David had his first visit with birth mom today. The drop off and pick up was extremely awkward in my opinion. My worker walked over to my car to get the baby and his diaper bag, and as she started to walk over to the office, the birth mom started walking over our direction. Then when we returned to pick up David, we happened to see the birth mom leaving, and she purposefully walked as slowly as possible past our car and was studying it quite intently. There are a couple reasons I didn't like this:
1) The birth mom is a big lady...she is tall and hefty. I don't know how I would hold up in a confrontation with her if she were to get physical.
2) We adopted James who is child #3 (David is child #5) for this birth mom...technically he is the last child she lost parental rights to. As of right now, the birth mom does not know James is with us although she may have her suspicions. James is too young to understand this whole complicated situation, so I do not want the birth mom to see him.
In the beginning of our foster/adopt journey, I was so ready to support visits. I put together pictures of the child and tried to be as accommodating as possible. The birth mom was a no show back then. Then with Sam, the parents were deemed a safety concern by the county, so we were assigned transporters for visits and asked not to attend court hearings. I still sent in some pictures and tried to make the baby look nice for the visits. This time around, I am more bitter when it comes to the visits. I have heard too many stories and have witnessed the shortcomings of CPS, and it upsets me. I still dressed David extra cute today and sent a diaper bag with plenty of supplies for the hour. I will continue to dress him up, and I will probably even send in a few pictures (of just David) along with a disposable camera to hopefully get some pictures of birth mom and baby. We never got pictures of the parents for James because they never lifted a finger to try to see him. It would be nice for both James and David to have a picture when they are older...if they even care to see the picture. However, it would be nice to have it available to them.
Anger
Part of me is angry with the birth mom. If she would stop allowing drugs to dictate her life, her children would be better for it. I am angry she is showing up for the visits at all, to be perfectly honest. Twice a week now I have to hand David over to a stranger essentially and allow her to snuggle him, feed him a bottle and take pictures of him. Basically she gets the benefits of being a parent without having to do any of the hard parenting parts. I am angry she never bothered trying for our oldest child, James, yet here she is making an effort with child #5.
Sadness
I do feel sad for the whole situation...that birth mom hasn't gotten her life together yet. I had some hope when she was allowed to keep baby #4 that things had changed...I had to hope because otherwise it meant #4 was living in a horrible situation, and it turns out that was the case. So many referrals were made to CPS on behalf of that child, and when the investigations took place either they couldn't find the child or he appeared fine at that specific point in time. This was the same child my husband and I waited for because we wanted to offer him our home. Now two years later the child may come into care, and we may not be able to offer a home for him because we have young children, and he may be a threat to them (so we have been told).
Frustration
I don't feel like anyone understands why these visits are making me emotional. They don't understand why it is so important to protect our oldest child from the birth mom. They don't understand why I didn't like the birth mom walking so slowly past our car. My husband and I feel there may be a safety concern for the birth mom to know us or our family yet no one else seems to see it that way. Instead we look like we are asking for too much.
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