Begin at the Beginning

Of all the questions I've gotten since deciding to become a foster parent, the most common is simply this:

"Why" is a tricky question, since answering it would involve a near-dissertation length lecture on my religious values, my politics, my parenting perspective and my professional life. And while I'm sure that I'll touch on each of these over the course of this blog, I've decided that the easiest way to start is not with WHY but with HOW. 

My husband Rob and I have been married for going on 15 years now. On our second date, we talked about wanting to be foster parents, so to say that this is not something we entered into on a whim would be an understatement. We got pregnant with Pom, our son, right away; and since I knew that I wanted my biological children to be older than any foster children (for safety reasons) his birth put our plans to foster on the back burner. 

Fast Forward a few years and Pom was nearly 8. We decided to talk about fostering again and even went to the initial informational meeting at a child welfare agency in the city. Unfortunately, not long after that, Pom was diagnosed with End-Stage Renal Failure. We spent the next 3.5 years performing peritoneal dialysis nightly at home and waiting for a new kidney to come available. You can read all about that adventure here and here. I think most people will agree that it would be unwise to take on a foster child while simultaneously tending to a medically fragile bio-kid. So, once again, our plans were put on the back burner while we tended to more immediate concerns.

In 2011, Pom received the gift of life from a deceased donor. He spent the next six months home-bound to prevent exposure to anything that might compromise his already fragile immune system. Just as things were getting better for him things were getting worse for Rob and I. Professionals will tell you that the stress of caring for a medically fragile child is capable of destroying a marriage. Not long after Pom's transplant, Rob and I went through the worst six months of our lives. Nearly every terrible thing you can imagine happening to a marriage happened to us. Things got so bad that my stepdaughter, moved out and I found myself in an attorneys office. Clearly, this was not a time to foster.

Thankfully, six months of hell didn't outweigh 13 years of solid marriage. Rob and I are stronger today than we've ever been. Pom is two years out of transplant and <knock on wood> as healthy as he's been in years. And so we decided once again to look into fostering. As a social worker who spends a lot of time with at-risk kids, I knew that we needed to find an agency that would fit our family dynamic. That process took 6 months, and only after we identified an agency that seemed like it would be a good fit for us, did the real journey begin...fifteen years after we first looked at each other and said "someday, I'd like to foster."