The Fourth and Final Week with Baby "J"

Three impossible words to realize and difficult to even type: He’s leaving us. We don’t know when or how, but it seems that it’s all settled even if the details have yet to be worked out. California and Baby J’s home state have decided to move the case, and of course, he’s going with it. It’s not about his birth parents being fit or unfit, or the home we’ve tried to make for him, it all comes down to cold, by-the-book legal jurisdiction and possibly money. Like I said in an earlier blog post, no state wants a new foster case.

As of this writing, we have heard from Baby J’s appointed lawyer that the other state’s DCFS has initiated a petition for services for him and they’re looking for a new foster family there to take him in. California DCFS has yet to receive information about it, such as day and means of transporting him, other than that we are likely to receive more information today. So, we are regulated from the role of foster and potential adoptive parents to simple babysitters waiting for their charge to be picked up.

I didn’t cry at first when I heard all this. J was asleep at the time and I went in and watched him, and even then, I didn’t. We had known since Day 1 that there was the risk of losing him, but being generally lucky people, we figured luck would be on our side. Then he opened his eyes, smiled, and reached up his arms to be picked up, and the tears came even as I smiled and cooed and lifted him up to play airplane. The tears kept falling throughout the day as I talked to Ian, and my parents who never had a chance to meet him but cried also at the prospect of losing who would have been their first grandson. We had visits and phone calls from friends, and my brother, J’s Uncle Michael, came over, and there was more laughter than tears.

He’s still in our home and our hearts, and it’s too soon, too close for reflection on what it means to have had this wonderful boy for one month, which he will forget but we never will.

Week Three With Baby “J”

Well, we’re midway through Week 3, and things aren’t any more certain than they were Hour 3. Like I said in the last entry, the judge has asked the parents’ home state to take the case, and the following Friday, they still hadn’t responded with a yes or a no. Ditto on the continuation on Monday. So, this Friday is the continuation of the continuation of the continuation of the continuation of the very first part of the process. It is a little like knowing you’re running a marathon, and stepping into quicksand right from the start.

No one’s happy about this limbo. DCFS doesn’t know whether this is a real case or not, the birth parents aren’t sure whether to stay here or go home, we don’t know if we’re foster-adopting or just babysitting.

But J continues to amaze us. When he first came to us, he could barely raise his head during “tummy time,” and now he can prop himself up. He can sit by himself with no support, if not quite consistently. He can roll over from his back to his stomach if not – alas, for him – from his stomach to his back yet. Last night, Ian and I taught him to wave “Hello” and once he caught on, he couldn’t stop laughing.

He has a little bit of a cold and is beginning teething, and then there are the usual other bodily secretions, making him the gooiest baby. And yet, even goopy, he is good-looking. So adorable that I was stopped by no fewer than five women at Ralph’s stopped me to admire him.

“How old?”

“Five months,” I smiled. The woman smiled. J smiled.

“Enjoy her while you can. She’ll grow up fast.”

J had no idea he had just been feminized. I hope to be around when he’s old enough to get mad about that.