(no title)

Battening Down Life’s Hatches

Alternative title: “I’ve heard people say their bodies start to fall apart in their 40s, but this is a special level of ridiculousness only I could achieve.”

I am mentally trying to batten down the hatches for the next month or two. Here’s what’s up:

1. Depression meds 💊

I was long long ago diagnosed with depression and anxiety and have been taking various antidepressants for, wow, about 21 years I think. I have a great psychiatrist, and over time we have established an effective pairing of meds: Effexor and Cymbalta. Each works for about 2 years then calls it quits abruptly and stops working. Lord only knows why they do that but it’s not uncommon. My first red flag is skyrocketing anxiety and when that happens I know it’s time to switch to the other med. Its a pattern I just live with, and I’m grateful I have two meds that work for me and that I can switch off between them.

Well, 3 weeks ago I hit the 2 year mark on Effexor and like damn clockwork my anxiety levels shot through the roof this week for no good reason. It’s time to switch again. Antidepressants often cause withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking them (increased anxiety, dizziness, flu-like symptoms are mine) so we titrate off one med and onto the other to minimize withdrawal symptoms.

So, the changeover from one med to another is not fun. We usually do a 4 week changeover process until I’m on the full dose of Cymbalta, and the Effexor will stop working completely before the Cymbalta kicks in, plus I will have some minor withdrawal symptoms from the Effexor dose going down. Great timing for my Effexor to stop working (see below).

But honestly, I love my meds. I’m so grateful for them. Anyone who feels the need to post a “nature, life’s antidepressant” meme as a comment should refrain. I suffered from anxiety and depression through my entire childhood, and having drugs that work and can give me a normal good life is a miracle. Thank you Pharma.

2. Ankle surgery 🔪

I’ve mentioned before that I have ankle surgery coming up. It’s on April 5th. I tore a tendon in my ankle nearly entirely through, and because of that it’s causing me a great deal of pain. The surgeon will take a tendon from the top of my foot where there are two tendons that do duplicative work, move it to my ankle, and break my heel bone and screw it back into place a little further over to support the new tendon better. Ick.

I’ll be on crutches for 3 weeks (at least) and then in a boot for 6 more weeks (at least). It’s estimated to be a full 6 month recovery period. I’ll get lots of PT in that time as well. In the end though, I should be able to walk distances again, and without a limp, and I can hardly wait for that time.

3. Ear tubes

I’m 46 years old last time I counted. And a couple of years ago my left ear started filling with fluid to the point where I can barely hear out of it. My right ear has fluid in it too but not to the same extent.

This is, apparently, something that’s pretty rare. Each MD I’ve talked to has said something like “Wow. Adults often tell me they feel like they have fluid in their ears but they seldom actually do. But you do. You have A LOT of fluid in there.” Heh, lucky me?

Thankfully it’s an easy fix. I need tubes in my ears like I were 6 years old and not 46. They make special “permanent” tubes for adults that have to be installed under anesthesia because apparently it hurts like the dickens. I’m having it done April 21st.

My timing? It could be better.

I first started pursuing the ear issues by requesting an ENT referral about 8 months ago. The first ENT I saw told me the following: a) I have fluid in my ears because I’m fat and I should lose weight to fix the problem, b) the only thing he could do is install tubes but they fall out and create scar tissue so he doesn’t recommend them for adults (he apparently doesn’t know about the type of tubes that is used on adults???) and c) he could do a procedure that involves inserting a balloon in my Eustachian tube and inflating it so the tube gets enlarged and drains better and he’s willing to try it on me but he’s never done it before.

I skedaddled out of his office, made a new appointment with my amazeballs GP, and requested a new referral to someone competent. He sent me to someone excellent, who was flabbergasted at everything the other ENT had said, set me up for a hearing test and a surgery date ASAP. It just happens that all the waiting for appointments has put my ear surgery in the same month as my ankle surgery. But meh, may as well get it all over with at once is my feeling!

4. Psoriatic Arthritis and Immunosuppressants 💉

I saw my beloved rheumatology NP on Tuesday and talked through my pain levels and intestinal issues and we decided sulfasalazine isn’t cutting it for me, and we need to switch to a biological to control my psoriatic arthritis. She recommended Humira and I’m totally here for it. I’m so glad she listens and believes me. My blood work (which involved umpteen vials and enough blood to feed a vampire family for a week) backed up what I told her too, though she didn’t have the results till a day after the appointment: my inflammation levels are creeping up and up, despite being on sulfasalazine.

But because of my surgeries I have to be off all immunosuppressants for a month. I’ve already quit sulfasalazine and am already feeling the effects. I don’t start Humira injections until toward the end of April once my surgeries are done. Joint pain, and gut pain, and intestinal uproar shall be at max levels by the time Humira kicks in, which will be a while after I first start it. It can take up to 3 months to reach max efficacy. This shall be a fun little pain and poop ride.

