Random Thoughts From My Foster Parent Brain

Sometimes I look at our children and can't believe they are really going to be ours forever.  I am saddened by a society where kids must end up in a different family at all but selfishly grateful they didn't have to leave us because I know my heart would have been torn in two if that had happened.

I look at my daughter and I'm amazed by her beautiful smile that another woman gave her and her crazy curls that another man gave her.  She is beautiful, an absolutely gorgeous little girl, and not because of us or any physical traits we gave her. I'm simultaneously sad and grateful that we are the ones to hear the new words being learned and said with that sweet smile and we are the ones figuring out how the heck to care for curly hair.   That wasn't the plan at the onset of her life.  We were nowhere in sight.  But there came a time when we needed to swoop in and I am so, so glad we were set to do so.

My son is wearing the shoes today that he was wearing when he first came to our house over a year ago.  They were two sizes too big at the time.  I saved them though and now he can wear a piece of where he came from.  He has no idea.  He just knows they are "baloo" and he told me to tie them tight.   Yes sir, I will.    They are cute shoes and something his first mom somehow provided for him, even amidst her struggles.  They weren't right at the time but now they are, so we will get some life out of them.

Sometimes I feel like my decision as a woman to seek foster parenting and adoption as a first choice and forego even trying to get pregnant is an affront to some women out there who struggle with infertility.   I have had conversations where I end up saying something like "I'm just not into the idea of having babies" or I read articles about "what pregnancy is really like" and "what they don't tell you about pregnancy" and I want to run in the other direction hollering "Why would anyone want to do that?!"  ...but then I realize that is crazy talk to some women who would give their left arm and thousands of dollars to make it possible for them to have a baby.  I don't know how they view me.  But I think they think I'm weird.   I have to check myself sometimes when I get too critical about other women's or couples' decisions.   I have thought "Wow you could have paid for two adoptions by the time you paid for those four rounds of IVF attempts that still didn't work."  But I know there are other women out there who have thought of me "Wow, you could probably have all the babies you want, lickety split, and you aren't going to?!"  

Being a human being is fun, huh?

Onward.