[villagemom]

We been married since 1992 and been through a lot of the ups and downs of life.

Fostering seems to really add to the ride. The SW told me today that the 3 we have will probably be TPR in January.

When we started doing fostering, we always said that if the option came up to adopt we will.

Problem is that with 3 foster and 1 bio, our marriage is pretty stressed. Can't tell if it's just another one of those phases....hubby and I are both considering not adopting because of the state of our marriage...could it be cold feet?

How do those of you with multiples protect your marriage?

[kforkids]

Just from my experience, I would say the fostering and heartbreak of reunification of children that we saw problems with has strengthened our marriage.

Fostering is definitely a roller coaster! We have fostered twenty some children and have adopted 2, with one more we will file on next week.

My DH and I are honest about where we are on the rollercoaster, and some times it changes minute to minute!

We're up to 5 children and are very happy- our lives are busy, busy but good!

[AmyAnne]

We had no children before A's placement and subsequent adoption. To be honest, we almost didn't go through with it because of the strain it was putting our marriage under.

I think I have adjusted better than DH, but he's slowly getting there. Part of this is that we've discovered in the past 4 months that he has been suffering low-level depression. The medicine's helping but if kiddo has a tantrum... I know I'm gonna have to address the tantrm, then address two days of the doldrums from DH. It makes me tired, and it makes me wish I could just check into the Holiday Inn overnight and make THEM resolve it without me.

We have decided not to take any more children for this reason. I love my son, but I don't feel like testing the strength of our marriage again.

My two cents.

[cb131]

But we both agree that we want to Adopt our 3.But I find I do not like my dh sometimes .It really suprised me.He does not like me sometimes because I am on edge with him waiting for him to be insensitive to one of the kids.But we are honest with our feelings to each other.We really care about how we look through each others eyes.I really feel for you guys,I know dh & I are going to have many many many more diagreements about the kids but I know they belong with us.Its just hard for him to jump in with the children(child)that already has a personality he does not like but knows its not her fault that she knows his buttons & pushes as much as she can.He tries sooooooo hard to do the right thing with her but somtimes he can't,so suprise to me dh is not perfect & he is human.

[TexasJingles]

This is a great thread. Now I know I'm not the only one out there with these same "challenges".

It's been a strain, and also made us stronger at times. DH finds it hard not to react the way his father did. I can see him trying at times (which is what holds us together), but other times????

I swear dh has bi-polar symptoms, but he won't go to a doctor. His mood swings are awful!

Amd talk about being inconsiderate to the boys! He chalks it off to that's what older son's do to fathers. Not!

We'll get through it, moment by moment, and just keep talking. I remember my parents going through "fights" about us kids. I think it happens to all. We just didn't have the infant time (nor the 9 months) to learn to deal with the situations that come up.

[madfostermomma]

My DH is better than I am actually - he handles kids and foster parenting much better than I ever coulld even though I am the one who pushed for this. I'll be the first to tell anyone he's a much better mother than me!

I'm a career person so working and being a mom has it's challenges. He works but it's not a passion for him For me it is - it defines who I am. . When the kiddos are sick - it's SUPERDAD to the rescue. He's met our new peditrician 3 times so far and I havent been there once.

There are times I want to give up and he listens to me rant and rage and then when I'm calm down he reasons with me.

I realized after we lost my fd that if we could survive that together, we could handle just about anything.

[Zoe_B]

Originally Posted by madfostermomma

My DH is better than I am actually - he handles kids and foster parenting much better than I ever coulld even though I am the one who pushed for this. I'll be the first to tell anyone he's a much better mother than me!

I'm a career person so working and being a mom has it's challenges. He works but it's not a passion for him For me it is - it defines who I am. . When the kiddos are sick - it's SUPERDAD to the rescue. He's met our new peditrician 3 times so far and I havent been there once.

There are times I want to give up and he listens to me rant and rage and then when I'm calm down he reasons with me.

I realized after we lost my fd that if we could survive that together, we could handle just about anything.

This has been my hubby, with our two bio boys, up until our first foster placement. Now he is really resistant to allowing the fs in as his "son." Doesn't like me referring to him as Daddy, and he's not proactive about the attachment activities I've wanted to do (bottle feeding, etc, fs is 19months).

He's still very good with him, but gaurding himself and feels weird about it all. So, yes it has been a big strain on us. But I just continue to tell him what a hottie he is all day, smother him with kisses and "beg" for a little lovin' at night, lol. He'll come around.

[echobunny89]

I am not married but I am in a long term relationship with my fiancee of 6 yrs. He has been great through all of this even though he was completely against it at the beginning. He felt that he had already done his "part" when he began parenting my bio-children from a previous marriage (my ex-husband disappeared to avoid paying child support and hasn't been heard from in 5 yrs) and did not understand why I felt the need to add to my already large family. However, his feelings totally changed once he met the kids I was planning on fostering/adopting. I think his Armenian heritage kicked in as well (Armenians are BIG on family) because he has been the model Dad even though not one of the kids are his biologically. His own family has been great too and his father is always sending grocery bags of food over to the my house. I have enough mac and cheese to feed an army (ten times over)!

