After the first week as Avery’s mom and dad we were pretty much in shock. All of a sudden we had all kinds of people calling us to set up “home visits”. The caseworker has to come and see them in your home once a month. The public health nurse sets up monthly visits. The guardian ad litem, the lawyer the court assigns to be the child’s advocate, comes to visit. The volunteer guardian ad litem comes once a month. We had to set up twice weekly visits with birth family, which is coordinated through an agency. In our case it was Catholic Charities.

I must say that I loved both of the girls who came to pick Avery up to take him on his visits! That was a really trying time for me. It was very tough to send him off to see his birth mom and birth family. Here I am just a woman wanting to adopt her own child. A child that would call me mommy and be my son, not someone else’s son. I  guess I just didn’t want to hear about them so they wouldn’t be real people and mess with my dream! Ah, how life steps in and kicks you right in the butt!

Of course the most important thing was to just try and get to know this little boy who didn’t smile very much. You could get almost smiles out of him but, a real smile that lit up his face wasn’t happening! We just wanted him to know how special we thought he was, and how proud we were to have him as our son. We did everything we could think of to let him know that whatever happened to him before was over! We would protect him!

All these pictures were taken the first seven months that he was with us! Not many smiles at all! I have hundreds of pictures of him, and they rarely show him with a smile. We will just have to keep trying!

In this post, I would like to tell you about my son!

   He came to us a very quiet little boy! No, not quiet, silent! He wasn’t talking, grunting, babbling, or anything else. He didn’t cry, smile, laugh, or show much emotion at all. He was just silent. He was 15 months old that day, and just as cute as could be! He was walking and running, although it was that wonderful wobbly walk that they do at that age.  We tried everything to get him to smile or laugh at us! My sister Paula was always taking pictures of him! I mean I must have 500 or so pictures of him that she took in a few months time. You can find maybe 10 of them that he is smiling, or half smiling in! He was always looking around as if to wonder where he was and what was going to happen to him! We just hugged on him and told him we loved him non stop!

Mike and I felt that by taking in a child who was so young we could eliminate all the problems of a child who had lived with their birth parents long enough to pick up a whole lot of baggage. What we didn’t take into consideration was the imprinting that goes on from before a child is born!

When DHS places a child with you, the licensing caseworker tells you as much as he or she knows. They don’t always have all the facts though. In our case, we were told that the birth mother had threatened to drown him in the bathtub. She was living with her mom, Avery’s grandma, at the time. Grandma  was very scared when her daughter said this, and told the home worker who was doing services with the birth mom. This worker told grandma she had to call CPS (child protective services) or she would do it. The worker told grandma it would be better for her to turn her daughter in and take care of Avery herself! Grandma did as the woman suggested to her. She really was scared, and was really trying to get help for her daughter.

Well, things backfired for grandma! They did give her custody at first. When they came out to do the home check they found the house to be dangerous. There was another problem as well. Grandma is not in good health.  CPS then asked them to come up to the caseworker’s office with Avery. They showed up and he was instantly taken away from them. He was placed into an emergency foster home till he came to us.

What does this process do to a baby or child? We all know that even if you have the worst parents in the world you still love them! He also had no idea where he was being taken to, or why. He was only 14 months old, just a baby! He was taken to a place where he didn’t know anyone. I can only imagine how frightening it must have been!

His emergency foster family seems to have been a loving family. From pictures that they sent with him, he seemed happy there. They sent us a list of the foods that he ate for them, what his daily routine was, and other information for us. I was grateful to get this since I didn’t know what he ate, drank, or what his development was.

I do have experience with babies Avery’s age. It is just that it has been many years since I have raised a baby! I felt that I should follow the schedule that the first foster mom sent me. The first day he was with us I figured he wasn’t going to eat much, would be fairly quiet, and we would all just have to get to know each other. So, I wasn’t all that concerned when he refused all food. According to what the schedule said, he ate a blend of toddler and table food. They had sent me sippy cups not bottles, and they sent a lot of toddler food. By toddler food I mean all those melt in your mouth packaged foods. They also sent a six pack of something called Pedia-Sure. Not something that I was familiar with! I bought a gallon of whole cow’s milk, and some apple juice. I was ready to raise my little boy!

One of the first things that happened with him when we got home told us a lot. He went right to the television set and turned it on almost instantly. He seemed to know exactly which button to hit. I found a channel called PBSKids and he proceeded to sit down and watch it with an intensity that just blew my mind! I mean what 16 month sits right in front of a t.v. and watches it silently? Well, our boy did. He had to have it on. He had to have it on whenever he was awake! I am not a real big believer in tv for kids. I don’t mind a certain amount of it but, come on all of the time? We later found out, through birth mom, that he would sleep all day with her, and stay up all night watching tv with her!

That first night was eye opening in many ways! It was just the three of us here in the compartment. We had unpacked all of his stuff, showed him around the house, tried to feed him supper, and now we were ready for bath time! We had a yellow duckie, cool floaty toys, and such wonderful baby smelling bath wash! He totally freaked out when I tried to put him into the tub! He screamed at the top of his lungs. The silence was broken in a really bad way! Horror filled our house instantly. I grabbed him and ran out of the bathroom! I don’t know what happened at his birth mom’s house but, the reaction I got made me think that bath time was not a good experience for him. Nothing about a fear of the bathtub had been in the first foster mom’s informational schedule.

I came up with a plan for his bath. I calmed him down and just washed him up that first night. The next night I put him in the kitchen sink. I didn’t put any water in the sink. I just sat him on his big bath sponge. I would give him the smallest of the nesting cups and turn the water on real low. He would fill them up and pour them out. I would wash him, hair included, with a wash cloth, very little soap, and very little rinsing! I would rinse his hair with the wash cloth. Eventually he let me put some water in the sink! You will notice that he is pretty big to be sitting in the sink! It was ok by me though!

