[uboe42]

My wife and I have just been through the most horrible experience with foster parenting and vow to never do it again. After months of waiting we finally received a call to come to a meeting about an infant child with cystic fibrosis. I can’t tell you how excited we were as the foster service provider kept making hints how this child will defiantly be coming up for adoption. Well we were on pins and needles for a month when Friday evening out of the blue they told us our home was a good match and asked us to pick him up. This child was the cutest baby boy you have ever seen. You would not have thought he had anything wrong with him to look at him. He did have a gastro tube for feeding, which was a little strange to use at first but we got the hang of it really quickly. They gave us a brief run down of the child’s condition and the extra care we needed to take. The caseworker explained how the bios have not been taking him to the doctor or properly caring for his disease. She basically let us to believe that these bio parents were complete trash, which of course we believed without question.

It was a rough weekend for us the infant was 8 months old and spent most of the time crying. We expected this, as he would be around totally new people and a new environment. By Sunday evening he had a really bad cough, cold, and started a fever, so Monday we made an appointment with his regular pediatrician. We saw his doctor and he was incredibly rude. He gave us a prescription for some antibiotics, but I couldn’t help but think, no wonder the parents didn’t want to bring their child to the doctor he was simply a jerk. Well on the way out were casually talking with the main nurse, and my wife (who loves to make a fuss) started fussing about how the bio parents didn’t bring the child to the doctor. His nurse then totally went off on us. She told us that the parents brought him in literally every month, and have never missed an appointment. She told us he was here less than a week ago. The doctor was so upset with us because he was called the day he was removed from the home and was literally screaming at the caseworker, telling her they were making a mistake. Well we just left feeling like dirt, confused, not knowing who to believe, or what was actually going on. We asked the caseworker about this and she suddenly had to get off the phone, yea right.

Tuesday comes along and we have a scheduled visitation with the bio parents. We get a call from the foster service working telling us to bring everything he was being returned to the parents. We were totally crushed; we of course fell in love with this child. When we arrived at the office my wife and I saw a normal clean-cut couple at the front desk. It was really freaky; they looked the exact same age as my wife and I. When they saw us come in they immediately started bawling and asking out their baby. These were the parents! This couple looked like us, they could have been us. They weren’t the horrible parents that were described to us by the caseworker. The caseworker had done nothing but lie to us, and we still have no idea why. I can’t tell you how low I felt that day. Both my wife and I felt as if we were accomplices to kidnapping. I’m telling you I still get chills when I think about that look I got from the mom and dad. It was a look that just said “I” stole their baby. It was quite an intense reunion. Parents overcome with all this emotion, even me and my wife both were crying. I just sat there watching the caseworker talk with her fake smile and cold, cheery attitude about everything, and basically saying, “sorry we took you baby, we thought you might have been deadbeats”. Well she asked us to step down the hall to her office and I said no, never again and took my wife’s hand and walked out.