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Buckle up, because although this may seem like a crazy and long story, this has been our lives for nearly a decade. 7 years ago, we began trying to grow our family of two. Weighing different options, we started with private adoption and started with an agency that in short, kept asking for money, but did not attempt to match us with a prospective mother. A year later, they said our home study was going to expire, and we needed to pay for an update. Disillusioned with the lack of results, we turned to surrogacy. Through surrogacy, we attempted IVF, and after 5 long, painful, disappointing attempts, we were blessed to get a healthy baby boy, Alexander (named after Alexander the Great).
As a baby, Alexander was phenomenal. He was easy-going and loved to laugh, which has continued to this day. Although we had a dream child, we had always wanted multiple children, to have siblings who grew up together in a loving, supportive, happy home.
Once Alexander was 2 years old, we decided to grow our family through the foster care system with hopes of adopting a child in need. With our familiarity with child protective services and the urgency for caring parents for children in need from our respective careers as a police officer and a teacher, we completed the requirements to become eligible to receive a child. Our desire to grow our family was not lost on the resource workers, which was precisely the reason why we were called for our particular case, described below.
In late November 2016, we got a call regarding a heroin-addicted 5-day old baby boy, who was anemic and in withdrawal. We were told that the mother wanted to give her son a good home. What preceded was one of the most challenging times in our lives. For the following two months, the baby boy went through excruciating pain as he was screaming, continually throwing up, shaking, and having diarrhea so bad his skin fell off. Of these symptoms, the vomiting was what cause both of us to take time off from work due to him being too young to move his head and risked the possibility of asphyxiating on his own vomit. We took turns watching him 24 hours a day to make sure this did not happen.
However, after a horrible 2 months, his recovery was over, and we were able to have a beautiful time with a surprisingly happy, funny, loving, and charming baby boy, who we hoped to keep in our lives. Reflecting now, it seems like a magical, almost heavenly period, whereas if everything was going so well, and everyone always had a smile on their face. In the 15 months that we had custody of him, we had accepted him into our family. As the four of us grew closer and happier. Alexander acted as a brother figure, who would run to the baby's crib when the baby would cry to tell him not to cry because he would be there to help him. They would often play and interact with one another, feeding off the other’s humor. In our case, the baby grew into a happy, healthy, and loved boy; a far cry from where he began.
In the time our foster child had been in our custody, we met the biological mother only once. We offered our contact information so she could receive regular updates regarding her child directly from us, but she had neglected to contact us. From what she told us in that encounter, she is a second generation heroin addict. She does love him and admitted that her child would be better off with us, but wanted to raise her child without us involved. During the course of the case, she moved to another state and became pregnant again. Despite our urges to child services, they were unable to facilitate another meeting between her and us until two weeks before reunification. By this point, she had opted to cease all communication with us after reunification, despite the attachments our family had built in 15 months.
In March 2018, our foster child was officially removed from our care. As of January 2019, we have never heard from the mother, nor have we heard anything about the child we helped raise and hoped to share our lives with and love forever. This has been the most difficult, excruciating part of our lives. This past year have spent nearly every moment worrying about and missing him, with the lack of information causing our minds to run wild about the worst situations for him. Although focusing on work and our son provides some relief, the nights are the worst when his loss invades our thoughts and has created an ambient sadness even during our best times. The holidays have been especially heartbreaking. Furthermore, child services does not provide any services to deal with the trauma for foster families who experience losing their loved one. At times, there is no respite for the worry that the mother will falter, with the fear that child services, who has closed the case, will not know to help her and help boy we consider as one of our own.
However, the absolute worst part has been when our son asks about him. Although we never told him our foster child was his brother, and that we were taking care of him because his mother was sick, their bond is too strong. Our son misses the boy he grew up with and sometimes cries because he misses him. As a result, Alex has had behavioral issues in the house and at school would. One of the saddest moments was when he put on and slept with the pumpkin costume worn by our foster child for Halloween, just so he could be closer to him. Despite this, we are eternally conflicted because the mom has overcome incredible odds to beat a disease, and earned having her son back. However we cannot bear the brunt of the pain of having never seeing, nor hearing from, the child we love as our own either.
