No update
Jun 14, 2004 Uncategorized
Brett is home so I’m off to work on that piece due tomorrow. I won’t be able to update unless I finish the article, which is getting stickier and stickier.
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Tags: Brett
More on surrender & adoption
Jun 12, 2004 Adoption
Katie said:
in many cases when the birthmother signs has nothing to do with when the adoption becomes finalized/irrevocable. i had to appear in court 48 hours after jonathan was born to orally & by signature waive my rights … but the adoption wasn’t truly finalized for another six months, despite both my appearance and the birthfather waiving his rights within that 48 hours.
This is a good point because it can all be confusing.
Here in Ohio and with our agency, the soonest birth parents can relinquish is 72 hours but, of course, they can take longer. Most, like Kate, don’t want to wait because they don’t want to put the baby in foster care during that time and they don’t feel prepared to take baby home. There are a few hospitals around here that will board a newborn for some time but not all of them will.
Also, our adoption won’t be finalized for six months either but if Madison was taken from us, she would not automatically go to J. The fact that J. has signed away her parental rights means that if Brett and I were found to be inadequate parents, Madison would be in the custody of the agency. They could then find other parents for her. In other words, J.’s surrender of parental rights is a separate issue from her adoption. Weird, eh?
Our agency visits us once a month but the visits are nominal. Our social worker comes and asks how we’re doing. Makes notes about Madison’s height and weight and picks up proof that we’re doing the recommended well-baby check-ups. We also need to inform them if we leave the state because they are required to know where the babies are at all times.
I don’t know what it would take to make us lose Madison but I think it would have to be big and bad and ugly. Other than making sure we’re doing the well-baby checks, not smoking around her and that one of us was home with her for six weeks, the agency actually has very little to say about our care of Madison. For example, they haven’t made us get a crib (we co-sleep so we don’t have one). I was relieved to discover this. I was afraid we were going to have to make it look like she had her own room since I know this is an issue in foster care.
During these six months, we could also give Madison back to the agency without repercussion because the adoption hasn’t been finalized. (Obviously, this has never even entered our minds!!!! Well, it might occasionally wander into Noah’s mind.) The most recent time this happened was when a child proved to have very severe health issues and the potential adoptive family felt they couldn’t provide the care she needed. The agency networked with other agencies and found a waiting family who was looking to adopt a child with extreme special needs.
I don’t think it’s fair at all that the birth family wouldn’t be considered for the next placement should the adoptive family prove not to be up to the task. I’ll ask the social worker next time about their policies in contacting the birth parents about it.
The reason that J. wouldn’t be next in line is that she has been effectively erased from Madison’s life in a legal sense. Again, her surrender of parental rights has nothing to do with our assumption of parental rights. I wonder, though, if this is different in states where open adoptions are legally enforceable. Would a birth parent there have a say in the next placement?
As an aside, at our agency, J. did not have to go to court. The social workers video tape the legal surrender so that the birth parents can choose not to appear before a judge. Obviously they can appear anyway if they want to but most are relieved to be able to do the surrender privately.
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Tags: Brett, Madison, Noah, open adoption, our agency
Revocation periods
Jun 11, 2004 Adoption
Allison Kaplan Sommer links to an adoption case that’s all over the press in Israel.
If we can agree that 72 hours is too short a revocation period for a birth mom and that six months is too long for a child, how long should a revocation period be?
I don’t have an answer but I think that the child’s needs should be paramount and that too many people in power aren’t considering basic child development when they make the laws.
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The thing about babies
Jun 11, 2004 Parenting
The thing about babies is that there’s no fighting them. You can’t win because they’re babies and no matter how carefully and logically you explain things to them, they just don’t get it.
I was watching Brett try to figure out what to do with Madison last night while I worked on my article. He’d come up the stairs, head down the stairs, stick her in the swing, prop her in the bouncy seat, try to get her to do tummy time on the floor. I knew what he was doing because some days, I forget and do it myself. He was trying to get the baby to pretty please entertain herself so that he could read the paper/have a cup of tea/take a pee in privacy/whatever.
So I watched him grapple with this from my comfortable perch in front of my lap top and I finally said, “What in the hell are you doing?”
What he was doing was trying to entice her into lying happily on her blanket by sticking random toys around her and she was having none of it.
“She’s just so discontented,” he said. “Maybe she’s hungry.”
Of course she wasn’t hungry she just wanted to be held. Not only held but bounced. Not only bounced, but held and bounced and walked around so that she would be gratified with new scenery every few minutes. Madison likes a lot of action.
This is my LIFE these days, I know how frustrating it is. I could see that he was about to lose his mind.
See, he forgot and he’s just now remembering that a baby wants what a baby wants and you can either fight them for days and days or you can give in and then she’ll be happy, which gives you the opportunity to be happy. Although taking advantage of this opportunity to be happy can be pretty hard, especially if you really really really wanted to read the paper/have a cup of tea/take a pee in privacy/whatever. Even more if you haven’t gotten to read the paper/have a cup of tea/take a pee in privacy/whatever in what seems like years and you have a headache and you didn’t get enough sleep and there’s piles and piles of laundry to do and you know that this one little break could restore your sanity. And you say, “Please, baby, please please pretty please with gumdrops on top, please just sit in your swing for two minutes while mommy flosses! You want mommy to have all her own teeth at your wedding don’t you?” Picking that baby back up so that she smiles and coos isn’t always cheering if you’re facing another day without flossing.
I have spent more hours than I like to admit feeling very resentful that Madison wanted held when I wanted to wash dishes. Not that I ever truly want to wash dishes but I want a clean kitchen and thus the dishes must be washed. All of my zen parenting muscles have shriveled up from disuse because having a lovely big kid like Noah doesn’t require that same constant shoving aside of my immediate wants and needs. If I want to stop and eat breakfast before Noah shows me his latest Super Puppy comic book creation, I tell him that and he waits. Most of the time he even waits patiently. Madison, however, is not capable of saying, “OK, mommy, I’ll just play with my toes over here while you get the kitchen picked up.”
It’s hard to get back into the swing of things but it’s not like I really have a choice. Now I remember that this was one of the most difficult things about parenting a wee, tiny, itsy-bitsy Noah. I thought I was going to have no problem being selfless and constantly nurturing but it turns out that it’s pretty hard and now I’ve found out that it doesn’t get easier with age.
On the other hand, muscles do have memory and this time I remembered my lesson pretty quick. Pick the baby up. To hell with the dishes. Spend the extra money for those flossing-sticks so you can do it one-handed while holding, bouncing and walking the baby. Enjoy her while she’s small. Take comfort that she’s growing every day. Put on the Hair soundtrack and dance around because everything is better when it’s set to good music.
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Everyone needs…
Jun 10, 2004 Parenting
…a little more MADISON!
(She is squinty-eyed from the sun.)
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Tags: Madison