Incidentally, I can’t take any of my usual NSAID drugs while surgery is coming up either. No Meloxicam, and not even Advil. So Tylenol is my only friend at the moment. It’s efficacy is… limited.

5. It’s foster care

Sprout’s new case worker visits next week and Sprout has a permanency hearing at the end of April. Between those two things we should be getting a feel for whether adoption track is still the plan, or whether there will be a change. There’s some family stuff going on in her family that I can’t write about here because it’s confidential to say the least, but it’s stressful. It’s foster care. It’s what I expect.

What a list! When I put it all together like above, no wonder I feel overwhelmed lately! People keep asking me when I’m going back to work and the only answer I can give is: not until my ankle is better and Humira kicks in. It’s the only answer I’ve got right now. After that, we shall see.

Divided Loyalties

I have had a couple of heartbreaking conversations with Sprout in the past week.

The first was triggered by a picture we put next to Sprout’s bed of her first family. It’s a cute candid shot of her Mama holding her and all her siblings gathered around them. I printed and framed it and set it next to her bed.

At bedtime, Sprout pointed to the picture and said it makes her sad.

I replied, “Because you miss your family?”

She said, “No, because I love Mama [name] but I love you too.”

Me: “Oh Baby, that has to be hard. But did you know you are allowed to love both of us?”

Sprout: “But she’s my Mommy.”

Me: “Yes she is. And she ALWAYS will be. She’s your first Mama forever and she loves you very much. But some people can love two Mamas and that’s ok too. Lots of people have more than one Mama.”

Sprout: “You can?”

Me: “Yes!”

Sprout: “Ok. (Pause) Can I be Spider-Man for Halloween?”

The poor kid is facing the stress of feeling like loving Seth and me is disloyal to her first family. I had hoped that our quick little conversation had helped, but alas, yesterday we had this exchange:

Sprout: “Seth is [Kiddo’s] Daddy.”

Me: “Yeah, she does consider Seth her Daddy, but she also has another Daddy.”

Sprout: “Seth is her Daddy and my Daddy.”

Me: “Yep!”

Sprout: “And she has [name] is her Mommy. And I have Mommy [name]. And you’re Miss Holly.”

She usually calls me “Mommy” – always has – so the fact that she called me “Miss Holly” in that conversation tells me she’s still struggling with feeling like thinking of me as a Mommy is disloyal to her first Mama.

I cannot even imagine how stressful feeling disloyal has to be for the poor kid, and to any kid in foster care. This isn’t our first time holding space for a child to feel that tension – we went through it Big Time with Kiddo, and it took YEARS to resolve. And while it seems resolved at the moment (she thinks of Seth as her Daddy but thinks of me as “Miss Holly”) it could rear its ugly head again at any time.

When Kiddo first came to us she had just turned 4, but was severely delayed and had very little vocabulary. Her first month with us we barely focused on her at all because her brother was with us and was so very, very sick. He was a danger to himself and others at that time and keeping him safe, and keeping our pets safe, and keeping her safe from him took all our energy.

I remember the evening after he was removed from our care, I looked at little Kiddo and was astonished to realize I had barely truly noticed her in the last month, and felt a massive wave of guilt and a deep feeling of inadequacy wash over me. I vowed to do better by her.

She was deeply wary of us for another month or so, but then began to warm up and start to trust us. During those first few months neither of her parents was really engaging in services or making it to visits. She started to develop trust of us and warmed up to us a bunch.

It took a long time for her parents to figure out their stuff and start engaging. Kiddo had never had much of a relationship with her Dad. He and her Mom had split right after she was born and couldn’t get along, so her Dad hadn’t seen much of her. So when he started doing regular visits with Kiddo not much changed. Kiddo started to dote on Seth and want to spend every waking minute with him, and he was happy to oblige. And her visits with her Dad didn’t seem to change that.

But once Kiddo’s Mom started to engage and do regular visits there was a massive shift in the dynamic of our household. Kiddo started to be outright mean to me all the time. She was standoffish and often hostile. It took us a little bit to figure it out because we were new to foster parenting, but Kiddo had always lived with her Mommy and even though her Mommy had made some bad mistakes, she was deeply loyal to her. And caring for me in any way felt disloyal to her Mom.

It went on that way for many months, but eventually Kiddo learned she was going to go live with her Daddy, and the visits with him started to increase. They started to be at his house, and she had her own bedroom there and started spending overnights and then weekends with him. And accordingly things started to shift in our household.

Kiddo started to get really mad at her Mommy for not being the one to get her back. And she started to warm to the idea of her life with her Daddy. And she started to warm up to me and get hostile toward Seth as the shift with her parents started.

It stayed that way for quite a while. Kiddo went to live with her Daddy and continued to spend frequent weekends at our house. For a long time she was close with me and not so much with Seth, until the relationship with her Daddy started to break down. Around that same time her Mom got her ish together and got Kiddo back with her full time which is how it has stayed.

