Interested in Your Experience and Information

mcdmaw

I had my baby boy about 5 months ago and also have a two year old little girl.  During my last delivery we learned that due to some blood transfer during my c/s, I cannot get pregnant again without significant risk to myself and the baby.  I learned all of this after my son was born and had no idea he would be my last child.

My husband and I had talked previously about fostering to adopt in the past.  Especially after this recent news, I just don't feel like our family is complete.  I am interested in your experience or advice regarding fostering to adopt.  

I'm especially interested in your views regarding timing.  I've received advice that fostering requires so much from a family that we should wait until our children are 5 or 10 years older.  My husband is more supportive of waiting however I am interested in starting our journey within the next few years.

DaisyZH

Welcome to the board and congratulations on your baby boy!  I'm so sorry about your c/s complications that is a very hard thing to go through and it had to be a shock to learn that after your DS was born.

We are also interested in foster-to-adopt, our DS is currently 15 months.  Like you I am the one that is kind of raring to go while DH is definately more slow and steady.  The information that we received has highly recommended respecting birth order.  Therefore we are planning to begin the process when DS is 2, hoping to be approved by the time he is 3 and then accepting placements 3 or younger. 

Depending on your area there may be a need for placements for very young children or there may not.  We are open to special needs and have been told there is a greater need for homes for young children with special needs as well as older school aged children and teenagers.  Every area is different though.  This would probably help you decide whether to choose to wait 5 or 10 years or get started earlier. 

 

CaptainSerious

I think the advice you received about timing is solid, although I don't think that the time/emotional commitment is the only reason for waiting.  Foster/adoption professionals often strongly recommend/require that families preserve the birth order of children in their home (meaning that the children in your home should remain older than any other children who enter).

Professionals in the field often cite jealousy and the child's understanding of how they fit into the home as a reason for preserving birth order, but there's a much bigger side to it that they often choose not to discuss when not relaying the circumstances surrounding a specific child.  Many older children who are in foster care or are available for adoption have experienced trauma in their lives.  This could be as simple as losing caregivers through death, but more often means witnessing or being the victim of abuse, neglect, or other violent behavior.  Children who have suffered these types of trauma often act out those types of behaviors on younger children around them.  This can happen even if they are getting all the emotional and psychological help they need; it's often part of their process as they learn to cope with what happened to them/what they witnessed.  So in the minds of many adoption professionals, placing an older child, who may have had a turbulent past, in a home with young children is not ideal in most situations.

With that in mind, and the fact that children in foster care are often "older" (i.e., not infants), it may be wise for you to wait until your son is older and you can welcome children younger than him into the family.  In the meantime, there are some great books out there that can help you prepare for some of the challenges of raising traumatized children.  I highly recommend:

Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow;

 

Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families; and

 

Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents.

 

Also, it's important to remember that the primary goal of the foster care system is to reunify children with their biological parents, and if that is not an option, to find a close relative to raise them.  As a result, you have to consider whether you will be able to welcome children into your family as your own with the knowledge that they may return to their birth families, or you may wish to find a program through which you can only open yourselves for children whose parental rights have already been terminated.