  We did this until he was just to big to sit in the sink. Then we started all over again in the bathtub! Just letting him sit in there with a small amount of water coming out of the faucet. He now loves taking baths! He has tons of toys and his ever loving train stuff for his bath!

Next thing we noticed was that he would try to eat the food I would put to his mouth but, he would start gagging, and just acting like he didn’t want to eat it. It breaks my heart to  think he must have felt he had to eat or who knows what we might have done to him! What he would eat by the handfuls was the toddler snacks. They were puffed wheat, corn, rice, etc. He would eat french toast sticks, no cinnamon, no syrup, no butter please, pork rinds, any kind of junk food you could think of, chips, pretzels, macadamia nuts, and anything hard, mostly tastless, bland foods. Nothing could be wet, or sticky, or to soft….

You get the idea. This kid would not eat! Now I knew why the pedia sure came with his food! The so called food schedule that was given to me was just not acurate!!!!! I was really alarmed at how little this boy ate! All he wanted was the pedia sure! He wouldn’t drink the cow’s milk at all! He would drink the unfiltered, organic, apple juice though! The rest of the time he just ate junk food! Okay, in the trash with the schedule! We will just have to start over with feeding the way we did with baths!

We made it through that first night and wondered how it would be at bedtime! We let him stay up and I held him till he seemed tired. The tv was still on, and we found out that PBSKids is on all of the time! Non stop kids programming! Reality set in that we would have to watch Barney whether we wanted to or not! He finally got tired enough to yawn, and I decided to try and lay him down. I laid him in his crib and kissed him goodnight. He just lay there staring up at the ceiling. I left the room with a nightlight on and Mike and I headed to bed! We were exhausted but, very, very happy! Avery seemed to sleep through the night.

We survived our first day and night as parents! It was eye opening and now we were left wondering what next!

Okay, we are confused! We have our son, we are all done with you guys, now go away! Why do they want to take him to see the person who abused him? The caseworker came by and gave us the paperwork that proves we were the foster parents. He told me that we would be going to court in December over Avery. He told me the “visitation specialist” had called and what was the problem? I told him we had been told that Avery was up for adoption. It surprised the heck out of us when we found out he had visitation! He just said Oh. The next week he left town for the mainland, forever.

Visitation started that Tuesday morning. This woman shows up in a van, late. She doesn’t want me to put the baby in car. She will do it herself. She says they just cry more when the foster parents, or parents, put them in. Okay, that is a load of bull!!!! She thinks I am not going to kiss him goodbye, she is crazy! She puts him in and goes to close the door. I firmly put my hand on it, and leaned into the van and kissed my son goodbye, and told him I would see him in two hours! He was screaming from the moment this woman took him from me. As I leaned into this woman’s van, I could hardly stand the smell! The car seat that she put him in was so filthy it just wasn’t funny!

When she brings him back home, he is dirty and so sweaty. She has food all over the front of her shirt! So, she ate while driving my son! Not very safe if you ask me. He was so glad to see me, and I was so glad to see him. I had spent the entire 2 hours worried sick about him. I couldn’t do anything but worry about how everything was going with his birth family. I was just a wreck the whole time! I was wondering how in the world I was going to be able to do this twice a week!

Luckily, this woman didn’t last! I found out that Avery went from emergency foster care, where he was for 1 month, to another adoption at risk family. They had him for one night and decided that they didn’t want him! Can you believe that? I can’t imagine anyone not wanting him! They were on a different side of the island so, when they placed him with us, his visitation changed to my side of the island. Catholic Charities took over. They sent an angel to us to pick him up! She was wonderful, soft spoken, and Avery loved her! Visits also went from twice a week to once a week! The birth mom said he made her to anxious, and she didn’t want to spend that much time with him. She also cut the one visit a week down to 1 1/2 hours. That was fine by me!

Caseworker number two comes along in October. She is very nice but, has just started working for DHS and is trying to catch up on all her paperwork. She tells me that Avery was placed with us by mistake. That DHS didn’t have custody of him yet! Great, just what I wanted to hear. She said that it was just a protocol thing. That they had no intention of reuniting this boy with his family. That it didn’t look like there was anyone willing to take him as the aunts, uncles, cousins, didn’t want to put up with the drug addict birth father. She said that it looked good for us but, you never know who will come forward in the end. She reminded me that we were adoption at risk! Boy was I feeling the risk part at this time! Hated it. I was crying all the time, yelling at my husband all the time, and just upset. I prayed that God would give him to us. I knew it was entirely in his hands. Cause it sure wasn’t in mine!!!

 In the meantime, in addition to the caseworker, we have had the public health nurse, her students, their teacher, a guardian ad litem, coming to our house once a month. Avery was in the early intervention program. It is an umbrella of services and people to provide them. It is actually an outstanding program. I just didn’t want to be in it. I felt that any problems Avery had, I could handle them myself! The house had to be pristine clean all the time, and I felt like I was always being watched. Everyone was very nice but, it was such a trial. I felt I had to be a super mom, super housekeeper, and super at everything! All I wanted to do was lock the doors, and hide in the house with my baby!

 I was beginning to understand the process now. You have to go back to your training. They told us that all these people would come into our lives as support. They told us that caseworkers change all the time. They told us that we would have many court dates. They told us that the process was slow, slow, slow! They told us all of these things! I just didn’t really hear them though. I was  thinking only of getting my baby into my arms!