I was warned that it would happen, and eventually it did! When our oldest son came to us, he was the sixth baby born to his birth mother. We figured our second child would be a biological sibling of our son’s as a result. Years passed and we hadn’t been called about any new baby. So, after our son’s adoption finalized, we decided to go ahead and just try to adopt a child through our state.
A couple months after getting our home recertified, we got a call about a little boy who needed a new foster home. We were told he may be available for adoption down the road. My husband and I prayed about it and accepted our second little blessing who was only 5 months old.
When my oldest son was 4 and my youngest son was 2, we figured our older son’s birth mother may be done having babies. That was fine with us because we felt our family was complete. We were told shortly after that she was pregnant. Only a few months later, we found out our youngest son’s mother was pregnant too! January of 2006, our oldest son’s birth brother was born. We had to make a very painful decision not to take him, out of the best interest of our boys at the time. I grieved a lot over it, but was so glad to later find out the adoptive mother of the second, third and fourth baby was open to adopting him!
So that was settled and I was able to feel some relief. Just over four months later, our youngest son’s birth mother gave birth to her second baby who was also a boy. We recently had to say no to the acceptance this baby too. We didn’t feel we could take one baby and not the other. There was no way we would be able to care for 4 boys with our boys’ current needs.
This story is like so many others. I don’t know how our sons will feel about us not taking in their birth siblings. I hope they will understand the thought and prayer that went into our decision and know we put them first. Thankfully we’ve been able to keep contact with both baby’s case workers who support visitations for photo opportunities.
Update: One week after this was written; I got a call that the birth mother of our oldest son is pregnant again!
(Melissa is a Families.com Christian Blogger. Read her blogs at: http://members.families.com/mj7/blog )