One year ago I got the call for baby girl.  I had just changed my license a few days before as I had previously only been licensed for an ICPC placement that didn’t occur.  An hour and a half after the call, she arrived.  As soon as Jackson saw her he said, “I LOVE that baby!”

She came with a few onesies, a couple of diapers, a swaddle, a blanket, and some bottles.  The only thing I was told about her routine was that she slept a lot.  That first night she wouldn’t take a bottle unless she was facing away from you and had a really hard time getting the whole bottle down.  Once she finally was able to fall asleep, she slept all night, and slept through the night every night there after.

Jackson and I learned a lot from baby girl.  Jackson learned how to be a big brother.  He learned that sometimes it is hard to not be the only baby, and he learned how to be a big helper.  He grew up, not only because we was getting older, but also because he kind of had to.

With baby girl I learned about parental visits, how to work with parents and support them as they worked through their plan, and how broken every foster care system is.  Jackson never had visits, there was never any communication with birth parents, and I thought that maybe my bad experience with his case workers was due to the complexity of an ICPC and everything that goes with that. Unfortunately poor communication just seems to be the name of the game.

The easy part was loving on her.  She is the sweetest little baby with such a good personality.  Jackson loved making her laugh and she loved all the attention he gave her.  She thrived while she was here, making a ton of progress in her feeding and development. Her laid back personality was just icing on the cake.

The hard part, was what the hard part always is, uncertainty.  I was told day one that some family members wanted her to be placed with them.  That didn’t happen.  Paternity tests were to be ordered.  It took 4 months for that to happen.  I was never notified that paternity had been established until I was informed that one of the fathers family members  was interested in placement.

The uncertainty was especially hard at Christmas.  I was told she would be placed with the family member before Christmas if at all possible.  My Christmas travel wasn’t approved until two weeks before Christmas because of all of the uncertainty.  Christmas came and went, New Years came and went and nothing.  No communication at all.  I was invited to my first permanency planning meeting in January and finally got to meet the birth father.  He asked me at that time if I was interested in continuing communication and visits once she was placed with a family member and I was overjoyed, relieved, and saddened at the same time.  The end was in sight even if there was absolutely no clarity as to when.

Our last day, started off as any other day.  After I dropped Jackson off at school, on my way to drop baby girl off at daycare, I got a text from the case worker telling me that baby girl was to be placed with a family member ASAP.  I asked if I could at least wait until after Jackson got out of school so that he could say goodbye and requested that I be the one to take her to her relatives home.  Both of those requests were granted thankfully.  A friend picked Jackson up from school so he could spend the day with her and when she got there, he immediately asked, “is baby girl still here?”  He knew it was coming.  I had been preparing him, and somehow he knew.

We packed up the car, filling it with all of her things.  She came with nothing, but left with everything I could possibly give her.  I had purchased new bottles, filled her WIC for the month, purchased toys, and books, and clothing, anything I could do to help ease her transition.  I was able to hold it together until she started crying and reaching for me.  That broke me.

The rest of the day was pretty much a cry fest, for everyone but Jackson.  He was so perplexed by all of the tears.  In his mind it didn’t make sense.  He knew this wasn’t the end, and he was right.

Baby girls family has welcomed us into their home.  We get to visit her as often as we want, and I have been able to help her family navigate all of the craziness that is foster care and relative placements.  I don’t know what the future brings for baby girl, but I do know that we will be part of her life for as long as we are able.

There is nothing fair about foster care and that is hard to accept sometimes, but there can be beauty among the ashes.  Learning to give and accept grace upon grace is challenging.  My faith sustains me and pushes me forward.

“But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable.  He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we will be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.” -Francis Chan

When I started my parenting journey, I knew I was going to be going it alone.  Knowing that, I really didn’t know what that would look like day to day.  Three years later I can’t even imagine what parenting would be like with a village.  There are definitely challenges, but there are also benefits.

When Jackson first came home I was able to take FMLA for several weeks so was able to ease into the world of being a working mom.  Once I did return to work I was slammed with the reality of having to juggle it all on my own.  Living without a safety net  became apparent when Jackson became sick and I had no one to care for him when he couldn’t go to daycare.  This continues to be my number one challenge, thankfully I am often able to work from home but daydream about being able to call up a family member to pick Jackson up when he’s sick, or when I’m running late from work.  The lack of a backup has forced me to simply figure it out, but that is when I feel the void of a village the most.  Knowing that there isn’t a village has forced me to make choices that I may otherwise wouldn’t have made.  Extra curricular activities, school choices, and especially social activities are all dictated by the knowledge that I have to be able to do all drop offs and pick ups myself.

On the other hand, I have learned how to make it work.  I know that I can travel solo with a couple kids and we will all survive.  I know that I can haul a few kids to church and not have to sit in the crying room in order to make it through the service. I know that I can walk two dogs with a preschooler strapped to my back and baby strapped to my front.  I know who is going to wake up at night when a child awakes, and I know who is going to kill all of the bugs and replace all of the batteries.  I know I can do it because I have done it.  I know I can do it, because there isn’t an alternative.

As much as I sometimes wish that I could drop my son off with a family member for a night instead of having to hire a babysitter, and didn’t have to stress about the weeks that daycare closes for holidays, I know that at the end of the day it will be alright because what matters the most is that my son is surrounded by love, even if our village is more like a heard of wayward sheep scattered all over the place.