So a little more than two years ago, my daughter accepted her second newborn foster baby, just one month after the first moved to a new home with her older brother.  I’ve already shared some of the similarities and differences in my experience with each baby, but this second placement came with a brand new addition to the routine.

Visits with mom.

While my daughter had Baby A, the birth mom never arranged for any visitation time, so I didn’t need to learn the ropes of taking a child to children’s services.  In fact, other than going downtown for my background check, I had avoided driving in town for years.  It wasn’t that I never had, or that I didn’t know where anything was, I just don’t care for busy city traffic.  With Baby A I think there was one time I was needed to pick her up from daycare downtown, and the day my daughter had to turn her over, but both times I was a passenger.

Baby B’s birth mom was different.  She wanted visitation very soon, and it was scheduled twice a week in the middle of the day under supervision at the agency.  While the downtown daycare was operating it made it convenient for my daughter to transport her, but she had the occasional  meeting or training scheduled, and I was available to ferry the baby around.  Bringing her there involved a parking garage and carrying her in a car seat or stroller, getting her signed in and transferred to mom.  If I was also picking her up after the visit, there was a coffee shop nearby to hang out, and then return to sign her out and pack her up to go back to daycare or home with me on occasion.  And validating multiple parking tickets.

After her daycare location changed and the drive was farther from my daughter’s work, there were more times it helped to get her into town and let my daughter pick her up when the visit was over, so my presence at the visits became more frequent.

The biggest difference was that I got to know Baby B’s birth mom.

I didn’t need to know background details about her.  And likewise I feel I shouldn’t say much of what I did learn, at least nothing identifying.  But I’m a mom.  I’ve felt five babies moving within me for the last six months or so of every pregnancy.  I found myself knowing these little people I carried more deeply than I ever thought possible, before they were ever born. I couldn’t assume that she felt any less of a connection with the child that she had given birth to, who had to be removed from her arms and given to another person to love and care for.

I remember not wanting to offend or intimidate her in any way.  If she didn’t make eye contact, I wouldn’t force it.  If she didn’t talk, I was polite but didn’t ask a lot of questions.  But I did feel for her.  Because I knew how it felt to lose a baby.

I always smiled at her, tried to place Baby B from my arms into hers, or transfer the stroller right to her hands, and give her some reassuring thing to notice about the baby.

My daughter had shared her desire to see moms reunited with their child in her fostering adventure, and I was looking for the same outcome.  So as a mom, I tried to encourage any good thing I saw her do or heard her say.  There were a lot of long stays at the coffee shop, praying for mom, and returning to hear her tell Baby B that she loved her as I took her back.

There was hope for their reunion.  For a long time.

I won’t go into detail, but in my understanding, when a baby is taken away from the birth mom, there are serious reasons that could be any number of things.  And in order to regain custody, each mom would have her own set of requirements to meet, goals to be working toward and achieving, before the system would consider reuniting mother and baby.

The passage of time would be the only way to know if  Baby B’s mom was able or willing to successfully meet her requirements.  Time, and official meetings and hearings and I’m not sure all the hoops to be jumped through.  But this was a process, and it had to be lived out, before a day would eventually come when either the birth mom could try to regain custody, or the door would be shut on Baby B ever being with her birth mom.

So until that day came, I had those occasional chances to make an impression on a young woman I grew to love and care for, who is still in my prayers, whose face I looked into as much as I could, seeing what Baby B might be like as she grows.

And I wanted her to see the love of God in me.  I wanted her to see joy and peace and contentment, with the world, with the situation she was in, with her baby passed back and forth between us.  I wanted her to know some of the love her baby was getting.  I wanted her to feel it.

It took a long time, but she started looking me in the eye.

I can’t tell you what she saw, why she was finally willing to look.  But what I wanted her to see was hope.  Hope for herself, that I would be happy for her if she were able to do all she needed to do and someday take her baby home.  Hope that even if she didn’t, she would know I still cared about her.  And mostly that Baby B’s birth mom could always count on her baby being loved by people who also took time to see and love her.

I grew up hearing a phrase, “Once burned, twice shy,” and like all things words I had spent some time trying to parse out what it meant.  I certainly had been burnt many times: candles, electric stove burners, oven racks, fireplace, car cigarette lighters, heating irons.  The things that burn you may be things you really need or want to be able to use.  So I had come to realize the phrase referred to caution, a hesistancy to stick your hand into something you knew would burn you.