Unfortunately, child services has only not been a help, but an obstacle with this loss. Before reunification, we called the division regarding the case’s reunification process and were told that we were just the foster parents and it was none of our business. We were aggressively and dismissively thanked for our service, and informed that we knew what we signed up for. To add insult to injury, we were told that if the division would change their plan from reunification back to adoption, it did not guarantee that we would be chosen for the actual adoption of the boy we love so much.
Due to how distraught we were left with the system, but committed to their goals of helping others, we called our elected officials to get some answers regarding the laws of this system but did not hear back from any state or federal representative. We also called state officials from the foster care system, and they informed us that they were now focused on family-care placements and will rarely place foster children with foster families. They told us that the chances of us growing our family through them have gone down significantly with the overall focus on reunification above all other considerations. We looked into private adoption again, but were informed in frank, but refreshingly honest and helpful terms that since the biological mother would have to pick the parents for their child, our family “provides somewhat of a detriment due to parents wanting the least adversity for their child.”
This has brought us back to surrogacy, which we did with Alexander. Being the most productive and positive experience, it seems to be the best option after our extremely painful situation. Surrogacy costs anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000 and is a little outside our reach, at the moment. It is unbearably difficult and embarrassing to ask for money but to have Alexander we waited and saved for years. With already having a son, saving would take considerably more time. This has been compounded with the desire to give Alexander the brother or sister he deserves as soon as we can after the darkest period of all of our lives and the guilt of causing him the pain of losing “his baby,” which he repeatedly calls the foster son we lost to this day.
Although we would not normally ask for this type of aid, the overwhelming sense of responsibility for us to grow our family and teach our children the value of charity is something we firmly believe and appreciate. We never imagined being at this road, but we have sacrificed our happiness to help another family get back on track, which in theory should be worth it, but still leaves a hole in our hearts where our foster child once was. We hope that the charity and goodwill of our friends and family is able to help us in this difficult time to grow our family from the ashes of our loss. Also, if by some miracle of God, we are able to reach our funding goal and do not use the entire amount given, we are motivated to give the remainder of the money to a children’s charity and will update the page with any updates.
Endless love and appreciation,
Matt, Alex, and Mike.
As a baby, Alexander was phenomenal. He was easy-going and loved to laugh, which has continued to this day. Although we had a dream child, we had always wanted multiple children, to have siblings who grew up together in a loving, supportive, happy home.
Once Alexander was 2 years old, we decided to grow our family through the foster care system with hopes of adopting a child in need. With our familiarity with child protective services and the urgency for caring parents for children in need from our respective careers as a police officer and a teacher, we completed the requirements to become eligible to receive a child. Our desire to grow our family was not lost on the resource workers, which was precisely the reason why we were called for our particular case, described below.
In late November 2016, we got a call regarding a heroin-addicted 5-day old baby boy, who was anemic and in withdrawal. We were told that the mother wanted to give her son a good home. What preceded was one of the most challenging times in our lives. For the following two months, the baby boy went through excruciating pain as he was screaming, continually throwing up, shaking, and having diarrhea so bad his skin fell off. Of these symptoms, the vomiting was what cause both of us to take time off from work due to him being too young to move his head and risked the possibility of asphyxiating on his own vomit. We took turns watching him 24 hours a day to make sure this did not happen.
However, after a horrible 2 months, his recovery was over, and we were able to have a beautiful time with a surprisingly happy, funny, loving, and charming baby boy, who we hoped to keep in our lives. Reflecting now, it seems like a magical, almost heavenly period, whereas if everything was going so well, and everyone always had a smile on their face. In the 15 months that we had custody of him, we had accepted him into our family. As the four of us grew closer and happier. Alexander acted as a brother figure, who would run to the baby's crib when the baby would cry to tell him not to cry because he would be there to help him. They would often play and interact with one another, feeding off the other’s humor. In our case, the baby grew into a happy, healthy, and loved boy; a far cry from where he began.
