was where my head was at.  TJ was born in August of 2012 the same week that the state received permanent custody of Annie.  What an exciting and scary time that was.  TJ was enjoying his current living conditions in the womb and did not want to come out.  The drs waited until 41 weeks and then decided to induce the pregnancy.  We arrived at the hospital around 11am and they began the process, TJ was not born until after 3pm the next day.  Talk about a long day and a half! I’m sure my wife would agree with that statement.  I had some of those conflicting feelings all the way up to the time of his birth.  As he was delivered TJ had the cord wrapped around his neck, they quickly cut away the cord and began working on him, but he was gray.  I just remember how unnatural of a color he was.  I remember my wife yelling at me trying to find out how he was.  The nurses and dr’s were working on him sucking out his nose and mouth.  They would pick up his hand and allow it to drop and each time it was just limp.  They called in a specialist team and they began to work on him.  I was calmed by their demeanor because even though they were obviously working on him quickly, I could tell they were not overly worried.  It wasn’t long at all and they had my son breathing again, and his color began to slowly turn a more natural pink.  I was so scared watching this process, but that worry quickly turned to excitement as I watched as they placed TJ in his mother’s arms. 

Annie had stayed with our parents the night before and was with the babysitter that day, and I was so excited to have her meet him and have my family together.  They brought her in and she was so excited to see the mommy and daddy that she hadn’t seen in two day, that the new baby went almost entirely unnoticed by her.  We were in the hospital for three more days because of the complications during birth they wanted to monitor TJ’s progress.  I was a little apprehensive once we got home to see Annie’s reactions to this new person being in her home.  The first week or two she paid very little attention to him.  But it wasn’t long before she became the big sister.  His was the first proper name she learned to say, and she quickly became protective of him.  It has been so neat watching her grow with him and to see the relationship between them develop. I still hold concerns as later in life she realizes that TJ is our biological child and that she is adopted.  I hope that too will be a issue we can seamlessly overcome.  I think it will help that my wife and I will continue fostering and so there is the chance of more adoptions happening.  Whatever struggles come from this however I am ready to meet head on.  I want to always encourage and open dialogue with my daughter so I just pray that she has the ability to express her concerns.  I know however that working together we will be able to deal with anything.

Adoption Day!

I realized that I have skipped over a large part of Annie’s story, but to be honest the point of the first few posts were to give a quick historic background on the three children so I could begin writing about current things in our lives.  Obviously I struggled to condense Annie’s story to a few short words so this will be the third part.  Following the birth mother‘s final visit with Annie, it became apparent to everyone that our case was moving towards permanent custody. (Annie’s father was incarcerated and would be for at least two more years).  The permanency hearing was postponed a couple of times.  In July the father’s rights were terminated, but the case with her birth mother was once again postponed. Finally in August of 2012 the permanency hearing was completed the state had received permanent custody! Everything we knew would be pretty much a formality at this point.  The state actually received custody just two days prior to our son being born, so in a way it was like we gained two children that week.  As anyone who has been through the foster to adopt process knows, there was a lot of hoops to jump through yet.  New home study, attachment assessments, more fingerprinting, etc.  We completed all of those joyously though, because we knew we were so close to being able to call Annie ours.  December 12, 2012 was the big day.  The night before I could not sleep I was so excited.  I stayed up most of the night writing Annie a letter that was probably 10 pages long.  I told her about how I felt through the process.  How all along how we wanted what was best for her.  I told her of how I had cried and prayed over her, asking God to put her in the right situation.  I told her how scary it was to ask these things of God, knowing there was at least a chance that wasn’t with me.  I told her how somewhat selfishly I had clung to the hope that she would some day be mine, because of the love that had grown between us.  I don’t know when I will give this letter to Annie.  Probably some time in her teenage years when she is old enough to understand.  We have already begun age appropriately letting Annie know her story, but the letter deals with some real raw feelings that will be best digested when she is older.  I have also decided that I am going to write each of my kids on their birthday every year.  The big adoption day finally arrived.  We all got dressed up and headed to the courthouse.  My parents, my wife’s parents, my grandfather, family friends, and more came to share in this day with us….It apparently was a big crowd for an adoption hearing but everyone was so excited and wanted to share in the day.  We were brought into the courtroom and to be honest I can hardly remember a thing the judge said, but the judge did let Annie bang the gavel to make it final!  And then she wanted to keep on banging it!  The following Saturday we had an Adoption party.  We didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do, but we knew we wanted to celebrate this occasion and knew that many others wanted to as well.  We rented out the hall at our church, made lots of food, and rented a huge bouncy castle.  We had close to 200 people come out to celebrate this day.  So many of our church family who had been praying along side us through this process were so excited to know they would be able to watch Annie grow.  We purchased Annie a necklace and bracelet with engravings and she wore these to the party.  We had such a blast and the bouncy castle kept all the kids entertained.  It was so neat to see everyone so invested in the life of one little girl.   I can’t wait to celebrate Annie’s adoption day annually with our family!

Will she stay or will she go (First foster placement pt2)

As I said in my first post about Annie, I knew she would forever hold a place in my heart.  It was in the moment of meeting her that I truly believed God had a plan in place for my family, and fortunately I hadn’t screwed it up to badly.  Anyone who takes in a foster child has to deal with the question of what will happen when that child leaves? For the first three weeks Annie had visits with her birth mother.  We really hoped for the best for the birth mother, hoping that she could turn things around and be the mother she needed to be to Annie, because we knew in the long run that would be best for her.  These were supervised visits at the JFS offices for one hour, one day a week.  We kept our mind set on the fact that this was not our child and that our job was to love her for the best we could for as long as she was with us.  We went to these first few visitations, but on the fourth one birth mom stopped showing up, so for several weeks we would go, sit in a waiting room for twenty minutes, and then be allowed to leave.  This went for at least a month before visits were suspended.  Annie was with us for the next 6 months with no visits/communication with any family member.  Our case worker told us that they would be filing permanent custody papers at the end of the month, and it was then for the first time we allowed ourselves to begin to really believe Annie was ours.  In February I went on a 10 day mission trip to Haiti, it was there my wife called me upset because the birth mother had been able to pass a drug screen and was requesting visits, and they were to begin the following week.  I was upset for several days, the realization sinking in that this was in fact, regardless of any feelings, still not our daughter. My wife and I prayed, cried, and worried over this situation for that week.  I don’t that I slept more than a couple of hours any night.  I would be up all night envisioning terrible situations that could happen to this little girl. I decided that I would take Annie to the first visit alone because I did not think my wife could handle being there.  I knew this visit would be rough because Annie had begun to attach herself to the extreme to my wife and I.  She was 8 months old and had developed separation anxiety big time…. I arrived at the offices and advised the case worker that I had concerns about her being upset being away from us.  I was told not to worry they would be in the room and would be able to calm her.  I sat there for 20 minutes as my little girl cried and cried.  I was merely a room away but powerless to help.  If I’m to be honest I was pissed off.  How could they put this little girl through this?  She didn’t know who these people were.  She hadn’t seen her birth mother in over 6 months, and saw the caseworker about 20 minutes every month when she was talking to us!  Why couldn’t there have been some kind of transition?  The longer I sat there the angrier I got.  Finally the adoption specialist came and got me from the waiting room and asked me (with the mother’s permission) to step into the room to see if I could calm Annie.  I came into the room and she lunged into my arms burying her head in my chest screaming.  My heart was breaking as I battled my emotions, I said a quick little prayer for God to give me the strength to calm her and grace for her mother.  I began to softly sing to Annie, and she immediately stopped crying.  The birth mother witnessed this and left the room crying.  After several minutes the birth mother came back into the room and asked if I would stay in there so she could visit.  I thought this would be about as awkward as it could get, but somehow it wasn’t.  I spoke a little with her mother.  She was 23 years old and had two older children, 6 and 9 year old boys, who had already been removed permanently.  She talked to me about how she was struggling to overcome her addictions and wanted what was best for her baby.  She even thanked me, saying how obvious it was that Annie loved me and had been cared for.  Here I was sitting side by side with this woman holding her baby so that she could spend a little time with her.  It was a weird situation, but I felt so sympathetic to her mother.  It was obvious in our conversations that she had no support growing up, her mother battling the same addictions she was now battling.  I realized what a cycle this would be without intervention.  This was the last visit Annie would ever have with her birth mother.  I can’t help but wonder if there had been more bonding there would her mother have stayed the course? Probably not I know but a part of me knows she felt lost in that room, powerless over her situation.  What a conflict of emotions.  Obviously I wanted Annie to be mine forever so that I could know she had been taken care of.  I also still held some anger towards her mother.  After seeing Annie cry and convulse in the hospital while withdrawing, I wondered how anyone could do this to someone so innocent.  And how could you go this long without seeing her? And at the same time feel so sympathetic to a woman who was so young and so lost. I had to hope and pray that she overcome her demons.    I still think of her and wonder how she is doing.  I would love for Annie to be able to develop some kind of relationship with her, but obviously only if it’s healthy.

Why

Why did I decided to write some of this down? I have no idea. I don’t know if anyone will ever read any of this, and I kind of hope no one ever does. At the same time I hope lots of people do so they can share their opinion and thoughts with me. A little background information: I am thirty years old (impossible for me to believe that) and have been married for 7 years. Like many people who turn to fostering or adopting my wife and I decided to go that route because of our inability to conceive. We had tried for about three years when we became pregnant. We were so excited the day we got to hear the baby’s heartbeat. It was what I would describe as a mountain top experience. A couple of weeks later my wife began bleeding and we went to the dr’s office to be checked out. I will never forget sitting there beside my wife as the dr tried to find a heartbeat again and was unable to do so. I was crushed to look at my wife and no we had lost this child before we had a chance. I felt so inadequate. I know that probably sounds stupid here, but that is how I felt: completely powerless to help my unborn child, or later my wife in dealing with this pain. Why would God put these wheels in motion? I did not understand His plan at all at this point. We are now almost two and a half years removed from that situation, and I can’t yet say that I thank God for it, but man do I see the plan now. My wife and I after many conversations with each other, friends, and family decided to begin fostering. Why keep trying something that wasn’t working when there were so many kids who could use help? We began the process shortly after and became licensed at the end of June. On July 9th we received a phone call for a placement, a baby girl born a week earlier. We said yes and would later adopt our daughter ( I will get more in to the specifics of her story later). 13 months after she was born my wife and I delivered our first biological child, a son. Our daughter is now 23 months old( I can’t believe this) and our son 8 months. For the last month we have had our second placement, a three year old little girl. I will get into each of their stories more down the line, but I wanted to begin with a quick overview as to where I was starting with this blog. Maybe no one ever reads maybe several people, but I felt the need to share my story even if it wasn’t with anyone.