So after Baby A left my daughter’s home in February 2017, I was ok with time passing before she took her next placement.  Burned maybe isn’t the perfect analogy, but the grief when she left certainly felt like surviving as if through a fire.  And I was hoping for time to heal before exposing myself again to being all in with a new baby. The second time around, yes, shy.

I wanted a couple of months or more before my daughter started entertaining the idea of taking in a new baby.  I hoped, for her heart, that she was able to work through her feelings and be emotionally focused on the next child, and I didn’t want her to feel rushed or forced to accept a placement if she wasn’t yet ready.

She started getting calls that she declined for good reasons.  When she told me about those coming in, my heart beat faster until I heard she turned them down.  Take your time, wait for the one that feels right.  It had barely been a month.

There’s another saying I heard as a child, “In for a penny, in for a pound.”  That one I deduced had to do with British currency, and how if you were willing to invest a small amount, why not go big and take a real chance?  That’s how I felt when I got the call.

Could I come over early evening that day?  Because a new baby girl was to be delivered by a caseworker to her home less than an hour before my daughter needed to leave for work.  Could I stay with her for a couple of hours until she got back home?

Just three months earlier, I was brand new to bottles and formula, but after two months with Baby A, I was a pro.  So with younger daughter in tow, we headed over to start the next big adventure.  With penny in hand.

Meeting Baby B was such a different experience from the first foster baby.  Same general circumstances: a baby in need of care, fresh from the hospital, just a few days old.  But we were all completely changed from three months before.

I was relieved to find my daughter just sitting with the baby.  Not worrying about getting everything prepped.  She only had a few minutes to greet this child, and I was glad she was spending it gazing at her, learning her little features, before running off for a few hours of work.

For me, I was ok not holding her right away.  I guess that was the same when meeting Baby A, when I was not sure what my heart would do once my arms embraced her. Only this time I knew, and I felt myself holding back, willing to be in for a penny, but not sure if I would be able to chance my heart on her, if there was room in there with Baby A.

Maybe you’ve heard someone express that idea, that adding a new baby would be too hard because how could you possibly divide your time and resources between two or more?  And the implication is, how could you divide your love?

I heard it as a parent, the protests increasing with the imminent birth of each of our five children, how hard it would surely be to raise more than the number of children the speaker was comfortable with.  There seemed to be a widespread misconception that the more kids you have, the less able you are to care for their needs.  But that wasn’t our experience.  In fact, I felt like it got easier as there were more people to look out for each other. And since I didn’t pay attention to how expensive children are supposed to be, I was always content to see how “again God provided for bills he’d incurred.”

So here we were, my younger daughter and I, meeting foster baby number two.  I let her hold Baby B first, watching them, taking some pictures, getting one of the premixed bottles from the hospital ready to feed her.

I was amused by the downright grumpy look on her face.  This child definitely had her own opinion of this outside world she was now a part of.  Her dominant expression was a scowl, though she was dry, warm, held gently, talked to quietly.  Still she looked mad at everyone and everything.  For a brief moment I thought maybe it would be possible to hold my feelings aloof for a while, just in case this didn’t work out.  I knew nothing about her circumstances, and as with the first foster I knew my daughter’s hope was to be able to reunify this little girl with her mother.

So when it was evident she was ready to eat, I took her into my arms for the first time.  I looked into her skeptical face, trying not to match it by smiling into those eyes as dark as my daddy’s had been.  I’d always wished for a brown-eyed baby, and here she was.

She was impatient for milk, and as soon as I got the nipple into her mouth she sucked vigorously, emptying the small amount in less than two minutes.  Yet another way she was different from Baby A, who had a perpetual dribble of milk out one side of her mouth, who took a long time to finish any bottle, needing burped often.  Baby B was certainly her own person.

In my younger years, before husband and children, I imagined myself to be an adventurer, a risk-taker.  I would list the things I expected to do in my adult life: skydiving, hang gliding, skiing, surfing.  All things I never got around to doing.

And then, bottle finished, I lifted up this tiny bundle, wrapped my arms around her, and my heart leaped off the ledge.

Five weeks old.  That’s when a foster baby can enter daycare.  So on top of no maternity leave, foster parents also have to find acceptable temporary caregivers for their newborn charges, which can be people they choose to be emergency backups.  In my daughter’s case, I was one.

An emergency caregiver goes through a simple background check and fingerprinting, but in order to pass that, there’s a lifetime of being a decent person that came first.  For what it’s worth.

