The Life of a Foster Mum
For 404 days I was able to watch him grow,
For 404 days I helped him achieve his milestones,
For 404 days I was able to love him unconditionally.
Now it has been..
792 hours since I was able to see his little face,
792 hours since I was able to hold him in my arms,
792 hours since I was able to hear his giggle as I chased him around my house,
792 hours since I was able to kiss his perfect little cheeks
He isn’t coming back…
You see, this is what we sign up for as foster carers.
We are TOLD not to get emotionally involved.
We are TOLD to not get too attached.
We are TOLD foster care isn’t always forever.
When that baby arrives at your door, your heart opens up like you never imagined it could.
You see this innocent baby staring up at you with beautifully crafted eyes.
Your heart melts as he nuzzles into your neck and falls asleep to your scent.
You watch him grow, you cry as he achieves his milestones. You BECOME his mum.
You see, being a mum isn’t about birthing a child. It is so much more than that.
We always remember tummy mummies but on this journey, we become their heart mummy.
You. Get. Attached.
I wouldn’t be the carer I was if I didn’t love, so hard, it damn well hurts!
Then one day, you are told your little baby is moving on.
You are told there will be only two visits before he leaves you for good.
I PANIC. I knew him best, how could they decide this without consulting me?
I contacted every person possible, to say he needs to stay with me. It’s what’s best for him. Please!!
In a heartbeat, I decided that he can stay with me forever. If he wasn’t going back to his family then he should stay with me forever. I am his family. I am all he has ever known.
My biggest regret was contacting THEM, those up the ranks who decide. How was I to know that it was going to backfire on me? How was I to know the people I bypassed would get angry at me for going higher? How could this system be so cruel?
They used culture as an excuse.
Members of our little man’s community, directly contact them to say that he should stay with us and it would be detrimental for him to leave, but it still wasn’t enough!!
It was out of my hands. I was reminded that I am ‘just the carer’.
To the system, I may be JUST THE CARER, but to that little boy, I was so much more than that!! I had no rights.
I screamed so loud but I had no voice.
I fought. I fought so damn hard for this innocent child. I am the only family he has ever known!! It wasn’t good enough. The love and attachment this child formed with my family and I, was so strong that you would fail to even recognise he was a child in care. Why didn’t they see that?
So instead I had to make memories with my baby. I had to make memories as though he was dying.
It killed me knowing that I would never see him again.
I am now mourning the loss of my baby! Mourning the loss of my baby as though he died but reality is… he is not my baby and he did not die. I feel so stupid to feel this way!!
34 days ago, I said goodbye with tears, love and anger, as this new carer smiled and ripped him from my arms, with no care in the world!
Not even a simple ‘sorry’ or ‘we will visit you’.
She knew how hard I fought.
I’m mourning the most beautiful little boy.
It’s the little things, the dummy he left behind, his breakfast bowl sitting in the cupboard, even his little fingerprints on the fridge set me off.
The car hits me hardest, I no longer have his tiny little voice to sing along with. Let’s not even begin going through the photos! Unless I’m prepared to sit in a blubbering mess for the rest of the day.
So yes, again they warned me. They warned me, that foster care is never permanent. They also said that they are screaming, desperate for carers and they don’t have enough of us!
They say to keep emotions out of it. How can you raise him like your own child without emotions? How can you love him more than anything in this world, without emotions…. and not get attached? Our babies bond with us too. How do you tell a baby not to become attached?
How can I open my home again, my heart again, when I feel like I’ve let this little boy down?! I don’t think I can.
The biggest impact this situation has had, is the fact that I planned on taking the biggest leap of faith, opening my heart and home for the rest of my life, to a little boy who wasn’t even my own. Now, I don’t even know if I can open either of those things ever again, even momentarily.
Will he know how loved he was and how hard we fought for him to stay with us?
Will we ever see him again?
Is he ok?
Will this trauma surface in later years through behaviour?
The very people who decided his fate were supposed to be minimising trauma. The system just keeps failing them!! They are supposed preventing these children from attachment disorders, but they are unsettling them further by unnecessarily removing children from homes they often know from birth.
I’ve often heard people tell me not to worry because these babes are so resilient. My argument is that HE didn’t have to be resilient, he just had to trust me to feel protected and kept safe.
We were supposed to avoid him feeling a sense of abandonment but no one heard my pleas!!!
I know I’ll never get him back, but so long as I am breathing, he will always be my little baby 😔
Anonymous x
\Mother. Wife. Teacher. Funny. Honest. Energetic. Loyal. Creative. Prankster. Junk food addict. Homie. Subtle as a brick in the face. Wanderlust.
I hope by commenting this doesn’t expose my niece, if so please delete!
I love her to bits. She took on that little fella and gave him more love than a lot of people give their biological children. We accepted him into our family like he was one of our own and he returned that love because he was happy and he was safe.
It rips my heart out to see the pain she was and still is in at having to break the link that bonded them like Mother and Son.
She left no stone unturned in her efforts to keep him but it fell on deaf ears. I wonder how these people who make these decisions would feel if they had a child ripped away from them for no other reason than policy and procedure, to those people, I think you have hurt this beautiful, loving young lady possibly beyond repair, so you must be very proud of yourselves, I hope you can sleep at night because I know she struggles with the worry of how he is coping without her and the love of our family!
My heart aches and stomach churns as I read your words…for I see me in you. I’m a foster mummy too…my 4 year old f. daughter and 8 year old f. son are my everything. We love them more than I could ever have dreamt possible and they love us. They’ve been our family for almost 10 months and they are the world to us. It is so hard that we are mothers in every way and our kids are integrated into every facet of our lives bit we have so little control. My default mode is to protect and keep safe our kids and sometimes the decisions made for them by others go against everything our instinct tells us is right. Our kids have just moved to concurrent planning and will be expected to move to long term foster care in the next 2 months. We are in the process of getting approval as their long term family but nothing is ever certain and my biggest fear is that something will change so that they dont get to stay like they and we so badly want. Home where they are safe, loved and protected. If their relationship with their birth family wasn’t so chaotic and damaging I’d be feeling so very differently because I truly do only want what’d best for them even if that means someone else . The sense of loss you must be feeling is a shadow that follows me everywhere and from which I can’t escape. I know it’s there.. so close..i can see it..and it touches me but I can’t shake it off. It haunts me but reminds me how much I love them to feel this way..the constant fear and anxiety..the love and pain. I know we must feel fortunate for the times we have and not the times we lose bit that is so much easier said than done. Fostering is parenting on a different scale because there’s a very real and present feeling of helplessness, worry on overdrive and perhaps we do appreciate our kids that bit more because we have the constant reminder that it may not last forever and also of course that our kids arrive as huge complicated jigsaws that we have to sort and start to piece together. Some of those pieces may even be missing or damaged and we can spend months or years relocating and painstakenly fixing or rebuilding those pieces from scratch and more years trying to get the newly repaired or made piece to fit just right. Worried that the damage may always show and the jigsaw never be just right but loving all those imperfections that make it so unique. Maybe we are just simply the type of people that love too much, too deeply, too completely..we always know it will likely end with our hearts shattered into a million pieces and yet we volunteer for that hurt again and again. I hope you see your son again soon..i hope he is safe and happy…i hope you will find a way through this and I’m so glad that he had you. All my love and please know you are not alone x