We said no

We made a decision on the adoption situation that we were presented with this weekend.  We said no.

We came to terms with how we would handle heroin withdrawal and were committed to helping this little guy through it.  We came to terms with his birth mom being Hep C positive and how this may impact our family.  We came to terms with his birth father being a client of his birth mom's, who is a sex worker.

What we couldn't come to terms with was finding out through google that birth mom had been arrested three years ago for aggravated assault with a weapon (with the intent to stab someone) and forcible confinement (holding someone against their will/hostage or kidnapping, whatever you want to call it).  Her family had also reported her missing this September, as per one of her town's local newspapers.  This is where I drew the line.

Apollo drew the line when birth mom wouldn't admit to the social worker that she'd ever been arrested for anything other than driving without insurance.  Social worker asked her directly if there is anything she wanted to disclose regarding any prior criminal activity or history.  She said there was nothing.

So, we said no. 

We are ok.  We are so heartbroken and torn up.  But we are so relieved. 

We asked the agency not to call us with anything outside of our original parameters.  We made the decision a long time ago what we were comfortable with, and heroin addiction wasn't on there.  Moderate drug exposure (which we said we were comfortable with) does not mean baby born addicted to opiates.  Baby born with severe brain damage (as was the case with the call we got 6 weeks ago) falls into the category of severely disabled, which we specifically said no to on our checklist.

I think they understand.  It's too hard on our hearts, too hard on our family, too hard on our relationship to keep getting these calls.  They make me a shitty mom and a shitty wife.  They make me feel shitty for saying no. 

But I am ok.  I know that these women's problems are not MY problems.  It's not my responsibility to pick up the pieces of their poor judgment and solve their problems.  Parenting through adoption is hard enough as it is.  Parenting on its own is hard enough as it is.

Our hearts are healing ...  our social worker told us that this means we made the right decision for our family.

The Calls

6 weeks ago we got a call about a baby girl in NICU.  She was 2 weeks old and she'd had 2 seizures subsequent to birth and after two MRIs, the doctors diagnosed her with severe brain damage, with possible blindness and deafness in her future.  Birth mom, grandma and aunt left her at the hospital.  We said no and she went to foster care.

This afternoon we got another call.  Baby boy was born this morning at 10 am.  By 6 pm he was taken to NICU for heroin withdrawal.  Birth mom left him, promising to come back on Sunday to make an adoption plan.  She's from out of town and is clearly an addict.  Baby is alone in NICU, going through heroin withdrawal by himself.  I feel like this baby is headed to foster care too unless birth mom comes back to sign papers, which seems unlikely.

We're considering revising our desired child checklist.  Being open to anything for adoption #1 brought Moonbeam to us.  But there are clearly some really rough situations that exist.  Not sure how many more calls like this we can take.

#MicroblogMondays: Only Three Things Matter