Kiddo’s relationship with her father remains Rocky. She has voluntarily chosen to spend her weekends with us and not with her father, about 95% of the time. She still chooses to see him on occasion but it’s rare. And she has remained super close with Seth, who she often calls “Daddy” or else her own special name for him, “Miss Seth.” Seth is honored to have the place he holds for her.

She remains super loyal to her Mom, with whom she lives, but has finally found a separate column for me, and we are now close without it feeing disloyal to her Mom. I’m her “Miss Holly” and we’re both great with that.

Everything isn’t perfect for Kiddo, though. She’s now focused on insisting that Sprout “is not my sister.” Heh, jealousy is strong, and Kiddo’s loyalty to her half sister is also strong. Divided loyalties are still a struggle for her.

As for Sprout, since it looks like she’s probably going to stay with us (it’s foster care so who knows, but that’s the direction it looks like it’s heading), all we can really do is support her relationship with her Mama as much as we possibly can, and at the same time reinforce that she’s doing nothing wrong by loving Seth and me too. What an awful burden for a little kid to be carrying – the fear of being disloyal to a loved one.

Life Books

Lately as I’ve been picking up my house from tornado whirlwinds of kid chaos, I noticed both the kids have been carting around their Life Books and looking through them a bunch.

What’s a Life Book? And why make one?

Everyone is curious about their origin, their early years, their “story” as it were. But that curiosity can be tenfold for an adoptee or foster child who is trying to understand where they came from, why things happened to them, and how they ended up where they are. For adoptees, a life book can be an essential therapeutic tool, a way of making sense of a confusing and traumatic story.

There’s LOTS of research and support for creating Life Books for adoptees in particular. Here’s a great web site for more details:

https://adoptioncouncil.org/publications/adoption-advocate-no-114/

In short, for our foster kids, it’s a photo album of their time in foster care living with us. I take lots of photos of the kids, and assemble all those photos into an album so they have a way to remember their time with us. I’ve done one for Kiddo and Sprout, and also did them for several other kids who were with us a long time and left to go home or to a relative.

For Kiddo, hers is just the time she lived with us full time – a year and a half of photos from when she just turned 4, to when she left to go live with a parent again at 5 1/2. I could update it and probably should. Perhaps I’ll put that on my to do list. I now have photos of her from age 5 1/2 to age 10 in my phone, and she occasionally asks me to print out a family photo or a photo of another foster kid so she can remember them. I’m sure she’d love it updated.

Kiddo treasures her book way more than I expected her to. She loves to see the pictures of all the activities we did with her, from taking her to a frog catching camp at a local forest, to our big beach vacation at Chincoteague Island, to dips at the local lake. We took her to an amusement park, and a puppet theater, and for walks in the woods. We take our kids on lots of adventures. She also loves the photos from around the house, like the photo of Seth helping her dig a matchbox car out from under the dishwasher.

The dishwasher ate a matchbox car, so Seth showed her how to use a screwdriver to take the front skirt off so they could reach it.

And she loooooves the pictures of herself with the dogs, especially our old Basset hound Slimy, who was really HER dog.

Kiddo and her Best Friend Ever, Simon, aka “Slimy”

For Sprout, I just did her book a few days ago. It’s bigger than Kiddo’s and has text in it, not just photos. I took more care with hers because it needs to tell the story of how she wound up with us, in a kid appropriate way, because she’s likely to stay with us for good, and she’s going to have a lot of questions that her Mama won’t be able to answer for her because she won’t live with her and they don’t speak the same language. It needs to have info about her background. She’s too young to understand what’s happening in her family’s home country now but in a few years she’ll start to be able to understand it.

I’ve also bought an archival box for Sprout, and it’s ultimately going to contain alllll of her court documents, and medical records. She’s likely going to want to understand WHY. Why she came to us, why she stayed with us, why she couldn’t go back home but her siblings stayed with her Mama. Of course we can explain to the best of our ability, but the court records may some day be of great interest to her. I want her to have the letter her Doctor wrote about how sick she was when she came to us. I want her to have the court order that told the county to start working on terminating her parents’ rights. Those things may absolutely break her heart when she’s old enough to read them but they’re part of her story and she needs to be able to have access to them if/when she’s ready.

She’s already using her book to explain her story to herself. The first few photos we have of her show her looking incredibly sick, and terribly terribly sad. As she looked at them the other day, flipping through the book by herself, I heard her say out loud, “I was sad then because I missed Mommy [name]. But now I happy!” I’m sure her narrative will gain nuance and change many times over the years, but my heart both broke and swelled to hear her say those words. I’m infinitely glad she’s using the book to figure out her own version of her story.

Little things matter so much

I just finally got Saturday’s mail, and there was a lovey little thank you note from Cookie’s case worker in the mailbox.

No case worker has ever sent us a thank you note before. We already liked Cookie’s case worker, but now I REALLY like her. I feel… appreciated. And that’s rare in foster care!

That said, we do have a doctor at the medical center that we have to take our kids to who appreciates us, and who expresses his appreciation, too. We love the guy.

