Baby in the Road

During foster class, we were told that another one of the VERY, VERY FEW rights a foster parent has is that if, once returned home, your foster child returns to foster care, you will be informed and, if possible, returned to your home.

Remember that Baby O had been placed with his three year old brother with another couple (who I became very good friends with) because she was open to taking not only the two of them but also their eight year old brother.  She and I talked on the phone regularly, visited each other's homes, and updated one another on our fosters.  She told me that the older brother, the eight year old, still wasn't placed with her because he was just too difficult.  Luckily, they did not remove the other two to try to find a place for all three.  Instead, she got to keep the younger two, whom she loved very much and hoped to adopt.  I had Bram at the time and was happy that the boys were in such a great home.  Tiernen was still babysitting them so I still got to see them all the time.  No one really knew what was going to happen with the eight year old.

And then the baby in the road happened.

https://youtu.be/1jS1FN5o5sk

 It literally made national news:  in Utica, on a cold March night (it snows here until late April) a nine month old baby was found alone in road on a busy road.  A local teen filmed it on his phone, uploaded it to Facebook, and it (of course) went viral.  

Outside of this being my town, what the hell does this have to do with me?

No, I was not called to foster this child.  But my friend who had the boys WAS.  She had never fostered him before, but she had fostered his three sisters before for more than six months.  She loved them and wanted them back.  She agreed to take the baby (who was not hurt) too.

The problem?  She could  not take these four (all under five years old) and Baby O and his brother.  Six kids under five would be a lot for anyone, let alone two working parents (and she and her husband both worked outside of the home).  Even if she wanted to, her home wasn't "opened" for six kids.

She loved Baby O and his brother, but they had only been with her two months.  The other girls had been with her for six.  Her bond was stronger with them, simple as that.

I tried to put myself in her shoes:  if I had to choose between Bram or Baby O, I would pick Bram because he was with us longer.  Sometimes those choices just had to be made.

And so, my friend made a hard choice:  Baby O and his brother were sent to another home, one that would take the older brother too someday.  I didn't know the family they went to and Tiernen no longer babysat for them.  My friend knew the family and kept in touch with them every so often, but she was busy with her four new foster babies. She told me they had other children, adopted from foster care, and that they were doing well.  

My last connection with Baby O had been severed, and I was really sad about it.