edit: this is a throwaway for extremely obvious reasons.My wife and I adopted a little boy out of the foster care system. He was the fourth child born to this mother, who is deeply, profoundly ill-- and suffering. All of her children have been born addicted or exposed to drugs and removed from her care; she has never fought to get any of them back. 2.5 years later, in a complete surprise, we got a call about another baby boy in the hospital who was going to have to be removed from the same mother's care. They asked us to take this baby in to our family. 18 months on, it was absolutely the hardest thing we've ever done-- ever. We thought it might break us for awhile. But we have no regrets. I am wildly, deeply in love with this little guy. We will be finalizing his adoption when the system gets its shit together long enough to complete the paperwork.Cut to today. The one person we have contact with in the kids' genetic family, who is a wonderful soul and a fairly reliable source of information about the mother's situation, says that she has physically seen birth mother fairly recently and she is definitely pregnant again. Visibly showing. Mother refuses to say whether she's gotten any medical care (spoiler alert: no fucking way, she never has before, so why would this time be any different). No idea when she's due. When she gives birth, she will certainly have this child removed from her care (all five previous kids were removed due to horrible drug exposure, and she's definitely still both using and drinking heavily.) When the child is removed from her care, the authorities will call us and ask us to take this child in.We already had this conversation, my wife and I, when it was still a possibility in the abstract. We... we can't. We're not that young anymore and our financial resources are not inexhaustible, even with the financial support these kids get. We don't have room in our place and we could not afford to move. And more to the point, we just aren't sure we could make it through. We're just starting to emerge from the hardest stuff and it's still really, really challenging. Our little 18 month old champ is likely facing a lifetime of some not insignificant limitations and/or challenges. Or maybe not-- outcomes vary-- but he certainly has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and it'd be the height of naivete to pretend he can just miraculously escape the nervous system damage that comes with it, even if he's doing great for now. Can we stretch ourselves even further when we know he may have needs that are extraordinary? We can't.I want to track down their mother. I want to have her held captive and forced to stop abusing that baby in her womb by drinking and doing drugs (this is a rant, not an actual plan or anything, don't worry, I'm not stupid). Then I want her to finally have the sense to make it so it's not possible to ever get pregnant again. And when the baby comes-- I want to scoop that baby up and keep it safe. I love my little guy so much, we have bonded in ways that I just didn't expect, ways that are different than with my oldest (who is equal in my heart but very different). I didn't realize how powerful that force would be on my heart, how it makes everything different. Now, I really, really don't want to say no when that call comes.We will. It'll be the right thing to do. We'll promise to be in touch with whatever hopefully amazing people get the call about this child and takes him or her in, we'll work to preserve that sibling bond as best as possible. But it is going to crush my heart. It already is. That's why I'm writing this.Fuck everything. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2YjfTnj
No comments:
Post a Comment