It started off as a rocky relationship. We had to argue with this doctor, respectfully, several times in order to get things we knew kids who were with us needed. The biggest fight was to get a prescription for hypoallergenic formula for Mouse. He didn’t believe us that her projectile vomiting and failure to thrive were food allergy driven (she also had a brain injury that could have been causing the symptoms) until we proved it by paying for the super expensive formula out of pocket. Lo and behold, the vomiting, crying, and failure to thrive went away.

We got our script.

We completely sealed the deal with regard to this doctor’s respect for us with Sprout though. She was sooooo sick when she came to us. Like Mouse she was also failure to thrive, but unlike Mouse she was anorexic and simply would not eat or drink. We managed to keep her out of the hospital and off a feeding tube by sheer force of will and hard labor. We weighed diapers and fed her pediasure with a medicine syringe a milliliter at a time around the clock for weeks. And slowly, slowly, slowly she came around and started eating on her own again.

Not only did we earn his respect, but he has earned ours too. He has worked his tail off for our kids. He started the incredible clinic we take the kids to because he believed kids in foster care deserved coordinated, specialized care that recognizes the issues kids in care face.

To have someone like him, for whom we have a great deal of respect, say “thank you for what you’re doing” and mean it? That goes a long way to make up for the frustrations we face when we advocate for kids in our care and face road blocks because of red tape, and an overwhelmed and underfunded system. It helps keep us going.

It’s never uncomplicated in foster care

It’s a slightly quieter house now in that baby Cookie has gone home to live with his relative. She’s over the moon to have him, and he’s a content little guy with all the holding and doting that’s going on. So it’s a happy ending in my book!

It almost didn’t happen, because the relative suffered a massive house fire several days before Cookie’s court date. We wound up giving the relative basically all our baby stuff, since all she’d accumulated for him went up in literal flames. We sent along his crib and a pack and play, a swing and all his clothes, a baby gym, some toys, and a bunch of books. Honestly we were thrilled to be able to help – what a horrible thing to have one’s house burn down! The relative had insurance and is rebuilding, and has a temporary place to stay, so it all worked out. But I’m sure the relative will be dealing with the trauma of losing everything like that, including pets, for the rest of her life.

Not only were we happy to be able to help Cookie and his relative, but we were happy to get rid of a lot of baby stuff. No more newborns for us! I had desperately wanted to do a newborn once in my life, and I am so glad I did, but it’s an exercise in sleep deprivation like no other. With my health issues and my general love of sleep, it was a stretch for me, and I don’t feel the need to repeat the experience.

Right now we are taking a break from taking any new placements. It’s probably going to be a fairly long break because I need ankle surgery to reconstruct a torn tendon and other associated damage. I don’t have a surgery date yet, but my pre-op appointment is in early March. It’ll be days with zero weight on my ankle, followed by 6 weeks in a boot, and a lot of PT and patience. So we don’t plan on taking any other kids until I’m fairly well healed. We still of course have a 3 1/2-year-old Sprout, and 10-year-old Kiddo on weekends, and that’s enough to keep me busy for a while.

Speaking of Sprout, we are struggling with her visits. We have twice now driven her 2 hours each way to see her Mama, who she asks to see regularly. The court had ordered visits at a half way point every other week, but Mama can’t get rides to the rendezvous point and she doesn’t drive, so those visits haven’t been happening. So in the beginning of January, and yesterday, we took Sprout all the way to her Mama’s new house to see her.

I can’t do the long drives because without a nap during the day, I’d get too sleepy to drive home safely. So Seth has to make the trips. I’m happy to ride along when I’m able to just so we get some family time together. Seth is a nurse and his schedule is cray cray, and we have Kiddo on weekends, so we just take advantage of whatever week day we are able to go and make it happen.

Well, the first time we went out there we alerted our case worker about some conditions in the home that weren’t great, and she notified the new case worker in Mama’s new county, and that case worker was angry that we’d taken Sprout out there at all. We kind of shrugged it off and just did it a second time a month and a half later. Well this time Mama chose to keep Sprout’s siblings home from school so they could see Sprout, even though we would have stayed long enough for Sprout to see them after they got home from school. It wasn’t our choice, and we didn’t ask Mama to do it. But the case worker in Mama’s county is now furious with us for giving Mama a “reason” to keep the kids home for the day. She asked rhetorically why we couldn’t just have gone next week during school break week. But we can’t make next week work because of Seth’s work and PT (he has a shoulder issue) schedules. So we went when we could.

I’m beyond frustrated. Here we are doing the very best we can for this kid and keeping her in contact with her family, which is, by the way, court ordered. We are driving 4 hours round trip to make the visits happen. And we are in trouble for it? We have a call in to the case worker in Mama’s county so we can have a direct conversation with her rather than having her pass messages to us through Sprout’s local case worker, and maybe that will help. Regardless, I’m not going to tell Sprout she can’t see her Mama because the case worker out there doesn’t like it. I can’t do that to this little girl who misses her Mama and needs to know her culture.

