My daughter and I had a visit with her birth mom today. Birth mom has a new baby, almost six weeks old now, and we visit almost every week.


Two years ago, when our daughter K was sixty days old we had visits with birth mom three times per week.

Foster care works differently from state to state, and county to county. There are various rules and regulations that vary as to how the kids are assigned to families. In our county, as well as some other counties in the United States, we are under a new program called "Family to Family."

The main feature of Family to Family is that DHS and the affiliated agencies encourage foster parents to play an active role with the birth family. As a foster mom, I am encouraged to meet with birth family and caseworkers to help plan and carry out the goals of returning the children home - the first option in a permanency plan.

This means if you hope to adopt, you'll have an open adoption. Even if you don't continue visits after the adoption, you'll know the birth family, and the circumstances of relinquishment, or termination of parental rights. You'll have a relationship with the birth family and you'll have seen mom at her worst.

For those of us who are want-to-be adoptive moms, this is a delicate balance.

Once a child is placed, they will stay with their foster-to-adopt family or go back to birth family. Hopefully they won't be bounced from a foster family to an adoptive family or to another foster family. (But it's not this way in all counties and I'll talk about that in future posts.)

Another foster mom gave me some great training about creating trust and respect between foster moms and birth moms. From what I have seen and read and witnessed, I believe this training should be mandatory in every county in every state.

During all those three-times-per-week visits, I always treated birth mom with honor. Even if I didn't agree with her life choices, she's a human being going through what must be the most difficult time in her life. I tried to empathize.

And it did create trust between us - I care about her and her new baby. I want her to do well with and to be a great parent. So far she has surprised me. She and the baby are bonding. My daughter has a birth sister now. I'm not sure how I feel about that. Only time will tell how all the dynamics will work out between our two families.

I also want her to get on with her life, and I want to get on with ours. After having a year of three times per week visits, it's been hard to change that dynamic, to bring the visits down to a few times per month, and hopefully - eventually, a few times per year. But I'm ok with that. I'm mom to my daughter, she's mom to her daughter. And for now, we just take it day by day.