You may have noticed that my last post disappeared and that I was planning on ramping up my posting, which has not happened. This is because a birth relative of the baby is seeking placement of her.  Some details are better left offline for a while.

But, there are some topics that are so generic that I feel I can post about my experience. Sleeplessness, yes! I have a whole crew of infant mom friends and we are all talking about it, working on it and dealing with it every day.  The moments that we are not thinking about it are joyous, indeed.

I read the book “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child”, which I loved and really changed how I do things.  Sleep improved immediately and within a month was fantastic. We had removed the swing and the swaddle and the kid was only getting up once in the night. After being up most of the night for 3 months of an underweight and colicky baby, this was an amazing step for us. A number of times, I even put her down awake below her mobile and she put herself to sleep. Wow, that wasn’t so bad!

I imagined this kid to be a great learner, a self-soother and to be, just generally, a good sleeper.  I read on a message board yesterday, something like this, “They tell you that your kid should start sleeping “through the night” at around 4 months. What they don’t tell you is that it won’t last.”

As her energy and alertness has increased, she has been fighting sleep more and more. Catching her at the right time is tricky business. One minute, she is happily playing and exploring her toys, the next, she is letting out manic screeches that indicate she is tired and wanting to stay awake.  We are still experimenting with the best way to bring her back down, a walk almost always does it. Usually if we try to put her to sleep when she first exhibits signs of tiredness, it is not to a good end. Unfortunately, this is not only true for naps, but also in her middle of the night waking.

So, we have slowly added back things that used to help her sleep that she didn’t need for a while. Her swaddle, her cushy bouncy seat and the last two nights even her swing.  Our doctor suggested that it was time to start letting her fuss for 5 minutes to help her learn to put herself to sleep, but we can’t really handle it and it is hard to imagine sleep actually happening in 5 minutes. The fussing seems to just work her up even more.

The hardest time is the afternoon. She pretty much refuses to go down for her afternoon nap unless she is so wiped out that she passes out.  We try everything and it always seems that she just wants to stay awake in an overtired state.

The bright side is that (in part because of the sleep training that I learned in the aforementioned book), she has one nap a day that is quite long.  I think she is on a quest to come down to two naps a day and this is the cause of this sleep havoc.  But, once that stabilizes, I am now quite certain there will be something else.

11 days ago I had the honor of picking up a beautiful, tiny little girl from the hospital.  Other than a few massages and runs to the store, I have been spending just about every moment with her since then. I am completely enamored, although struggling with limited sleep.

I appreciate the congratulations that people are offering me.  I am thrilled to have S- with us and I know that others are happy for me.  It is another step forward in our journey as foster parents and the first time that I have been this close to a newborn infant.  I also appreciate the visitors and gifts that have been so generous and wonderful.

On the other hand, it is important that people understand that currently, I am only mom temporarily, foster mom that is.  So, it isn’t congratulations on your new baby. It is closer to congratulations on your babysitting gig.  Of course, I am being flip. It is really something in between.

Any joy that we are experiencing with Baby S- is because her birth mom is having a rough time. Rough enough that she is not able to take care of her daughter right now.  I have met her and witnessed how devastatingly sad this is for her.  It is my job as a foster parent to be an ally to the birth mom and to support Baby M- in whatever decisions that the courts make about her future even if our role in it will be limited or non-existent.

It is natural to be curious about the kid, her birth mom, where she came from and the likelihood that she will be able to stay with us.  Unfortunately, each question, even those as simple as her name are hard for us to answer.  Sure, the birth mom gave her a name, but if she is adopted by us will we change her name?  She is 15 days old, does she really need a name?  And other questions, we don’t know what the answer is or the answer just feels complicated. Questions about what will happen from here involve taking guesses based on details that constantly surfacing. I am afraid that sharing those just begin exposing how vulnerable little S- really is and open up her and her birth mom to judgements and speculation.

J- and I have decided that what I have written above is all that we will say about Baby S-’s situation.  Anything else that I may have heard is yet to be confirmed or is simply none of anyone’s business, to be crass. Any additional information can only taint people’s impression of the baby or mom rather than give any real sense of what the kid’s future will look like.