Nothing in foster care is ever easy.

We are still waiting for the County folks to do what they need to do to terminate Sprout’s parents’ legal rights to her. The court ordered them to file paperwork by the end of January, but it didn’t happen. I’m not an ounce surprised, but I am frustrated. Sprout needs specialized medical care out of state but we can’t get it for her until she’s adopted and on Seth’s insurance because nobody out of state takes our state’s Medicaid. So, we wait. And I worry about missing windows of time to do more advanced treatments for her because she is still in the foster care system and undoubtedly will be for a long time to come.

On top of all that, the case worker she’s had since she first came to us is moving to a different division of the county, so we will be getting a new case worker soon. Will it be someone good? Someone so new they don’t know what they’re doing? There’s soooo much turnover among the case workers because it’s a thankless job, and because of budget cuts and people quitting, they’re terribly overloaded. There have been a couple of articles about the situation, and every case worker we talk to confirms they simply cannot do all they need to because there’s way too much work. See the links to the articles below.

Anyway, that’s all the news from Lake Woebegone. Luckily Sprout is thriving and happy, and Kiddo is doing pretty well too. So we love on them as best we can and enjoy the hell out of having them in our lives.

Foster Home Improvements… for the Grownups!

Back in October, I ran out of patience with this.

It was the ever growing ever changing mound of shoes that had developed a life of its own inside my back door. With two messy adults and a slew of foster kids who come and go, the pile had existed by the back door and grown steadily for the last 6 years. The back door is the primary entrance to the house, so every guest and every case worker who came in was greeted by its sordid dimensions and sometimes, when Kiddo is here, a faint funk wafting off it.

One afternoon I got so sick of looking at it I decided to do something about it. And got this off Amazon:

Something about that experience started percolating in my subconscious mind, and a few months later I was ready to extend the home improvement project… to the whole room. Much to my husband’s dismay.

We have a living room in our house but adults never sit in it voluntarily, unless they’ve been dragged in by a kid and forced to watch something animated on the TV. It’s affectionately been dubbed “The Play Room” and looks something like this:

There’s a trampoline in the middle of the room, and an ancient futon for a couch. There’s a play kitchen and a storage rack and bins stuffed full of toys. The artwork in there is lovely, but overall it’s been claimed by the small humans who share our home with us. Entering it endangers the soles of your feet (tiny plastic dinosaurs and legos and suction cup arrows and wooden blocks often litter the floor). And sitting on the futon or chair means getting dragged into a game of “eat what I make you in the kitchen” or “Mommy, watch how high I jump on the trampoline!”

I used to sit in the back room, where we had an oversized rocker recliner that I had claimed as my own. But the whole room was just a space for collecting crap: recycling waiting to go outside, boxes waiting to be broken down, mail, shopping bags, coats, toys. It was insane.

Cringe. So bad!

Most of the room was taken up by a mammoth roll top desk that had been gifted to me years ago. It was a gorgeous piece, but was too big for our little Victorian era rooms. Whatever room it was in was dominated by it. And worse, no one ever sat at it and used it. It was just a collecting spot for old mail and random odds and ends. You could never see the top of it. It was perpetually ridiculously messy.

I loved the thing because it really was gorgeous, but decided to part with it for the sake of the room as a whole. So I posted it on Facebook Marketplace where it sold in a heartbeat. I should have asked for more for it!

So then I started surfing furniture store sales and Amazon and Jo Ann Fabrics and a few other random stores. I found new curtains, new loveseat and chair, and a new shelving unit to hold the few items we needed to keep from the desk. We got my Mom’s old coffee table out of the attic (we’d put it away to protect it from kids 6 years ago). And I went to town sorting, organizing, trashing, and donating. I listed a bunch of stuff on our local “Buy Nothing” site, and donated an entire car load of stuff we don’t need, don’t use, and don’t want.

Just one of the donation piles we generated!

I should have done a before pic of the hall closet. You couldn’t stuff anything more in it. Now it’s functional again!

Seth assembled the new shelving unit and tinkered with it to install lighting in the display cabinet portion of it. Now I have my favorite items in a dust free lit space so they can be seen, and yet keep small fingers off them.

The shelves. The entire contents of the desk condensed down to three small decorative boxes once we’d junked everything we don’t need.

Our gorgeous antique rug is now the showpiece of the room. I’m so happy to be able to appreciate it now.

The rug was a gift years ago from an old boss. It’s been in use for a while but unnoticed because of all the clutter surrounding it.

The result? We have a WHOLE ADULT SITTING ROOM IN OUR HOUSE. Woohoo! It’s so nice to have room for company as I sit in the room, and so nice to have less junk in it. It’s not just an entryway we pass through and dump stuff in, it’s a room now!

Up next? Oh lordie. I’m starting multiple hares at once.

I’ve accumulated cabinet paint for the kitchen, and new drawer pulls, so that’s on the agenda.

