The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I was overly optimistic that despite the promise that hell would freeze over before I would get a baby before foster class was over.  I had subscribed to about a thousand online fostering forums and read countless posts about the need being so great for qualified foster families that many people were given placements even before they had finished the class.

This would be me, I decided!

I started sleeping with my ringer on, anticipating the middle of the night phone call that would surely come, informing me that my foster baby needed me to pick him or her up that very second.   I was ready.  I had clothes.  I had bottles (three different kinds).  I had crocheted more blankets than a baby could ever wear.  

October ended and I went to Once Upon a Child and bought every single Halloween-themed outfit they had, all super discounted, in sized newborn to 12 months.  

I was ready!

November started and foster class was winding down.  My house was inspected and the mountain of paperwork was in.  Where was my phone call?  I was starting to get depressed.

Then I found out that friends I had made in class were getting a sibling set of five, including three under two.  They were just waiting for their last minute references to come in.  I was so jealous and simultaneously hopeful.  If it could happen to them, it could happen to me...

Not that I wanted three under two.  Not that I wanted a sibling set at all.  But there were babies out there.  And they were being placed with new foster parents.  I kept that phone on.

My house was declared officially "open" (which means I can take in placements) in mid-November, but I still did not get a call.  

Having an empty, fully-equipped nursery in your house is very depressing.  Suddenly, I had a new empathy for parents who had premie babies who couldn't come home from the hospital or worse... were stillborn.  That's what it felt like:  I was mourning a baby that I didn't even know existed.

More than once I pouted and decided this whole foster thing wasn't for me.  I felt rejected.  Maybe they weren't calling me on purpose and all the under two-year-olds were going to those two-parent families with the stay-at-home moms.