[Kate1129]

Hello,

I am Kate a new Hostess here on the Foster Care & Adoption Support Forums.

My husband (Matt) and I are new to fostering (licensed a year), but we are not strangers to Infertility. After 8 years of Primary Infertility and 3 miscarriages, we decided we would expand our family through adoption. International Adoption would work for us as we cannot take that much time off work to travel (we own our own business, so no vacation pay ). Domestic, well there is that chance of the bmom changing her mind, but we've got some firends who were flat our "taken for a ride" and are out every penny! Not something we were interested in.

So it came down to Fostering or nothing. Fostering is so much more then I dreamed! I thought it was going to be so hard and then again so easy. But it's been so hard and not easy at all. I thought it was just about "taking care of a child". Wow, was I mistaken!!! It's so much more. You are to care for the child, with restrictions. You are to maintain contact with a birthfamily, who don't like you. You are too drive the kids all over the countryside. Go to appointments. And then wait on pins and needles after hearings. Not to mention issues with working "the system".

Even though it's been so very hard, we are so very glad to be doing it. The children need someone and I am proud to be that someone!!!

Welcome to the Forums if you are new, I am happy to join you if I am new to you!

Blessings,
Kate

[jolean12]

Kate,
Glad to have you. I introduced myself a little on the other tread but wanted to welcome you also.

[newfostermom]

Hi.. it is nice to meet you. I am new to the boards and newly licensed.. we don't have our first placement yet, but from what we hear.. it is anytime now.


We are going through a private organization to foster... The babies that will be placed with us will be newborns born to mom's in prison. Most of our placements will be a year or more, and hopefully one of these little blessings we will be able to adopt.

We too have suffered through infertility and lived to tell about it. We were diagnosed with male factor over 3 years ago, but have been trying since we were married, over 13 years ago.. so we always new something was wrong.

We hope this is our answer to starting a family.

Looking forward to getting to know you guys.
Tammy-34
Hubbie.. Brian-35

[Jilly63]

Your message just "clicked" for me and may be God's answer to my prayers.

My husband and I have been considering becoming foster parents for quite sometime now. We have already been through the "hell on Earth" of infertility and the on the roller coaster of adopting. We had nearly forgotten all of the stresses and heartbreaks of adopting until we decided to try and adopt a cibling for our son. For one split second I reconsidered fertility treatments again but know it's a futile point. Adoption......what a blessing in disguise! We are older now (34 & 37) and are afraid that by the time we make it through all of the "so close" promises and "she decided to keep it" dead ends, we might just be 40 something! For some reason, foster parenting kept coming to my mind. My husband was totally against it in the beginning. He knows how attached I become to others. He is deathly afraid that it would kill me to let go of kids after taking care of them and falling completely in love with them and the hope of adopting them. All of this aside, I keep feeling like I need to look into things further. I have all of the information and horror stories of why we shouldn't and now you have given exactly why we should. Thank you so much!
Jill

[margie360]

Hi Kate,

It is hard to get used to the system. But if you keep the kids as the top priority then you do okay.
Margie

[ourangelbabies]

HELLO!! I'm a new almost foster parent! We are waiting on the state of Florida for our license. We have completed everything else. My DH of 18 years and I are very excited about taking this next step of our lives. We have two bio sons a 22 yr old and 16yr old. My DH is disable and I'm SAHM. We're fostering only, newborns and babies. I've been reading this board for a few months,trying to educate myself on what to except. Thanks, for all the info, it's a bit scary. We have prayed about fostering for along time and feel this is our calling. Would like to find a support in central Florida?

[ALI143]

Hi. I've reading ALL the post here for a month.
We've had a difficult time adopting here in Oregon. New workers and a looong delay getting our homestudy done. It's been done for a year now and we've gone to committee twice (in Oregon they have 3 families per one child being considered at committee), but no luck so far. Our newest AW is "the new guy" and he forgets to send in our homestudy for kids we ask him to. We had to work with his supervisor off and on between workers and she is WORSE!
I'm glad I have a place to go where everyone else can understand.

[harris4kids]

I am not really new here, but I don't post very often so I thought I'd introduce myself. My name is Kara and my husband and I have been doing foster care for 5 years. We have 3 bio daughters and two sons, whom we adopted through the foster care system. They are such a blessing !! We did not experience infertility like many here but I was adopted and have always felt a need to "give back". Our most recent placement was a 4 year old and 3 year old boy, siblings, with serious emotional and behavioral issues. They moved last week to a theraputic home where they will participate in a day treatment program. So sad to see the damage that can be done to kids that young! I learned so much by going through the channels to get them the help they needed but I hope not to have such a placement again. We were lied to be the previous foster family so we would take the kids. We are now taking a break to enjoy our kids and then our worker has promised us a baby!