I’ve ordered a new couch for the play room – one with style and pizazz and a little playfulness. The futon is roughly 20 years old and long past its prime. Plus it seems like 40-somethings shouldn’t still be sitting on futons for couches. Ha! It should be pretty durable too. But it’s on back order and won’t be here for several months. That couch is the single pricey item I’ve bought. I recently recovered the cushion on the aging cedar chest we have in there that holds our games collection. And I recovered the window seat cushion. Both of the recoverings were done with remnants from Jo Ann Fabrics to save some cash. I ordered blinds for the windows, too. I wanted Roman shades but holy they’re expensive! So I went with much more affordable cellular shades.

The bedroom, though, is really next on my agenda. Why might one ask? Because it needs to be an oasis away from the chaos of kids. We love our children to pieces, but being parents is stressful, let alone being foster parents. So our bedroom will have a chill grownup vibe I can’t wait to give life to. I gave myself a tight $350 budget for the entire bedroom remodel and I think I can do it. So watch for a future post on that room!

Caring for Newborns is Hard, Y’all

It’s hard to sum up what life has been like the last month and a half. The best way is perhaps to explain what happened yesterday.

We had not one, but TWO case workers come over yesterday to do monthly home visits – one for Sprout and one for Cookie. So we deep cleaned because the house had been in crisis mode and was NOT presentable.

Cookie’s room was the worst. It was a DISASTER. My discarded clothing was in a pile on the rocking chair with a sock graveyard on the floor behind it. There were tissues in a circle around the garbage can where I’d aimed and missed. There were boxes on the floor where we’d packed Cookie when we thought he was going home at the last court date but he didn’t and we’d just started living out of them. His clean clothes were sprawled across the boxes, not sorted by size. There were unfolded receiving blankets in the clothing pile too. And there were various shoes belonging to Sprout because she changes her shoes about a dozen times a day and leaves them everywhere. Around the dresser was a haze of spilled formula powder on the floor.

We went in there to tackle it. We started by changing the sheets on the twin bed I’ve been sleeping in, then Cookie’s crib sheet. Then I started sorting clothing. Sometime during the process I realized what I was doing: I was cleaning a depression cave.

Anyone who has dealt with serious depression knows the depression cave. The stuff just piles up because one doesn’t have the energy to clean it. The mess then contributes to the depression. It’s a nasty spiraling down that happens in a depression cave.

Caring for a newborn and all the attendant sleep deprivation and frustration with this little guy’s feeding challenges has made me feel like I’m depressed. I don’t think I need to change meds or anything, I just think I need this little guy to go to his relative.

Speaking of which, there was a court reporting date at the end of December, and the County was supposed to file a report on the relative’s background check and state whether they’d approved the relative to take Cookie. Well, it’s now January 21st, and Cookie is still with us. The relative has been approved. The parents want Cookie to go to the relative. The county wants Cookie to go to the relative. The relative wants him. And WE want Cookie to go to this relative. But somewhere along the line between the County and the court, there’s a holdup. And it looks like the paperwork won’t all get sorted until the next deadline, which is February 9th. That’s the next court date. I’m counting on his going home that date for so many reasons.

It’s HARD to care for a newborn. Even harder when he’s got feeding issues and vomits/spits up half of what he eats and therefore needs to eat really really often. Even harder when it’s not your child and you’re trying not to bond with him because you know he’s going home very soon. I’m struggling.

Seth and I have decided this is our one and only newborn experience. We are both getting too old for this! We are exhausted and our patience is being tested by the demands of the baby. We have the case worker the rest of our newborn size diapers so the County can give them to other foster parents who are taking newborns, because it won’t be us! She asked us “are you sure you don’t want to keep these for other newborns?” Seth and I just burst out laughing and said “NO” emphatically in chorus. Ha!

With the depression cave cleaned and the baby sleeping slightly longer stretches at night, I’ve moved back into Seth’s and my room and am just using a baby monitor. I feel vastly relieved to be in my own comfy bed again. Bless Seth for being willing to listen to the baby monitor going off at night so I can avoid developing a fresh depression cave in the baby’s room again. I feel much more like myself just because I’m sleeping in my own bed!

19 days left. I hope. Then this little guy can start bonding with his new caretaker and settle in with his family. And I can have my life back!

Adoptee Voices

I do a LOT of reading and listening and watching about foster care and adoption. I follow blogs, I listen to podcasts and books, and when I spend time on TikTok, I’m just as likely to be watching videos posted by foster parents or adoptees as I am to be watching silly cat videos. I can’t help it. I want ALL THE INFORMATION.

As someone who is fairly likely to be adopting a kid in the not-too-distant future, the most important thing I can do is listen to adoptees about their experiences. What did their adoptive parents do right? What did they do wrong? How do they feel about being adopted? My goal in listening to these voices is two-fold: I want to know all the possible reactions that I can so I’m not surprised by anything my potential adoptee might feel some day, and I want to do as much as I possibly can to make my potential adoptee’s experience as good as it can possibly be.