The timing of those five weeks was great, from just before our Christmas break  into the first of the year.  Some days my younger daughter would come along, or Papa, as my husband wanted to be called, would stop by between jobs to get some cuddle time in.  My older daughter would pop in as she could, but for the most part it was just me and Baby A all day long.

Funny thing, when my kids were newborns, I had no desire, time or ability to plot out a schedule of any kind.  I’m a blowin’ in the wind kind of gal, so I liked the freedom to do what we wanted.  I didn’t work outside the home until  our youngest was a few years old, and I wasn’t worried about chores.  My husband and I loved our cozy home and our laughing kids.

With Baby A I was introduced to apps that keep track of how much a little one eats and sleeps and needs a clean diaper and probably lots more that I wasn’t aware of.  And surprise!  My daughter wanted the rundown when she got home to plot things out.  That was probably the hardest thing for me, getting used to keeping statistics like Baby A was a baseball player.

I would drive home thinking  I didn’t know how many ounces of breastmilk my babies drank, I just knew they had plenty of wet and soiled diapers.  Nor could I tell you how long they slept.  The chill-out hormones running wild in me knocked me out so I napped with them, and we all woke up rested and content and oblivious to how much time had passed.  But then, those were my own children, and I didn’t have to answer to anyone for their progress.

With this foster baby, I guess there needed to be some way of proving she was getting enough formula and her body was functioning as it should, but it all seemed tedious to me.  Time would tell if she thrived or had some struggles, and my eyes would glaze over when it came time to count.  I was more interested in how many smiles I saw in a day than how many diapers.

Even though I don’t like rigid schedules, I did develop a rhythm with Baby A.  I’d brew some coffee and try for a daily devotion and journaling time before she woke up, followed by breakfast.  Of course her needs always determined what happened when – that much was the same.  Then feeding and changing and dressing, playing and singing and talking until she was ready to sleep again.  And reheating abandoned coffee.

I often let her sleep on my lap or the couch right next to me as I knitted washrags for her baths.  We had lots of quiet times, no tv, or on very quietly.  There was a little song from an old movie that I would sing to her, “Baby Mine”, and it became our thing, singing while I changed her to hold her attention (I never made it past the second verse because she didn’t like being exposed).  Or as I held her close to calm her if she were fussy.

As had happened with my youngest, I got to watch her roll over on her own for the first time at only a couple of weeks old.  Of course it was a one-time thing that didn’t repeat for months, but it was thrilling, the shocked look at finding herself flipped over.

Almost everything brought a smile to her face.  Yes, a real smile.  Yes, almost right away.  Her resting face always held a hint of it, the corners of her mouth perpetually curved up.  I spent most of that five weeks enjoying those smiles.  And she wasn’t just smiling at nothing.  Baby A had great focus, especially looking into the many faces of people who held her, and she was alert whenever she was awake.

One thing that was just the same as with my own kids, was how fast that first five weeks flew by.  Before I knew it the day came when she could officially go to daycare, where others would feed and burp, change and cuddle, rock and put her down to sleep.  And I’m sure they would be efficient and conscientious.

But they wouldn’t be me.

There’s a passage in Luke 2 that’s telling all that happened around the birth of Jesus.  Mary and Joseph traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census, with Mary very pregnant because she gives birth shortly after they arrive.  Meanwhile, shepherds are out in the hills where first one angel appears and announces the birth of the Savior, Messiah, Master, and then a huge choir of angels joins them all, singing praises to God over the birth of this child who forever changed the world.  And all the details aren’t mapped out for us, but the shepherds went to find Jesus, and I’m sure they couldn’t help but share all the excitement they’d experienced with Mary and Joseph.

When a baby is born, each mother, each father tends to think of them as their own.  And for years many of us have that luxury of caring for our own children in our home.  If they are in daycare, we know that they will return to the security of our family in our home every day.

With a foster baby, there’s a very real sense that this baby doesn’t belong to the foster family, or the birth family, or the local children’s services agency.  At least nothing is for sure until a lot of steps are taken and all the options explored and eliminated one by one.

One thing that I have no doubt of, after spending five weeks in the heaven of being with Baby A almost every day, is that each baby is made by God with a plan and a purpose.  And for however long the relationship lasts, after those five weeks I was deeply sure that I was privileged and honored to love this child from the beginning of her days, no matter what course her life would take, no matter how many different people enter it or declare claims on her or make plans for her.

In those weeks I thought a lot about Mary, and the wonder and confusion all the attention given to her baby must have created in her, and this verse kept going through my mind: