An empty nest, coupled with some soul searching and internet crawling, led me to the arena of foster parenting. Every community has children that are unable to live with their biological families and in need of a home to call their own. With our ultimate goal focused on adoption, my husband and I attended an orientation held by our local Department of Human Services and began feathering our nest
A few months later, with our freshly minted foster care license in hand, we received a call to care for a severely malnourished infant…our little Savanna.
Savanna’s birth parents were both drug addicted, alcoholics. They had taken to committing petty crimes to support their habits. They squandered away their public assistant checks and grossly neglected little Savanna. They admitted to the courts that they had stopped giving Savanna baby formula for several months and gave vague answers to the quality of her care. By the time the police intervened, Savanna had to be hospitalized for starvation-she only weighed 11 pounds at nine months of age. Her body was riddled with bruises. Savanna was developmentally behind in every area of her life. To this day, 6 years later, she still suffers daily. She has been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Seizure Disorder, Severe Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder and Developmental Delays. Her struggles are our struggles, she is our baby girl. The idea of spoiling her rotten and keeping her all to ourselves was very tempting, but ultimately not fair to Savanna; having siblings to share her daily life with seemed like the right thing to do. So the search was on.
The goal of the foster care system is to reunite families, so the wait for another adoptable child could take years. We patiently waited, fostered numerous children, and kept our fingers crossed!
A few months after our baby girl came home, Savanna’s birth parents announced that they were pregnant. Pregnant?! They were in the process of having their parental rights terminated on Savanna and they’re pregnant! They were also out on bail for a string of crimes they committed on the same day they made an appearance in court for Savanna. Expecting more jail time, they bolted. They were on the run from the law until their 8th month of pregnancy. Giving birth while incarcerated probably wasn’t a part of their birthing plan, but on September 1, 2006…little Skylar was born. Exactly one year from the date Savanna came home-destiny.
Due to the severity of Savanna’s situation, the birth parents were denied any hope of reunification.
Now, having been blessed with two wonderful babies…we figured three could only increase our bliss. Nine months later…no, I didn’t give birth, but Seavon did make his arrival! We received a phone call for an adoptable infant boy, drug exposed, with no hope of parental reunification. He was part of a large sibling group, 6 kids, all adopted out. Our third baby made it home.
We were now exhausted, but enjoying the daily chaos of having multiple children underfoot, and quickly learned that having kids who are close in age has added benefits. They have similar interests, play with the same toys, enjoy the same stories, and follow the same day-to-day schedule. Do we stop at three…do we dare try our luck for a fourth child?
It seemed that as soon as we made the decision to try again, we got that wonderful phone call…”we have an adoptable infant, are you interested?” February 1st, 2009 little Stormer made his debut. Like Seavon, he was drug exposed and part of a large sibling group-all-adopted out. Our family was now complete.
We had our fantastic four and our parenting adventure was now in full swing. We had a house full of cribs, toys and diapers; I’m sure we were the envy of all our friends. You know, the ones with the empty nest who could sleep in all day and didn’t have spit-up stains on all their clothes.
I love being a mom and feel blessed each and every day. Yes, even when they drive me crazy with all the running around, generating a noise level that will surely deafen me at some point.
Our experience through the foster care system was an emotional roller coaster, but a ride worth taking. When someone mentions to me their desire to adopt, I get right up on my soap box and sing the praises of adopting children through foster care. We were lucky, we know that. However, I hold firmly to the belief that our children were always, our children, they just took a detour coming home.