When we first saw baby T in her car seat I started crying. We adored her from the very beginning. We wanted her desperately! We brought her home and were still a little clueless how foster care worked. At the beginning of her case we were working toward reunification with her birth mom. It was hard to have a baby in our house. Babies are so hard! Having to get up and feed her in the night, change her diaper every few hours, etc. But, baby T was such a great baby. Our kids loved her too. They loved to help feed her. It was hard because I was teaching preschool and coaching soccer at the time we got her, but somehow we did it. We had to take her to see her mom about 2 times a week. Sometimes the birth mom wouldn't show up because she was out of state? or sick. I really started to get my hopes up at that time.
So, I went to court. I was so nervous! I remember I was the only one in the audience and sweaty and chilled. Did I mention we wanted baby T sooo bad? At that court date they had revoked the rights of the mother. I continued to get my hopes up. Plus, a few days before that I had taken her to get her hair checked for drug exposure. It was the highest number our DCFS workers had ever seen. It was way high, I can't remember the number.
A few days later the case worker started to tell us that Kinship had come forward. What? We thought there was no one, because baby T's birth mom had a flakey family who did drugs. I still thought we could plead our case and beg for her. We met the kinship. They were both overweight and kind hillbillies, okay now I am being mean. They already had 6 kids of their own and the youngest was 12. They appeared to be in their 50's. So, to make a long story short, the "team" had a meeting and they decided to place with this other family. What?! How could there even be a question who would be a better pick for baby T? It was like her great uncle. That's what makes me mad, all the rules about how kinship trumps all no matter what.
The day we had to give T to them was sooo hard. I packed up all her stuff. We gave her a letter and a picture of us as a family (with her in it), Wes & the kids said, "Goodbye". Wes cried and it was hard to see him that way. He hardly ever cries.
I took baby T to the DCFS office. I had our daughter L with me. She loved T so much! We handed T to her birth mom. I gave her a kiss on the forehead, and I cried (I mean sobbing out loud, the ugly cry) all the way down the hall.
It was hard to go back home and continue to clean up the baby stuff, again! I kind of put piles of things in my closet for a later time when I wasn't so emotional.
We still have pictures of baby T up in our house and miss her so much. She is over a year now. I'm sure she is happy with that other family. Another thing that made me mad is she was going to be having to go to daycare daily. Even after a year I am still mad about them choosing kinship over us. Oh well, life goes on.
