"Birth" Story of Our Son

Because our little baby is a foster child, we won't be posting pics of him on our blog.  I have tossed around the idea of making this blog private, but have ultimately decided to keep it public and not post pictures of the little guy who has taken over our hearts the last few weeks. BUT, I hope to use this blog as a way to express my emotions in writing on this journey as a foster mom.


Our baby entered our home a couple of weeks ago. Honestly, I cannot begin to tell you how quickly I have become attached to him. I was expecting attachment to be difficult and take a long time.  I was expecting parenting to feel a bit unnatural, but cannot begin to tell you how much I have loved every minute of being his mommy.


As a foster mom, the "birth story" of my son looks very different than almost any one of my friend's birth stories. I never had a due date. I did not purchase one pair of maternity clothes. And, never had a food craving I could blame on pregnancy.  There was no rushing to the hospital. No labor pains. And no water breaking. There was just a phone call from a case worker asking us if we wanted a little baby. 


A caseworker arrived at our home with a beautiful baby boy one morning in February dressed in jeans, a sweater, and a puffy vest.  I remember thinking, "I cannot believe how beautiful he is" as I looked inside her car at my son who was riding in the back seat. He came with a couple of boxes of clothing, a few bottles, and 1/2 a container of formula and a couple of brief feeding instructions.  She hardly knew anything about his background, scanned paperwork frantically to even find his birthdate, and left within a half hour saying "congratulations on your new baby!". I'll be honest, it felt a little weird at the time, but both Joel & I had waited for years for this day to come, so any awkwardness was overcome with excitement. 


Within an hour of his arrival, we fed him his bottle and rushed him to the doctor for a routine visit and tried filling out the mountains of paperwork based upon the minimal amounts of information we knew about his past.  He fell asleep in my arms wrapped in a fuzzy blanket as we chatted with the pediatrician.  The entire visit I couldn't help but think, "what do these people think of us?". We know nothing about this little guy--not even his middle name--and we don't even have a diaper bag for him or burp rags to clean up his spit up. They must think we're incredibly irresponsible parents!  After leaving the doctor, we headed to Target to pick up a few baby essentials, including the burp rags!  Joel managed to work several hours in the midst of the chaotic day.  He even made dinner for us that night. We were able to get our little guy to sleep by 9, only to be woken up 15-20 times during the night. No matter how perfect our home seemed to be for a little baby, everything was all new to him.  The bed, the sounds, the lights, even a new mom and dad.  


The next few days were a blur.  Foster children come with a lot of appointments and Joel was working 10-14 hour days and I was trying to work 8 hour days while running this little guy to all of his appointments and making sure we had everything we needed to care for a little baby. Not only were we running frantically by day and not sleeping at night, we were also trying to process a lot of emotions that come with learning about your foster child's past.


Joel headed off to an already scheduled church retreat for the weekend while I fed myself with protein bars and tried to make our new baby feel peace in his new home. The poor guy had just been whisked away from anything that felt "normal" to him and no matter how hard I tried to make him comfortable, he just wasn't.


Thankfully the transition lasted just one week & since then we have all been adjusting very well. We have eaten many meals that did not consist of a protein bar and our baby has a schedule & is now almost sleeping through the night for us.  All of his actions show he is very happy to call our place home. 


We're not sure how long we'll have have our baby in our home. Could be a few months....could be forever.  We are pre-adoptive foster parents, but it will be up to the courts to decide how long he'll be with us.   If it was our decision, we'd say forever.  


Right now, I'm just so thankful that I get to be the one that he calls "momma". I get to kiss his chubby cheeks and am the one he looks at with longing eyes when I feed him his bottle. It's my hand he holds and my little neck he slobbers on when we take naps together on the couch.  I am the mommy he has to calm his cries in the night and the mommy who gets to scrub all the baby dirt out of his ears in his bath.  It's my lap he sits on and my hand that catches some of his sneezes and my heart he gets to share.  


I like to tell him every day that we have a lot of hugs, cuddles, and kisses to catch up on from the time we were apart. He seems to agree.