Foster parent limbo looms
Being a foster mom for 10 months isn’t the adoption path we thought we’d be taking. My son’s name is not my son’s name – it’s something else on his Hawaiian birth certificate. When we brought him home after we were approved as his foster parents, my husband and I talked about what were suppose to call him. Our son? Our foster son? Our soon to be adopted son? We settled on our son, even though he wasn’t going to be officially our son for quite a while.
So… our son did not come to us via the regular domestic/open adoption route we thought we were embarking on, where the birthmother sees your profile somewhere (agency/attorney/facilitator/internet), hooks up with your so-called professional so that they can then make sure she’s actually pregnant/what kind of financial help she might need, etc. We found out about PJ via relatives when he was 9 days old back in September 2005: a true Seven Degrees of Separation-type thing. He ended up in foster care after being born mildly drug exposed. How mildly? No one knew. At this point we’d been waiting almost two years to get a baby so we took the leap, figuring we had nothing to lose (if nothing else, we’d get a few days in Hawaii).
So we traveled to Hawaii in October 2005, when our son was 6 weeks old, in hopes of bringing him home with us – as Hawaiian Social Services had said we could. No deal – we got bad info and he was staying in Hawaii for now. But they did grant us a 36-hour visit with him. They actually let us take him to our hotel, spend the night, stroll him around… it was bizarre. They trusted us not to take off with him? His birth grandmother, with whom we’re in close contact, actually suggested this to us, knowing full well that it wasn’t that easy dealing with a Hawaiian government agency.
People in the elevator were saying, ‘Oh he looks just like you two’. We just smiled at each other and said thanks. It was surreal…
To make matters more complicated, the foster family where PJ had been placed wanted to adopt him. They already had four kids and lived in a shack on the north shore of Oahu. They’re good people but well… he’d have more opportunities with us. There’s that money thing again – even if it was the illusion of money. Just because we came from California to get a baby, the perception worked in our favor this time and we didn’t discourage it. One weird thing happened that we had hoped was a good sign, though it was a strange coincidence. The foster family told us they’d already named the baby. It was a little annoying but we figured, OK, fine: we’ll just rename him. They’d named him PJ! Short for Philip Jordan. Wait a minute… we wanted to name him PJ! Not Philip Jordan, but close enough. We thought it was a good sign that things might just work out!
Were they stringing us along? Was the birth mother back in the picture? We had no clue…
So we went back to California without PJ. Thanksgiving came, no PJ. Christmas came, no PJ. He had to stay in Hawaii and have surgery for a hernia. We could get him after the first of the year. Were they stringing us along? And what about the birth mother? Was she going to come back into the picture? It didn’t look like it, but that was still in the back of our minds. It was five months before we finally got him.
Can I brag? We couldn’t have gotten a better “starter” baby, as my husband calls PJ. The wait was worth it. People used to say to us, “Oh, the right baby is out there for you, blah, blah.” Well, it turned out they were right. At first my husband and I talked about how we were worried about bonding with PJ but it’s all worked out so far. He’s a healthy, crazy boy. ALL boy – drives us crazy sometimes, and we’re loving it. But we’re still “foster parents”. Which bugs us.
We thought he’d be officially adopted in July (that’s what Hawaii said back in January, when we picked him up. Then October 3, according to the social worker. January 3 2007 is now the big date – the difference being that’s when we have an official court date in Hawaii, where PJ’s adoption will be finalized. If things go as planned by January 4 he’ll be officially our son!
So we wait….