Adoption
Melanie Paige was born 7/7/10 @ 8:48 AM- 7 lbs 4 oz, 19 in!
Lana Michelle was born 1/9/07 @ 9:40 AM- 6 lbs 14.5 oz, 19.5 in!
Options
Not sure where else to post this...
We just found out this morning that we are getting custody of our new
nephew who is less than 48 hrs old and still in the hospital. CPS is coming to do a home inspection and then assuming they pass us (which I know they will) we are taking him home. I guess I'm just a little overwhelmed, as we have 2 girls already, one of which is not quite 9 mos. Don't get me wrong, we are more than happy to take him, but I don't know if I'm prepared for the societal things that will come along w/ this, as well as dealing w/ any legal issues in the future. I know you can't really be prepared for any of this, but I'm wondering if u ladies have any wisdom you can share w/ me on these, as well as dealing w/ a newborn who has some drug addiction issues (which is part of why we're getting him.) TIA ladies!
Melanie Paige was born 7/7/10 @ 8:48 AM- 7 lbs 4 oz, 19 in!
Lana Michelle was born 1/9/07 @ 9:40 AM- 6 lbs 14.5 oz, 19.5 in!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Not sure where else to post this...
Welcome. This is a great place for you. There are a couple of ladies who have similar situations.
Is your hope or intent to adopt your nephew?
I ask because it may change how you deal with questions. How will your girls see him-- as a cousin or a brother?
I am sure it's overwhelming and I can imagine the situation that has led you here is difficult...don't feel pressure to answer questions when people boldly ask.
I'm from Claude originally.
I know you're probably totally overwhelmed. There are some ladies on this board who've done kinship placements, so if you don't get enough responses to this post with specific information, you might try starting one with kinship placement in the title.
To answer the few Q's so far:
As of right now, he will be w/ us for an undetermined amount of time. We are planning on treating him just like our own children, and assuming they let us keep him and we don't have any issues w/ his biological parents, yes we PLAN on adopting him eventually. I suppose if we don't get to keep him forever, we don't want them to get completely confused so we would want them to think of him as a cousin, but if we do get to fully adopt him forever, we would like him to be considered a brother. It's just really hard to explain all that, b/c while I don't want him when he's older to not know his parents (since one of them is our sibling) I also don't want him to feel any different from our children b/c it makes it that much harder (when kids think they aren't "real" kids if that makes sense...) Right now we are referring to him simply as "Baby William" and my older daughter knows that he came out of her Aunt's belly, just like her sister came out of Mommy's belly, b/c we went to see them in the hospital. For now I've just explained to her that he is coming to stay w/ us for a little while (and so is Nana, so I don't think she'll be too confused yet...)
As far as his exposure, they are waiting on the blood test to come back to determine fully (they had to send it to a private lab as it's a TINY hospital). We know that he at least has nicotine, marijuana, and Zanex (sp?), and his withdrawals are mostly shakes and the like thus far, but they won't release any of his medical info to us until we have the legal paperwork b/c of all the privacy laws, so I'm not even sure what they're doing, if anything, to treat him...
It's amazing how much u can love such a new little person already!
My LO was addicted to nicotine and caffeine at birth (her birthmother smoked a pack a day and drank a gallon of Mt. Dew a day) and she had the shakes for 3 weeks (occasionally she would scare us b/c she would draw up really quickly and suddenly and we thought she was having a seizure). I know nicotine/caffeine doesn't sound like much, but the pedi at the hospital told us that he had never seen a baby withdraw like she did -- he compared it to cocaine withdrawals.
We did what pp did and kept her swaddled and secure and in darker/quieter environments as much as possible.
Like fred said, blood tests may come back on the baby as being negative and a better test is testing meconium.
Kinship placing works pretty much like foster care, but a lot less restrictive. I know most of the time you will be supervising visits between sister and baby, most likely there will be court appointed visits. She will also have a plan to work in order for her to have the baby returned to her. Just as BPs have a plan in foster care, they have a plan in kinship placements as well (I noticed your in Texas, I'm a foster parent in Texas).
As far as drugs, marijuana is the least addictive drug. You can quit marijuana without much problem. The Xanax, however, is addictive and she will have to go to rehab for both anyhow. For the baby -- Xanax is a benzodiazepines. It won't depend on how much she did -- it could be a little or a lot and the baby may or may not go through TONS of withdraw.