In general, CPS cases have several phases.  In the initial phase, CPS investigates. They assess the birth mom and decide if she will be offered reunification services and which services they will be. They learn about the family.  If they can, they will track down the birth father and look into his family. At any time, the baby could be moved from our care into the care of the birth family. If the birth mother is offered reunification services, she will have a certain amount of time to meet the criteria set out by the court. If she does not satisfy the case plan, the court has to decide what to do from there.

J- and I aren’t good with limbo. We are in a  holding pattern right now while we wait for phone calls that will allow us to be parents.  We’ve got a bassinet, crib and clothes. We even have the carseat in the car. We are as ready as we are going to be.

It started with the first phone call.  We hadn’t fully thought through what to do when it came. We were reacting to our last experience where we felt so prepared and confident and thought we had everything planned out and ultimately all o fthat preparation didn’t make much of a difference.  This time, we’d take things as they came. We would invest and plan less.

We have also talked about the possibility that we will “just” be foster parents for some time.  We will try not to be attached to permanency and adoption. We will go with the flow.

We assumed that we would be able to talk about it.   I was giving a massage the first time the phone rang, so J- asked if he could call them back. By the time I got out of my session, they had found another home for this 3-week old baby.  There was very little information about the kids situation, but if we had a chance to talk about it, it would have probably been a “yes”.  It is hard to imagine turning away a 3-week old baby for any reason.

So after that call, I realized the panic that I would experience if we got another one of those phone calls and we didn’t have a crib or diapers or a single bottle.  We got furniture from craigslist and went down the baby aisle of Target and got one of everything.

Since then, we have received 3 more calls. They have all been between 9 and 11 am and they have all been about children under 2 years of age.  3 of them have been for children needing immediate, emergency placement.  They haven’t worked out for a number of reasons, primarily because we took week-long vacation right after we became certified.

We are looking forward to more calls and are ready to say “yes,” even if it is just to get this process rolling.

We got a call from our licensing social worker on Thursday.  She said that she was entering our information in their database of certified foster parents.  It takes 24 hours for our names to show up to placement workers, but we could get a call for placement as soon as Friday. Of course, every time that the phone rings, I have a bit of excitement. Of course, it could be a few months before we get a call and it could be a very long time before we get a call with the right child.

The other important thing that she said was that we are responsible for screening the call.  We are responsible for deciding whether the kid is the right kid for us. It is nice that this is so out in the open and obvious this time. Other than the number and age of children that we could take, we gave little other information to the county about our criteria.  On the other hand, the last time that we went through this it was our impression that the social worker’s would have some role in ensuring a good match.  I was never really able to recover from the frustration and disappointment with our agency when this did not happen.

So, we are currently lining up resources of people that we can talk to in an emergency about the situation.  Our therapist, our good friend the social worker, our friends who are also fost-adopt parents.  I do feel certain of my criteria, but I don’t feel very certain of my ability to determine whether that child meets my criteria or whether I can say no if it is not certain.

Then, I think of how much more experience that we know have in our understanding of a child’s history and behavior and attachment.  I also remember that this time around my mantra is all about staying calm, no matter what.  So the next time the phone rings, I will take a deep breath…and say “Hello…”

A few years ago, I was fed up with the guilt that I felt every time I turned down an invitation, missed a political event, a concert or a party.  But, I new that I wanted to invite focus and simplicity in my life.  I decided that I would rule out anything that fit into the arbitrary category of “big”.

Big includes just about anything that involves a crowd, crossing bridges or nights later than 11pm.  Writing that makes me feel old and boring, but I actually think I am just discovering my comfort levels and where I find satisfaction. I can have fun at big events, but many times I do not.  Many times, I spend the time hopping from one person to another that I haven’t seen in a long time and don’t really get the depth of contact that I really enjoy.  It is also pretty likely that if I go to a big event that I will get a cold or flu after or at least need a day of recovery from exhaustion. Continue Reading »

About a month and a half ago, J- and I decided to complete our fost-adopt application so that we would be certified to work with A- County.  This was partly because we had been done with the rest of the process for a long time. It was also because we were tired of the complicated answer that we were giving every time anyone asked us where we were at with it. It went something like this:

“We have to fill out the paperwork, which should be pretty easy since we have done it before. The paperwork includes references which may take a few weeks to get back.  We also have to go down to the county and get fingerprinted and it takes a while for those results to come back.  When we decide to, we could be ready for a placement within a month or so.  But, it is possible that there will not be a good placement for some time.  The most important thing for us this time through is to not feel too rushed or worried about anything.”