[bjhv5]

My DH has had his moments but has been pretty good and with everything else we have been through in our marriage this foster stuff is a breeze I will give a briefe history:

We met in 95 I had 3 bio and he had 1 that he was fighting to find after his ex hid her
we married after only 8 months of knowing each other right befoer we got married our middle son JJ was dx as going blind then 4 months later our dd was also dx as going blind he stayed and was my rock,then we found his dd and started the fight with his ex over seeing her after about 1 year we got to see for 20 min then she went away again so back to the fight along with the pressure of dealing with 2 children who were loosing their sight and we did not know why.
So lets see we are almost 2 years into our marriage now:
Well ds started having seizures,his ex finally said we could travel from Florida to New Mexico to spend 1 week with dd.well we now have dx for our ds and dd it is not good the have a gentic disease that will end thier life before they turn 20! So we hit 3 years well seizures are in full swing,his ex wont allow visits anymore so off to court in NewMexico trying to do all this long distance while dealing with two childen have seizures and loosing mental abilities as well.
Skip ahead to our 7 th year of marriage after a tubal reversal to try to get pg We are on the way home from the hospital finding out on dh's bday i get hit by a drunk driver and loose the baby as well as having to be in bed for the next month due to broken hips,ankel and ribs
so I get pg again 9 months later and another m/c.
2 years later we get custody of dd Dh gets laid off from a good job that he has had for 7 years then 4 months later we loose our precious Jarret to this disease he has fought for so long at the age of 12. Hilliary (dd) is still doing soso well we go through 2 rounds of IVF and 2 failed attempts and we decide to stop with TTC and look into foster/adopt we are now in our 9th year of marriage at this point.
so get our license and start fostering our first placement was a 5 yo girl and her 3 yo brother who he decied(?) to escape out of the house while I was at work @ 4:00 am ( I worked at a hospital) DH FREAKED OUT and wanted to STOP fostering but agreed to keep going now e just hit 10 years of marriage (12-30-05) We have our 29 month old J,K18mo,S 5 month(whom dh did not want to take because he felt overwhelmed with the 2 little guys while I was at work) So I qiut work tightened the belt up and became a SAHM again( which I love and only went to work to get us through the tight $ spot) and we have stayed strong through all this .It has not been easy by no stretch but we have held tight.There have been times when I did not like him very much and we did not see eye to eye and I know there have been times when I was NOT A VERY NICE person to put it nicely but he stayed by me.Hilliary is still hanging in there and doing okay as she can
You just have to communicate with each other as hard as it is.
Sorry to ramble but I just got on a roll.lol So this fostering has been the easy part of our life

[GingerR]

Believe it or not, I would have to say that being foster parents has really strengthened our marriage, probably much in the same way people describe how bio children strengthen a marriage... you see another side to that person, you depend on them like never before, and you (hopefully) learn that you present a pretty darned good united front on the important things.

Being a foster parent has sort of added purpose to our marriage, I think. I sometimes dream of having those days back when everything was so easy and carefree, but truthfully, I think if we were to go back to that way of life, I would feel a real sense of void.

[Faith65]

I have to say fostering B (13 yr old) has been a test to our relationship. Some days a bigger test than others but would I want to parent her with anyone else NO. Would I want to go this journey with DFC with anyone else no. Tried it 5-6 yrs back with my ex husband and never again! LOL But with Will yes. Would we or will we ever foster/adopt another child after we adopt B? Get back to me on that.

But, there are days we don't like one another. There are days we don't agree and are very unhappy or disappointed in the other one but love one another and love B yes with all our hearts. And doesn't all relationships come with up and downs? Highs and lows? Mountains and valleys? And I wouldn't want it to be any other way.

[Navy_RP_Wife]

DH and I have been married for almost 9 years and our bio son is almost 10. DH was barely 19 when I found out I was pregnant and we waited to get married until K was 13 months old: partly because I was selfish and wanted my big wedding and partly because I am a child from a MESSY divorce. We started our marriage with odds stacked against us and with in months of getting married we made the decision for DH to join the Navy. In 8 years, he has been gone about half of that time and that causes alot of stress for us. We also have dealt with years of secondary infertility issues and now the fate of our family increasing in size rest on a state that seems to have no idea what they are doing, lol!! DH sometimes has a problem with putting us ahead of the military: he sees no problem with telling us to wait but will never tell the Navy to wait when he is now in a position to tell them that. I tell him all the time that his work isn't done when he comes home and takes off the uniform, its just a different kind of work that sometimes is enjoyable. He is getting better, its only taken 8 years and hours of complaining from me, lol!

With our 2 fosters and bio son, DH is the drill instructor and they do not like it. He reprimands them like he would his sailors. Sometimes its kinda funny to hear a chorus of "Yes Sirs!" coming from them. He is harder where I am more emotional with them. I would say "I know you miss your mom, but thats no reason to act this way" where he is its my way only! Sometimes when I see him being unfair to the kids, I can say something and he will usually blow up and me, only to come back later and say he is sorry, I did have a valid point. We have a fd and we have always wanted a daughter, so she has figured out to play the princess role real well. But for our marriage, its chaos itself and we are getting counseling to deal with issues we had before the 2 kids came to us. We take what little time we have alone and enjoy it the best we can and carefully avoid conversations that will start a fight until we are alone. Sadly we realized that in our most instable times, it is still 100% more stability that M and B have ever had!

[Mavenmvp]

We currently have no children and I have been seriously wanting to foster to adopt. This is interesting because I've actually been wondering about this exact issue. I know that introducing new members to a family is always stressful because of the changes that occur, new time issues, and I know that these children have special needs. But I guess I'm hearing that there is also some stress related to different parenting styles and involvement. Am I missing anything?
Also what can you do to prepare? I would imagine that if you love your foster child and really want to adopt, you might really feel anguished about "losing" this child. I thought about that an thought that maybe we could look at it as if the child was basically visiting with us for awhile. Any thoughts?

[Gryph]

We've been married 31 years, foster-adopt for 18.

We communicate a lot. We need a few minutes each day for private, uninterupted conversation. The best times were when we had breakfast or lunch together while the kids were in school. We didn't always agree but came to some sort of compromise.

Now, after all these times and experinces, we are almost carbon copies of what to do.