DS2 was born addicted to Xanax, he was also 2 months premature so he went through withdraw in the NICU. We did find that while he liked to be swaddled, it wasn't in your typical swaddler (Miracle Blanket, etc.) He much more preferred a receiving blanket type swaddle. He also didn't sleep through the night until he was 6-7 months old (4-5 months adjusted). He also preferred me over anyone else, otherwise he screamed and screamed and screamed for hours at night. Also we watched for signs of reflux. We did eventually elevated his bassinet mattress (we had a tiny baby doll pillow that we put under it) and he finally got comfortable that way.
We all could tell you so many different things, but each baby is different.
We're all here to help you through it.
Welcome to the board, feel free to ask anything.
My DS was born addicted to nicotine, caffeine and his BM was on an extremely high dose of methadone. He was very shaky and easily agitated. We did swaddle him but with blankets since he seemed to hate the miracle blanket type swaddles. I also wore him a lot because he had severe reflux. We made sure to limit the number of people coming to see him and just kept things low key for awhile. He's almost 16 months now and you would never know he had a rocky start.
Have fun loving on that sweet baby! Thanks for sharing.
Welcome!
We have guardianship of our nephew right now with plans to adopt him when we can. My sister voluntarily gave us the baby, knowing that SRS would eventually be involved. We're just playing the waiting game now. We've had him for just over a year, and I hope we can adopt him this year.
It sounds like you have shared an appropriate amount of info with your LO. Have fun loving on those babies!
Thanks for the warm welcome ladies!
We went up to visit today (I guess I should mention that we are doing this in conjunction w/ TWO states worth of CPS b/c we live just across the state line...) and he seems to be doing much better! We also took SIL to a shelter type place several hrs away. This will be number I-can't-count-that-high for her, so I hope she gets better...she still thinks she's going to get to keep the baby, even though she's been kicked out of rehabs and crisis centers before and they are telling her otherwise, that he's already a ward of the state and they have a placement pending for him. So, so far they are saying no visits w/ baby as of right now for her once he comes to us, so I'm wondering if supervised visits (as stated above) are usually the norm and we are the exception in this case? I guess I should also mention that SIL also has a criminal record, and we got the impression that when/if the baby's tests come back positive they may be pressing more charges on her somewhere along the lines of abuse/endangerment to the child...
I wish they'd hurry up and do our home visit already so that we can get him here! Does anyone have any tips for this? I assume they will verify their background checks on us w/ fingerprints just to be sure we are who we say we are, and look around the house, plus probably probe into our finances a bit more, and try to get to know us better, but I'm not sure what else to expect. So I've been cleaning like crazy- my husband jokingly said I was "nesting" again lol I'm not so much worried abt the things like the check ups and money, b/c everything is already baby proofed, and my husband is military and I'm former law enforcement w/ a Psychology background; it's the questions and other stuff I don't know abt that worries me!
Really appreciate all the info you guys have given me so far- I'm glad I found the right place to post this, and u all have been so nice
My DD is also my niece. Her BM is my sister. We were in another state as well, but we didn't take her home at birth. I was 5 months pregnant and not prepared at all to take it on, plus my sister was working her plan to get her back and I didn't want to be involved in the complexity with us being over 1000 miles away. Once we found out that my sister was not working her plan and CPS was moving to a permanent placement, we stepped in.
Our initial homestudy and background check took 2 weeks to complete before she came home at almost 8 months old. TPR happened 2.5 months after she came home and we finalized the adoption when she was 17 months old. We referred to her as our DD from day 1 and we also used her new name that we chose.
We've had some challenges with family (my sister and mother primarily) and have had to make tough choices. Kinship adoption can be confusing at first, but now it feels completely normal to me. Let me know if you have any questions.
Oh, and Charlotte was exposed to methamphetamines in utero for the full 9 months. Her meconium tested positive for it. She was very lethargic, difficult to feed, cried a lot, and had breathing problems. She was behind in development for physical, occupational, behavioral and speech. She had several months of therapy and for the most part is on target with everything. She is slightly behind on some occupational things (dressing herself, brushing teeth), but not enough to need therapy.
Her biggest challenge now is her behavior. She angers easily and can rage/tantrum for lengthy periods. She struggles to accept less desirable outcomes/choices and is very rigid. She requires a strict routine in order to help keep her behavior under control. Her therapists thought that there was a possibility of her being on the spectrum (high functioning end), but it's near impossible to tell if it was the exposure to drugs or if in fact she is on the spectrum. Treatment is still the same and there is a strong possibility of a learning disability. It can be tough, but therapy did wonders in giving us tools to deal with it.