The fairy tales and the horror stories. That is what we have heard and been emotionally tattooed by since we started this whole 'I can't quite seem to get pregnant' trip. People ask if we have kids and we tell them we are in the foster to adopt program. And either we get moist, admirable looks like we are enlisting in the 82nd Airborne and about to parachute into the Kandahar region to give lollipops and hugs to the troops or people grip my forearm and lower their voices then tell me their or their friend's or their relative's horror or fairy stories. Then they say, not that we're trying to talk you out of it, but you should know the risks.
I suppose in a way it's similar to being pregnant, everyone wants to impale you with their agonizing, blood-spattered, endless Quentin Taratino-esque childbirth epics of pain, poop and glory- double features if they had twins (and who doesn't, these in vitro days?) Or they try to touch your blooming belly as if it is an adorable exotic pet that isn't quite still connected to your body. I might be infertile but at least no one is touching my belly.
But the well meaning and the subversively supportive (and blatantly unsupportive) ones among us tell us scary foster stories. Sometimes I feel like I should be hearing these tales around a crackling bonfire in the middle of the woods, because they are just that scary and you just don't want them to be true.
Why do people tell us their scary foster baby tales? Because we ask. We have no choice but to ask, "How did you get your baby?"- because these days, in Los Angeles, about one in six babies born in our community is the fruit of a marriage between a man and a woman who had sex, with each other, and one of them, presumably the woman, got pregnant from their unimpeded intercourse.
Everyone else's little bundle of joy is a crapshoot of hormones, science, money, donor eggs, donor sperm, donor uteri, and/or other people's poor choices. At one party there was a regular old school baby boy; 3 adopted kids; one foster 3 year old who may or may not become their eventual, actual child- they will know on April 7th 2011; one in vitro baby girl; and my favorite- a donor egg/birth daddy girl who was grown and birthed in Canada while Momma made the money to make this baby feasible in Los Angeles. All gorgeous lovely children, viscerally adored by their parents-- I feel like I need to say that not one of them was like, "All this work, money and exhaustion and frankly, I'm just not that impressed with the kid. I won't be fooled again, I'll tell you that much. Next time I get the itch, we'll buy a beach house." What I do love is how open and honest everyone is about how they became a family- and it makes us feel like our patchwork family is right around the corner.
While we have finished all our milestones; physicals, finger-printing, TB tests, classes, homework (3 sets- local, national and I think one to make sure we aren't on any no-fly lists) and we now await our first Home Study, we collect the tales.
Our gay sponsor couple, who have been there for us throughout our process, sent us to their agency and nursed our insecurities, had the Phantom of the Opera of horror tales. First act: they are rewarded for their foster to adoptiveness with a newborn baby boy, and I mean the first 7 days of his life newborn- not the 'newborns' as shown on TV (which are two month olds smeared with jelly and fluffernutter). Not only are these men the first parents of this wee hours old baby, the infant is born addicted to heroin, so these valiant dads regularly diaper, feed and give their little son methadone to help him get his mother's monkey off his very little back.
After seven days they have to give their son back. Turns out the birth mother and her social worker had been double-dealing and they scored an open adoption for the newborn my friends were preciously rearing. Our sponsors were wrung out, devastated and understandably reticent every time their agency called with another hopeful child. Our sponsors went with their gut, not with their heart and they learned the power of a well-placed 'no'. After a year they took a chance on their gut instincts and met a little girl. She is now their true life daughter and they make a perfect modern family. Feel good endings happen.
Other friends adopted a newborn little girl, brought her home to their five year old son and after three weeks of caring for her and bonding, had to give her back because the birth mother lied about the birth father and the real birth father wanted to rear his own daughter.
A friend came home from a dinner party and wrote me a long, heartfelt plea not to go through with our plans due to the 3 hour horror story told to her by a barely recovered couple who were tormented by three, deeply troubled foster siblings for the better part of a year before giving up in fear of their home being burnt to the ground as they slept.
How about another horror story, kids? Let's face it- we like happy endings but we crave horror. Especially if it's happening to someone else.
Our 2nd foster family has a birth daughter- they wanted to foster-adopt their second and they had a plan- a specific age (2-3), gender (girl), etc. and went through agencies. Since they also run a day-care facility, they are worlds ahead of us with regards to handling children and being tough, take charge yet fun and lovely people.
After a while of no luck one determined DCFS agent pushed them to take on a temporary situation that went against all their plans- a 3 year old sister and her brother, just out of a hospital for neglect, and it would just be a few weeks, tops, as they were to be adopted very, very soon. Our friends relented under pressure and took the kids in.
The three year old girl was massive and looked more like a six year old so neglect was not exactly the truth. Almost immediately she began attacking our friend's birth daughter with fingernails, biting and fists. And when they tried to punish the child she would scream at the top of her lungs and her brother would throw himself headlong into walls. When on visits with their birth mother, she would examine her children for bruises and accuse our friends of abusing her children and tried to press charges.
When the foster sister and brother attempted to play in graphic sexual ways with the children at the day care our friends dug a little deeper and learned that the foster children had been removed from their home because they were being molested by an older brother. And the promise of it being a foster of a few weeks was quickly vanishing along with their own child's safety and their ability to keep their day care a safe place for other children. No one was coming for the foster kids and no one cared.
When our friends complained to the DCFS about their birth daughter not being safe, the agent replied, "Well, she's not a foster child so she's not our concern. Just keep them away from each other." Our friends realized this agent was interested in one thing only- moving troubled children off her desk as if they were just folders to file somewhere neatly far away.
Our friends had to resort to a 7 day notice- which is very much taboo in foster to adopt business- it is seen as not even an act of last resort but something far, far worse. Our friends had to state that they were moving out of state within 7 days, and since the foster kids' parental rights hadn't been terminated, the foster kids weren't legally allowed to move with our friends. That was the only way to get DCFS to take the children back.
After all that, they persevered with determination and a few more ground rules- they wouldn't take a child unless parental rights had already been terminated. It took a while but soon a little boy was placed with them. He was younger than they'd planned and the unplanned for gender but they all instantly fell deeply in love with each other. The day I called to find out how they were doing, they had just taken in their first original plan- a 3 year old girl who's parental rights had already been terminated and their family is now utterly complete. Fairy tales endings are only worth the Grimm obstacles it takes to achieve them.
As we await our home study... we gird our loins-- what form will our fairy horror tale take?
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