Adoption = Trauma

To do my best by my kid, I need to be aware of the bad parts of adoption: for my kid, that’s the trauma of removal from family of origin and being old enough to remember how terrible that day was, removal from a unique culture, loss of first language, and loss of connectedness with the first family. All of those things = trauma for my beloved kid. And no matter how good my adoptive family is and no matter how hard we try, we can’t erase that trauma.

What we can do, though, is acknowledge the child’s pain when it comes up, and sit with her in it, and support her in every way we can. We can provide therapy and understanding as she comes to understand her journey in ever changing ways. And we can foster the best connection with the first family that we can.

We can also provide resources as options for the child. A summer camp for transracial adoptees? It’s something she might some days be interested in, so when she’s the right age we will present that as an option for her. We of course won’t force her to do it, but we can give her that opportunity if she wants it. We can also seek out other adoptees, preferably transracial, in our own community and offer opportunities for connection. We can read age appropriate books about unconventional families with her. And we can make it clear that we are always always always willing to talk about whatever she wants to talk about related to her family and adoption.

Most importantly – and we already do this – we can hold her tight when she’s sad about missing her first family, and just sit with her in her pain. We don’t try to distract her or cheer her up, we just sit with her and hug her if she wants hugs.

Adoption also = something to celebrate

All the heaviness of what I wrote above is only half the equation though. We DO want to celebrate that this child is a permanent part of our family if the day comes. We want her to know she’s very much wanted and loved and adored and doted on. We want her to know we are so damn glad she’s our kid.

I loathe the “Gotcha Day” tradition that some adoptive families have of throwing a big party every year on the adoption anniversary. It seems to be purely celebration of “acquiring” a child, and not an acknowledgement that that acquisition came at a heavy price.

That said, we do want an adoption to be part celebration, as well as an acknowledgement of all the hard parts. We want the adoption day itself to be a one-time event that is significant. I spent an hour talking to an adoptee who is a coach for adoptive families today, and she suggested letting the child decide what she wants her adoption day to be like. Does she want friends/family over? I already know who she’d say she wants here. Does she want a cake? Does she want it to be an event? Or does she want it to be immediate family only and a quiet day? Our kid is young but already has strong opinions about, well, everything. So we will let her decide what she wants her adoption day to look like if it happens. And it will be a one-time event in her life, not an annual celebration of her “Gotcha Day.”

The best thing I can think to do right now is keep listening, keep learning, and keep seeking out adoptee voices that are writing/speaking/making videos/doing podcasts/coaching or whatever other way they’re choosing to communicate. And I can keep letting my kid feel whatever it is that she feels and acknowledge those feelings and listen to her and hug her tight when she’s sad and celebrate when she’s happy.

Christmas tidings!

Christmas is always a strange holiday for foster families. Depending on where kids are on their reunification journeys, often our kids have had visits with first families on Christmas, which we’ve always encouraged and facilitated.

This year that’s not the case as Sprout’s family doesn’t celebrate Christmas in any significant way (they’re Muslim), and they’re so far away (3+ hour drive) that a visit on the day of Christmas doesn’t make sense. Plus, it’s looking increasingly like she will stay with us, and therefore giving her our own family holiday experience is important.

Some years Kiddo has opted to spend Christmas Eve with us, but she didn’t this year, so we don’t have her adding to our chaos this year either. We’ll celebrate with her sometime this coming week when she pops over for a day or two during her week off of school.

Cookie had his holiday visit with his parents and one grandma yesterday, and unfortunately isn’t able to go visit other family members today or tomorrow as originally planned because that group of family members is in quarantine for Covid. At least he’s too young to remember having a different family tradition one year!

Alas, the life of a nurse complicates things for us this year, as Seth is working 12 hour shifts Christmas Day and Boxing Day. And Christmas Eve evening we are going to our church for their annual pageant and candlelit service (heaven help us, we are IN the pageant this year!). So, we set up Christmas while Sprout is napping, and she’ll get to dive into all but the one present that’s coming from “Santa” this afternoon.

Her array of gifts is pretty good, thanks to a LOT of generosity from friends and family!

We didn’t want to encourage any Santa belief. I feel weird about lying to kids and there’s so much ick around disparities in what Santa brings different kids. But Sprout picked it up from the vibes of the universe as the Santa message is everywhere this time of year, and she wholeheartedly believes. But instead of having everything come from Santa, the kids are getting one shared gift from him Christmas morning – an indoor trampoline. I hate the idea that privileged kids get tons from Santa and less privileged kids get little from Santa, and we do not want to perpetuate that cultural disparity, so in our house Santa brings just one or two fun active things for the kids.

Christmas Day itself will be a weird day for me. Mellow I hope! Perhaps we’ll watch a Christmas movie. We’ll read some Christmas books. I’ll feed the baby and nap with the kids just like any ordinary day. Perhaps Cookie will sport his Christmas bibs. My Dad will come celebrate with a nice Christmas meal on the 27th since Seth will be off that day. I refuse to cook anything elaborate for a picky toddler and a baby who just eats formula, so I’m guessing tomorrow will include such rare delicacies as Kraft macaroni and cheese and some bologna sandwiches. Ha!

