We have completed our first placement! Baby was an amazing 13 month old who was basically magical for, like, a baby. Baby slept through the night, baby ate well, baby was generally in a pretty good mood, baby was pretty charming and was ready to learn and explore and DO STUFF all the time (except when tired and hungry).
First baby was with us for about three weeks and we could not have asked for a better first experience. Yes, we hope to someday have a permanent baby placement, but we knew it wouldn’t be this one right from the start and this helped us get going – to get used to the concept of loving and letting go.
The biggest lessons from experience #1 were about process – fostering just requires an endless amount of patience. Not, my strong suit! In all the classes and forms and preparation you just don’t learn what the process IS. How do the children get placed? How does scheduling work? What is the monitoring? Who does what, exactly? Well, gulls, foster care is just as much of a mess as you have ever expected! As just one example, with this baby we often did not know if visitations were going to happen THE NEXT DAY until sometime the night before. We didn’t know who/what/where. We didn’t know if we had to provide transportation or if they would. We are a one-car household and literally all sort of decisions stem from which of us need the car on a given day. Basically, nothing goes as planned or stated in foster care, which is SO FRUSTRATING to me – I am a super-good planner! And then I do the things as planned! And then everything is easier for everyone! I know all the reasons foster care does not and will not ever work that way…it just happens to be the greatest challenge for our household. Hilariously, writing the application for eventual adoption if it happens, one of the questions is “explain how you are flexible and able to be flexible in parenting”… I was just honest and said I’m not…but I’m working on it. And here’s fostering, to really help me undertake that challenge!
First baby was a known short-term placement and was a super-good amazing intro into this world… we don’t have children of our own, are not oldest children who took care of younger siblings growing up, nor are either of us those people who just love EVERY kid and babysit for everyone all the time (I like children when they belong to me in some way. My partner likes children who can talk and DO stuff). Fostering is our LEAP into parenting…and it’s a big leap, both the physical reality of caring for another human 24/7 and emotionally. I was totally freaked out about the drop-off, we spent the whole day cleaning (what if they got here and were like…hell no, we aren’t leaving a baby HERE?! This was anxiety, not reality!). Instead, they walked in, plopped down baby, were like, “here’s baby” and that was that. We were plunged all in!! The household providing care to this baby before us gave us all sorts of info (baby cries all the time, baby hates baths, baby loves broccoli, baby doesn’t go to sleep well, baby loves strawberries, baby has blow-outs all the time) of which the only thing that proved to be true was baby’s love of strawberries and broccoli. Yum! So even the info we DID get was next to useless in figuring out what/how we are doing this “foster parenting thing”.
My partner is independently employed and is at home as the primary care-giver for our fostering. He was unsurprisingly challenged when his entire life was suddenly occupied every second with the needs of a small demanding very sweet tyrant (i.e. toddler). In contrast, I had to keep my all-encompassing, high-stress, reasonably demanding, day job…meaning entire days go by where I don’t even get to see the baby – hard on baby (presumably accustomed to a female care-giver, the baby definitely had a slight-me-preference), hard on me, hard on spouse. We thought that I might be able to work from home part-time giving us more time together, less feeling of missing out for me, less felling overwhelming 100% responsibility for him…HA! Maybe with a new-born, but absolutely NOT with a toddler. And there sure as heck isn’t time to write this blog between working and babying! Quite honestly, even the pets were stressed out about where and how everyone was supposed to interact…my poor dog is all “is this my toy? Does EVERYTHING belong to this tiny thing? Will I ever go to the dog park again?”
Like all new parenting, fostering is apparently hard on the relationship. WHO KNEW?! All of a sudden, there is just not that time together – and both parties are exhausted and, in our set-up, somewhat mildly resentful of each other when those breaks away from baby do come. I would have liked more involvement in the parenting and felt sad and stressed about missing out, he would have liked some time away to work and exist without constant unending baby needs, and felt stressed out and alone in this process. I seriously cannot imagine how new single parents do it, or people without support systems. We had so much support and it was still exhausting!! Also, I see some solid benefits to day care…you come home and get to be EXCITED about your kids, instead of it “yep, still our kid all the time every second.” If we have a long-term placement we will definitely be doing some ECFE classes, and some swimming, and just SOME THINGS!
This baby was so easy to love and care for. And it was also clear to us that the baby would and should be heading home very shortly; we were thrilled to learn the reconciliation was happening. And also, obviously a little sad (I would have been FINE if we could just say goodby and hand-off without the hour of waiting in a hallway to learn what was happening next – will we? won’t we? but instead got weepy and shed just the right amount of small tears). It’s super-important to fall in love with each and every one of these children. That is the job we are signing up for…to love and to let go, over and over. And to remember, no matter how happy and well-cared for adjusted, every child in foster care is in trauma. If you saw this baby with us, you would assume it was ours. It ran to us for hugs and cuddles, looked for us when we were gone, cried if I left for work, enjoyed new activities with us (learned to LOVE bath time for the first time!), pushed boundaries, challenged the rules, and wanted to do everything all the time. If the worst happened, and baby lived with us, from outside you would think baby was perfectly bonded and just fine…but seeing baby greet its parents, after almost two months living in care, at 14 months old…that baby knew EXACTLY who its parents were and wanted more than anything to be with them, not us. And that’s the challenge of substitute care-giving, especially with a permanent placement as the ultimate goal. No matter how happy and healthy and supportive a home we give a child, it needs to have space and freedom to be hurt and lonely and confused about its family of origin and to be conflicted about us as “parents”. That is OUR challenge to live with, and support, not a child’s to hide from us.
