Later that year another little girl came to our family and again I quickly loved both her and her mom. This little girl had one of those full-face bright smiles that charmed everyone. She was beautiful and looked just like her mom. She didn’t stay long and went home a short while later. Daniel and I don’t have the adoption talk during a case. We focus entirely on loving the child and loving the parents. We think of our work as fostering a family rather than just a child.
I still had the feeling that a girl was going to come to our family. I didn’t know when or how, I didn’t know if she’d be a newborn or 17 years old, I didn’t know if she’d be biological or adopted, but I was now sure there was a girl who was going to be a permanent part of our family.
Then just as clearly, after our smiley little girl went home, I knew Ezra’s birth mom was pregnant. It was another of those “in my bones” feelings I’d had about Ezra coming and about a girl coming. I just knew. I reached out to her and she confirmed, she’d just found out days earlier. I didn’t know if this was connected to my feeling about a girl coming but I wasn’t going to count my son’s birth mom out or let in any thoughts about that baby coming to us. I was going to do everything I could to help her successfully parent.
I helped her out in the ways I could and we visited together regularly. She found out she was having a boy. She was doing great. I’d grown to love her even more and was hopeful for her future with her little boy. Contact stopped toward the end of her pregnancy but I figured she was nervous or had maybe already had him and was wrapped up in being a mom.
Then came the miracle of Baby Girl and Two Babies.
I got the call for Baby Girl the day she was born. Two days later Daniel and I were bringing her home from the hospital. She had this full head of thick black hair and was such a relaxed but alert little girl. She watched everything in a way that seemed like she was eager to take it all on. I was smitten the moment I watched the nurse lift her out of her bassinet to place her in her car seat.
Facebook post from 27 January 2018: “Oooh, baby girl, I am lo-ving-you.
Three days after Baby Girl came home, on a Sunday, I missed a call from May. She sent me a text that said, “Call me back. I don’t care that it’s the weekend.” Uh oh. I called her back and learned that Ezra’s biological brother had come into state custody. He’d been born one day after Baby Girl. The way “the system” works is CPS investigates and decides whether or not to open a case, if they decide to open a case then it’s sent over to DCFS who decides where to place the child. When Oliver came into custody CPS called the DCFS supervisor on-call who by this point happened to be May. As soon as she heard the name she knew exactly who to call. If May hadn’t been a supervisor, or on-call, or been our caseworker then Oliver likely would’ve been placed into a different home because we already had Baby Girl.
Our family DCFS social worker asked if I could handle two newborns. I told her I thought I could. They were only 1 day apart in age so it’d just be doubling the same things and Baby Girl had no special needs which would make it easier. By this point we’d had a lot of experience with infants with pretty severe special needs so I was confident we could handle these babies (there was also no way I was saying no to a bio sibling or letting go of this little girl). So when he was ready to come home we started our exhausting and exhilarating time with Two Babies. Oliver was assigned a caseworker, Diana (not her real name). Diana was only his caseworker for a few weeks before his final caseworker was assigned, but she comes back in a big way a couple years later in our story.
The stars had to align for Two Babies to come to our home:
- If May hadn’t become a supervisor, and specifically been the supervisor to take the call from CPS, then Oliver would’ve been placed somewhere else and we would’ve had to fight to get him moved to our home.
- If Baby Girl had been born a few days later we wouldn’t have been available to foster her.
- If Oliver had been born a few days earlier we wouldn’t have been available to foster Baby Girl.
- Baby Girl’s bio mom wasn’t from here. A series of events had brought her to our area for the first time shortly before Baby Girl was born. If she hadn’t been here, in this specific area, she wouldn’t have come to our home
It was incredible that she was here with all the things that had to fit perfectly together. DCFS already had a scheduled day when Baby Girl would be going home, we would only have Two Babies for a few months. But that date came and went and Baby Girl stayed. I loved snuggling my Two Babies, I loved working together with Daniel being “twin” parents. It was funny seeing people look at Two Babies, look at us, look back at Oliver, look at Baby Girl, look at me and Daniel and try to figure out what the deal was. Baby Girl had thick, dark hair and Oliver was bald. Oliver had giant, owl-like eyes and Baby Girl looked like a cute little Cabbage Patch doll.
I was completely wrapped up in Baby Girl. I loved her and her strong, fierce personality. I stayed focused on loving and supporting her biological mom, showing her love and compassion, writing updates for her that I would want to know, sending cute pictures of her beautiful daughter. I hoped hard that when Baby Girl went home we’d still get to hear how she was doing.
But then she wasn’t going home. The direction of the case had changed. Baby Girl was now going to be adopted.
Jess Building Joy 
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