In the time our foster child had been in our custody, we met the biological mother only once. We offered our contact information so she could receive regular updates regarding her child directly from us, but she had neglected to contact us. From what she told us in that encounter, she is a second generation heroin addict. She does love him and admitted that her child would be better off with us, but wanted to raise her child without us involved. During the course of the case, she moved to another state and became pregnant again. Despite our urges to child services, they were unable to facilitate another meeting between her and us until two weeks before reunification. By this point, she had opted to cease all communication with us after reunification, despite the attachments our family had built in 15 months.
In March 2018, our foster child was officially removed from our care. As of January 2019, we have never heard from the mother, nor have we heard anything about the child we helped raise and hoped to share our lives with and love forever. This has been the most difficult, excruciating part of our lives. This past year have spent nearly every moment worrying about and missing him, with the lack of information causing our minds to run wild about the worst situations for him. Although focusing on work and our son provides some relief, the nights are the worst when his loss invades our thoughts and has created an ambient sadness even during our best times. The holidays have been especially heartbreaking. Furthermore, child services does not provide any services to deal with the trauma for foster families who experience losing their loved one. At times, there is no respite for the worry that the mother will falter, with the fear that child services, who has closed the case, will not know to help her and help boy we consider as one of our own.
However, the absolute worst part has been when our son asks about him. Although we never told him our foster child was his brother, and that we were taking care of him because his mother was sick, their bond is too strong. Our son misses the boy he grew up with and sometimes cries because he misses him. As a result, Alex has had behavioral issues in the house and at school would. One of the saddest moments was when he put on and slept with the pumpkin costume worn by our foster child for Halloween, just so he could be closer to him. Despite this, we are eternally conflicted because the mom has overcome incredible odds to beat a disease, and earned having her son back. However we cannot bear the brunt of the pain of having never seeing, nor hearing from, the child we love as our own either.
Unfortunately, child services has only not been a help, but an obstacle with this loss. Before reunification, we called the division regarding the case’s reunification process and were told that we were just the foster parents and it was none of our business. We were aggressively and dismissively thanked for our service, and informed that we knew what we signed up for. To add insult to injury, we were told that if the division would change their plan from reunification back to adoption, it did not guarantee that we would be chosen for the actual adoption of the boy we love so much.
Due to how distraught we were left with the system, but committed to their goals of helping others, we called our elected officials to get some answers regarding the laws of this system but did not hear back from any state or federal representative. We also called state officials from the foster care system, and they informed us that they were now focused on family-care placements and will rarely place foster children with foster families. They told us that the chances of us growing our family through them have gone down significantly with the overall focus on reunification above all other considerations. We looked into private adoption again, but were informed in frank, but refreshingly honest and helpful terms that since the biological mother would have to pick the parents for their child, our family “provides somewhat of a detriment due to parents wanting the least adversity for their child.”
This has brought us back to surrogacy, which we did with Alexander. Being the most productive and positive experience, it seems to be the best option after our extremely painful situation. Surrogacy costs anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000 and is a little outside our reach, at the moment. It is unbearably difficult and embarrassing to ask for money but to have Alexander we waited and saved for years. With already having a son, saving would take considerably more time. This has been compounded with the desire to give Alexander the brother or sister he deserves as soon as we can after the darkest period of all of our lives and the guilt of causing him the pain of losing “his baby,” which he repeatedly calls the foster son we lost to this day.
Although we would not normally ask for this type of aid, the overwhelming sense of responsibility for us to grow our family and teach our children the value of charity is something we firmly believe and appreciate. We never imagined being at this road, but we have sacrificed our happiness to help another family get back on track, which in theory should be worth it, but still leaves a hole in our hearts where our foster child once was. We hope that the charity and goodwill of our friends and family is able to help us in this difficult time to grow our family from the ashes of our loss. Also, if by some miracle of God, we are able to reach our funding goal and do not use the entire amount given, we are motivated to give the remainder of the money to a children’s charity and will update the page with any updates.
Endless love and appreciation,
Matt, Alex, and Mike.