[ALI143]

A baby; how exciting! Congratulations-hope the wait isn't way too long. Can't wait to hear up-dates.

[hdwolfe321]

Hi everyone. It's been nice trying to get to know you from reading the threads, but I feel the need to introduce myself now. I introduced myself in some other general areas, but never got a response and/or a welcome. I feel that I "fit in" better here.

My husband and I tried to get pregnant for 2 1/2 years. All the while we contemplated foster parenting, just because we know there is such a need for those people who are so willing to "give". At any rate, we began our foster parenting classes in March of 2004. We live in VA and in our county, you are supposed to take 8 weeks of classes (1 day/week) before you can begin the certification process. At 5 weeks, our director pulled us aside and told us that there would be a baby boy born within the next couple of days that would be "foster to adopt" and would we possibly want him (the birth mother saw our profile and actually chose us). She told us we'd have overnight to decide. But, by the middle of class that night, my DH and I had already been passing notes to each other about what his name would be and what he'd be when he grows up. We told her at break that we wanted him. It was heaven.

Then, when he was 6 months old, we got a call. Another newborn, perfectly healthy, was coming into the system as "foster to adopt". Did we want him? Initially, I had said, no...we had just set up daycare for our 6-month old and I was back at work. But after discussing it for about 5 minutes with my DH, we'd changed our minds. So, we brought the sweet guy home in about 5 days (he was jaundiced and had to stay at the hospital).

And since my story turned out to be so long, I will sum it up by telling you all that we learned in May that we were "expecting". It was insanely unbelievable that I'd get pregnant..but it happened. (I was told it was very highly UNlikely.)

So here we are. In January we will have a newborn, a 15-month old, and a 21-month old.

I reccommend fostering to anyone who has the heart for it. If you can love a child, then you can foster.

[readyforkids]

Welcome! Wow!!! Congratulations!

[darla24]

What wonderful story. So happy for you. I too am new to post after reading many many threads I decided to post here as well. My husband and I have been foster parents for over 5 years. We will be going to court in late Aug to finalize our 3 year adoption thru foster care. We have two bio kids a 22 and a 18 year old. Also have 11 month had her since she was 2 months old.Have a great time with your new family. Darla

[Hunter's Mom]

Hi! I am Christy & I have been on here some before, but it has been a while since I have posted or read (too busy). I got a new laptop, so I have a little more free reign now.......
We are foster parents in Alabama & are in the process of adopting a precious 20 mo baby girl we have had now for 15 months. We have a 10 year old bio son. We have 2 fds (sisters) 7 & 2 who should be TPRed this fall, but whom we are not adopting. It has been a tough decision as I really want to, but I know in my heart, I am not their forever mommy.
We did not get into foster care to adopt really, but it has just worked out that way.
Our precious K came to us bc no one else wanted her. She was extremely sick & both parents are MR. She was sent home with us basically to make her as comfortable as we could during her last days. She has since had her surgery to repair her heart condition (she will need more later) & does not even qualify for EI based on her own development - she is going based on family history, but we had to get a geneticist to prescribe it for her - she is advanced in some things, delayed slightly in others, more bc of her disease than her mental development according to all the docs. Now everyone wants her, but there is no way this little girl will leave our home. Our lw tells people we did not choose K, K chose us. She is a happy, mostly healthy little angel.
We are also an emergency home which can be interesting!
I will try to be more active here again!

Christy

[tlc4kidz]

Hi Christy!! Just wanted to say welcome to another "Hunter's mom".....my Hunter is 13, and it seems that they are everywhere now!!

[melliemoo]

Hi there!

I'm new here too. My husband and I have been through the whole range of infertility treatments, got pregnant on our third and final IVF cycle, and I miscarried at 9 weeks. We decided we just can't deal with IF any more, so we've turned to adoption.

We decided to foster/adopt. We have some friends who successfully adopted a baby girl through the program and highly recommended it. Also, it seems like it can be a fairly fast process (we live in Houston, and there are a LOT of kids here). And we feel like if we're going to adopt, we want to adopt a child that really needs us.

We had our orientation last week, and being our PRIDE classes next week. We can't wait! We should hopefully be licensed by the end of the year.

I look forward to the resources here, and getting to know all of you.

Melissa =)