Another foster adopt mom and I had a conversation last week which is still infuriating me. I have to get this off my chest.

This excited prospective adoptive mom was upset because of a visit with her prospective adoptive baby’s birth-mom. For those of you who don’t know this process, if you foster adopt a child, there may still be visits with the birth-mom while an effort to reconcile with birth-family is made. If reconciliation, or reunification, isn’t successful, parental rights are terminated and the child is free for adoption.

Anyway, my friend went to give her child over to the birth-mom for a visit. When she went to pick her up an hour later the child was in a new outfit that bmom had brought for baby. My friend was upset and was crying. “How can she change my baby” “What is she thinking changing her clothes without asking me.”

Hummm.. This pushes all my buttons. After all, the child isn’t actually my friends child. She is birth-mom’s child. It is easy to forget that the birth-mom may actually love her baby, and having her child taken away is the hardest thing she’s ever lived through.

Kids get taken away for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes mom was abusive, but more often it could be jail time, or drugs, or just being so young that they can’t handle the pressures of motherhood.

I’ve always tried to be compassionate toward my birth-moms. In fact that is how I finally got my daughter. The caseworker trying to find a home for my daughter when she first came into foster care, ran across our file as being open and that we had room in our home. The caseworker remembered that I had been particularity kind to another birth-mom she was involved with. She had respected that about me when we worked together on the last foster children and so she called my agency and our daughter was placed with us.

There are several birth-moms I still keep in touch with. Many call me just to ‘check in’ and let me know how they are doing. Somehow they look up to me, or maybe just want to prove to me they can do this mothering thing. Whatever the motivation, I’m glad I can help them to stay on track.

It is incredibly difficult to attach to your foster children so that they can feel safe, secure, and adjust in your home. Love them with everything you’ve got. But it is equally important to be able to let go when needed. I call this the Zen approach to fostering. Love unconditionally, without expectation.

So, back to my friend. What to do? In my case I always dressed my foster kids in the clothes the birth family gave them. (Unless they were overly torn or dirty). In my experience, this starts building trust with the birth-mom. And of course, the child, however young, can feel the bond building between the moms.