So after putting our now 4-month-old foster baby, screaming with a combination of stranger anxiety and being over-tired, in the car with her social worker to go to her visits just now, I'm going to write a little bit about the layers.

(This is based solely on my opinion and experience, and on my understanding of Massachusetts DCF policy and practice, which may be flawed.)

This is related to the earlier post I made about the issue of "giving them back." The plan for the vast majority of children in care is to reunite them with their birth families, so "giving them back" is part of our job as a foster family; we are not a designated pre-adoptive family. People ask me a lot about becoming attached and now that our foster child has been with us much longer than we originally expected (3 days has turned into 2 months, and looks to be at least a few weeks more, maybe longer), I answer that there seems to be, almost daily, a new layer to how difficult it will be to finish up our placement. Yes, we are attached; every day more so.

When the baby came to us she was a 9-week-old, non-interactive, newborn lump made of needs. She slept about 20 hours out of every day. She ate, we changed and bathed and dressed her, we held her and cooed to her, and she is what I call an "easy" baby--slept well (and still does), and once we'd sorted out some feeding issues, ate well and was generally content. She was cute but didn't really "do" much.

Within a few weeks, she had grown a lot, and started smiling at us. She was awake for longer stretches, and one day I realised she was starting to really look at me like I was her mom, which for all intents and purposes, I am. That was definitely an added layer of difficulty for me, relative to the fact that at some point, she'll be leaving us. Not that she will ever be 6 years old and ask her family, "Hey, what happened to that lady who took care of me when I was a baby?" because one of the gifts we as parents are given is that our children generally won't remember much before their 5th birthdays. . .so they won't remember when we let them roll off the bed, or when we let them scream in the crib for a half hour just so we could take a shower, or when we forgot to test the water from the sink-sprayer and accidentally gave them a cold shower. I know that even though she knows me as her primary caregiver, she will forget me, probably sooner rather than later. But the fact that I know she feels I am her mom gives me a new layer of difficulty when it comes time to let her go, because yes, it's good and What We Want to reunite her with her real mother, there will be part of me thinking, "How can I take this child from the only mother she really knows?" (she has a one-hour visit with her mom once a week; lately she also has a one-hour visit with dad).

So there's that. And now we are adding the stranger anxiety, which is natural in a baby her age and a sign that she is developing normally and that she is able to form an attachment to people (issues of attachment are so critical when it comes to foster care and adoption--we want children to strongly attach to someone--even if it is not their birth parent--as it is crucial to their ability to be empathetic, sympathetic, understanding of the range of emotion, trusting of people, etc). But it is not at all easy for me, when instead of the newborn lump I used to be able to pass to anyone at anytime and she was just happy to have a warm pair of arms to lie in, I have this squalling, howling baby looking at me like, "WHO IS THIS?!" when I put her into the arms of her social worker to go to her visit.

(I just answered the phone and it was the social worker saying she forgot to ask when her last feeding was. . .and I could hear the baby still howling in the background 30 minutes after they left. She is still very unfamiliar with her father, who had not seen her for at least 6 weeks, which at that point was about half her life, and who is a teen aged boy, so you can imagine how un/natural his interactions with a baby must be).

So, again, these are issues that are mine, not the baby's. She will be fine, no matter what, because I am building her a good foundation for loving, trusting relationships with caregivers. But I must admit, despite my big talk in the past (and the present) about how I know this is just part of the job, the letting go, I am beginning to dread it. I have to remind myself more than I used to about how she is not for keeping, is not ours, not mine. I have to shake myself out of daydreams more often. My favourite coping mechanisms (despite the fact they often don't serve, but old habits die hard) are magical thinking (if only X, Y, Z happens, everything will miraculously be easy, happy, glittering and dipped in chocolate) and avoidance. Even if I chose to avoid thinking about our foster child moving on, I get a reminder every week when she is whisked off to a parent visit; there has only been one week of the 8 she's been here that I haven't had at least one contact with "the system"--her social worker, our social worker, WIC, the court investigator, the baby's attorney, etc, etc).  It would be easy and comfortable for me to avoid the truth, so I really do force myself to stay in the reality of the situation. Almost everyone who compliments me on her cuteness is told she is a foster child, if the conversation lasts beyond, "She's so cute!" "Thank you; I agree." (babies are great conversation starters; strangers almost never talk to each other except about babies), more as a reminder to me than anything else. I don't want praise for my saintliness, as you know; and I am not minimizing her connection to us or her place in our family, I am merely acknowledging it, and reminding myself.

My magical thinking bubbles are still limited, though perhaps they are more like 10 minutes a day than 5. In the back of my mind, I know how we would tweak her name to fit our family better while still respecting her birth family. I wonder if she will be potty trained earlier than my boys were. I think about finding a sister for her, about decorating a bedroom just for her, about how we will need at least 4 bedrooms in our next house so we can fit more foster kids. And while I really do try to keep a lid on that sort of stuff, it's natural for a parent--even a short-term parent--to dream a future for a child, and when the time comes to give her back to her bio-family, part of me will mourn the fact that my dreams for her and for our family won't pan out the way I sometimes hoped. Actually, the hardest part may be that we will likely never get to know how her life turns out, so long as it doesn't turn out "badly." That is to say, if the reunification of her bio-family happens, and she does not come back into the system (if ever I have prayed in my life, I've prayed that if she leaves our care, she never has to come back into foster care. . .as if her mother can take responsibility and parent her appropriately, by sheer force of MY will), there is no way we will ever know how things turn out for her. And that will take some getting used to, as I have never been good at letting people go. I am in touch with all my exes; I try to keep tabs on how people I "used to know" are doing, because I really do hope they are doing well. I want everyone to be happy and find peace and be successful in their lives; I have a notion that as the years go on, it will be hard for me to accept that some or even most of our foster children will leave us and we will never know what happens after the door closes behind them.

Meantime, I try to flow like water around stones; I take each moment as it comes. . .with three children in my care there is always a need to fulfill, not to mention taking care of myself and being part of a couple. So there's plenty of grunt-work to distract me from the larger picture, but I do find myself sighing now and again. I have said out loud, "What will I do when you leave me?" But I also ache in my heart for her mother, whose heart I know must also ache. And a wise friend reminded me in a comment on my last post that our children--even the children we give birth to--are only "on loan." And despite my protestations that I am not a saint, that I am doing this selfishly (I love babies; I want lots of kids around; I enjoy and think I am good at mothering; I want to dress little girls in frilly pants), one of the things that was said to me that sticks, is when my friend Gamal urged me not to sell myself short, because the butterfly's wing can start the gale. There is a purpose to this process far greater than my personal pain, of which there will be some, I know. And remembering that larger purpose helps me deal with the other stuff. There are many lives entwined in this, and it is messy and sad and my part in it is actually the part that can bring some light and some joy to an otherwise disastrous situation for this giggling, whooping, wiggly baby.

She loves me. It breaks my heart. But that's OK.