Then I’m looking forward to the return to normalcy too. I like reducing the clutter in the house by putting decorations away. I like the reduced stress of the holiday being over. I shall miss the excuse to buy the kids all the fun things though!

Roller coaster fun with a baby

Baby “Cookie” is doing well. He’s gained 12 oz since he’s been with us!! Given that he came home from the hospital weighing a weenie 6 lbs, 12 more ounces is a really good thing. He’s not at all an easy kid to feed. He spits up a lot and actually vomits a lot, so I was vastly relieved to know we are getting enough into him despite all the nose spit-up rockets he’s generated. (Poor tyke, that’s gotta burn!)

He’s sensitive to stimulation – sound, light, or motion – and tenses up and that sometimes causes feedings to go awry. But he’s improving daily and the little squirt is on the right track for sure. We had a play date last weekend with one of Sprout’s friends from school (in other words, we totally gate crashed the Mom’s house and she graciously put up with all our chaos, fed my children, and didn’t cringe at the oldest’s lack of manners or the middle one’s screeches of delight while playing. Bless her!) She introduced me to MAM bottles with preemie nipples and they’ve been a life saver. So much less vomiting. Who knew bottle brand could matter so much?

As for me? I’m sleeeeeep depriiiiiiived. Cookie is up every two hours for a change and feedings and burpings that take a long time for him, so I’m not getting much shuteye.

I’ve absolutely delighted myself by having infinite patience and kindness and affection for him even when I feel like I’d happily sacrifice a limb or eye for some sleep. It was a crap shoot. It really could have gone either way. One doesn’t know how one will respond to extreme sleep deprivation until one is in the thick of it.

My house looks like the high-speed winds we’ve been getting happened indoors. But so it goes. I’m learning I simply cannot do it all with an infant and a toddler and a big kid on weekends. I’m managing to feed and bathe and dress the children and get Sprout up and on the bus on time every day so I’m doing ok in the grand scheme of things. I’m bathing myself (mostly – ok, sometimes) and keeping up with the insane laundry piles generated by an infant who spits up a lot. There are no infestations in the house. It’s a total win in my book!

My husband has been working INSANE hours. The overtime pay right now during the holiday season is a lovely lovely thing, so he’s been picking up all the extra hours he can take. That means I’ve spent a few days feeling pretty damn overwhelmed. Monday Sprout woke up with diarrhea, which is a symptom of Covid, so not only could she not go to school but I had to get her Covid tested that morning too (which turned out to be negative thank goodness). I thought there was no way I could do it. But I called the school’s Covid hotline, got her an appointment, registered her for testing, fed the baby, dressed Sprout and re-dressed her after an accident, and got all three of us scraggly humans out of the house and to the school and back again, and no one commented on our disheveled appearance. I find carrying a newborn infant gets one a lot of latitude. Also, I love dry shampoo.

As for Cookie’s near future, it’s a bit unknown. There’s a relative who wants him but there have been a few hitches in the process of getting them cleared to take him. We THOUGHT he was going there this afternoon after today’s court appearance. But then when I talked to the case worker this morning she was less sure than she’d sounded the day before. And then when she called after court she said he’s staying in foster care for now. There are upcoming court deadlines and dates in January and February so things could change then, but it looks like he’ll be with us through the holidays.

I’m happy he’s staying but feeling some twinges about how much I miss my bed. I’ve been sleeping in the twin bed in the baby’s room so I can catch his early fussing before he cries, because if he reaches the crying stage it means he’s gotten so hungry he’ll gulp and puke the whole feeding. But that means I’m sleeping on a mattress designed for much smaller humans and it’s a bit soggy and the covers keep getting all twisted and I just miss my glorious queen bed. But Seth needs as much sleep as possible with the hours he’s working and Cookie needs to be fed as soon as he starts fussing, so I’ll just keep slogging through the nights in there for now.

Cookie is now going to switch from the “triage case worker” (the ones who handle kids’ initial transitions into foster care) to his “permanency case worker,” who will work with the parents and the child and the prospective relative placement long term. We love the permanency worker, and she’s likely to tell us more of what’s going on than the triage case worker. It makes me crazy when case workers are secretive about what’s going on, and this triage worker hasn’t been especially forthcoming. I get it – she sees all sorts of foster families who have all sorts of reactions to the news she delivers and it’s just her style not to say much. We’ve found it REALLY helps us to work with families when we have a good basic grasp on what’s going on. If we can provide support to this prospective relative placement that can make this process work for them, then we will. But not all foster families support family reunification, particularly with infants. The permanency worker is not someone we’ve worked with before but her supervisor is and we have a great relationship with her, so hopefully we’ll have a good trust-based relationship moving forward.

And (*yaaaaaawn*) we shall keep on keeping on for now!