So now, our references and the fingerprints are in process, probably nearly done. We could receive a call any day saying that we are ready for our final home inspection.

Another part of the answer that we were sort of leaving out is that we have a house guest, N-.  We have never been sure how long she would be staying with us, so we have been waiting to see how her situation evolves.  She is great to have around, in general, and as a nurse and mother of 3 would be a great person to have around with a baby.  Unfortunately, she has been pretty ill lately.  So ill that she has had to be in and out of the hospital.  It has been touch and go and hard to imagine having a baby or kid in the house.  Until now.

Late last week, my friend ZM called saying that her beautiful daughters have a brand new biological sister who was born on the 17th in an area about 4 hours away from us.  That county had called her to see if she could take the new baby.  Although she would like more kids, hers are 2 and 4, plus she has a very active business and is a single mom.  She decided it was too much for her.  Although she told the county about us, the county is first trying to place the baby in a home within their county.  There is a slight chance that those homes won’t pan out and ours will become an option.

Meanwhile, our roommate is improving and willing and able to live with a baby. We feel lucky for our spacious house which could allow N- to recover even with a baby in the house.  It does add a variable to our certification process and we remain unsure whether all of these things can be worked out if the little one does become a possibility for our family.

A story has just been put together that says that Sarah, Josh and Shane, the three American hikers being detained in Iran did not cross the border, but were kidnapped from Iraqi Kurdistan. This is the first time that the truth about the hikers is getting a viral media push through email and facebook. It is significant because it changes their status from prisoners who have committed a crime to hostages.

This is actually not really news.  The UK Daily Telegraph released the details in an article in August, 2009.  A local tribal leader saw the kidnappers crossing the border from the Iran side, and noted cell phone records of the call that alerted the kidnappers to the hikers presence. The article also notes that, at that moment, the tension between the US and the Iranian government was high because of US protests of the 2009 election in Iran. Continue Reading »

With the arrival of summer and several other blogging projects, I am noticing my energy shift from this blog. I am not sure how much I will be posting over the next few months, but please check out my other blog projects:

East Bay Alternative Medicine-A collaboration of local alternative medicine practitioners that is just getting going.

Insurgent Summer- This is a “guided” summer reading of one of the greatest pieces of  anarchist literature of all time.  Starting this week, it will take place over 10 weeks.

The good news is that we expect to be back in matching by the end of the summer, so I may have a whole lot of new material coming up soon. This will be especially exciting for those following my parenting/fost-adopt life.

I have always been an outdoorsy type. My husband jokes that I am a lizard, because I am happiest basking out in the full sun.  The bay area is never warm enough for me  since I was meant for temperatures that were 80 degrees and over.  Some of the longest bike rides that I have done in my life have been in temperatures over 90, including several trips between Pittsburg and Sacramento and the Davis Double. I am certainly not biking or hiking like I used to. I am doing massage in a dark room for money and writing with my spare time.  Still, these things are part of my identity and I never considered that I may be deficient of vitamin D. Continue Reading »

Okay, well I don’t want to develop a reputation for thinking that I invented terms that I didn’t.  But this term I think I really did invent!  This species of person is found mostly in Berkeley and they like to plaster what they think on their car in cute little catchphrases. They are typically people that believe what they think is important and that other people care about it. There are even people with their whole hatches or cars plastered with their messages. Don’t get me started about art cars.  I apologize to my friends in advance. Please don’t take it personally, bumper stickers are a long standing, quirky pet peeve that I finally have to set free.

I did come home frothing after seeing an offending slogan and posted on facebook. Some of the ideas from this post are from my funny peeps there, and are duly attributed with their first initial. Continue Reading »