In sixth grade I met my partner. We were friends for several years before our lives took different paths. In 2006, we reconnected and quickly became inseparable. We got married in 2007, and shortly afterward, we found out we were expecting our first child.
We devoured every pregnancy book we could find, feeling prepared to welcome our baby boy and start our journey as parents. Our first son was born in 2008 after an uncomplicated pregnancy. He was charming, intelligent, and everything we could have hoped for.
We thought the second pregnancy would be just as smooth, but it turned out very differently. Midway through, we learned our unborn son had serious complications that couldn’t be fixed either before or after birth. Our second son was born in April 2010 and lived for only 23 hours. Losing him was heartbreaking.
We didn’t want our son to grow up without siblings, but the thought of another difficult pregnancy scared us. So, we explored adoption as an alternative. After learning about foster care and watching other families, we realized many children in our community needed loving homes. We decided to begin the foster parenting licensing and training process.
At first, if someone had offered us four siblings over ten years old, we would have run the other way. We were new parents with just one child and felt comfortable only with boys under three years old. Anything else felt overwhelming.
Our first foster placement was a seven-month-old baby boy with dark hair and olive skin, who resembled our three-year-old enough to pass as brothers. He came from a domestic violence shelter where it was clear his mother couldn’t care for him properly. He quickly became part of our family, full of life and laughter.
After a few months, he was returned to his biological parents. Saying goodbye was tough, but it was part of what we agreed to when we became foster parents. We loved him like our own but knew he belonged elsewhere.
Our second placement was a baby boy just a few weeks younger, who had suffered severe neglect and a serious skin infection. He was very small for his age and looked like a burn victim. Although we were scared to hold him, we did, and we visited the hospital daily until he was healthy enough to come home. We cared for him like a newborn to help him grow and recover.
Shortly after, we received a call late at night that our first foster son had been left alone in the bathtub and nearly drowned. We hurried to the hospital, dreading the outcome. Miraculously, he recovered fully and returned to live with us. Though he initially had trust issues, he eventually became his happy self again.
Later, we welcomed a newborn boy whose young mother was working on returning to a normal teenage life. We promised her that her son would have a forever family who loved him and that she would always be part of our extended family.
At that point, we thought our family was complete with four boys close in age and lots of busy little ones. Then we got a call about our first foster son’s two sisters and a younger brother, all in unstable homes. Despite our full house and no experience raising girls, we knew we had to keep these siblings together.
We cleared space in our home and bought a large 12-passenger van we called the “Super Pickle.” We prepared to welcome the girls and felt confident our family was complete with six energetic kids. But just before a family photo shoot, my wife found out she was pregnant again. We were overwhelmed but happy when our healthy son was born in 2015, making seven children under the age of seven.
One of our daughters didn’t believe the baby was permanent until his adoption was finalized. The two sisters were officially adopted in 2016, on what would have been the sixth birthday of our second son.
Again, we thought we were finished growing our family. But in 2018, we met four older siblings, tweens and teens, who had been in foster care for almost six years. They were at risk of being separated, so we decided to keep them together and rearranged our home to welcome them.
Over the years, we’ve had as many as five kids in diapers and expanded our home appliances to keep up. People often say they couldn’t handle the pain of saying goodbye to foster kids, but for us, fostering is like stopping to help a child in an accident it’s simply the right thing to do.
Foster families offer children love and stability, whether the placement is temporary or permanent. We have two biological children and nine adopted kids all of whom we love completely and call our own.
