If you read any other blogs by foster parents, you've probably seen at least a few posts about how visits suck. That, friends, is because visits suck.
The baby's dad is still attending visits, but not with any regularity. The baby cries - screams - for most of the visit, then passes out from exhaustion. The dad didn't come to either visit last week, and today the baby cried so hard she puked all over herself and him. (I can't pretend the "and him" wasn't the tiniest bit satisfying.)
Her dad has been told that it's bad for the baby to see him only sporadically. She has not developed any sort of a relationship with him, because she's still not comfortable with him. The baby sees the worker with us at least once a month, when the worker comes for home visits, so she trusts the worker and tries to cling to her throughout the visits, still sobbing. Hearing all of this kills me. I asked the worker today if there's ever a point when they can ask the judge to change how this is going, on the basis of it being actively damaging for the baby, and the worker said, basically, that she's only ever seen the courts go for no visits in cases of sexual abuse. If the parents want visits, they get them, even if they only bother to show up occasionally. Our next hearing isn't until February, so this will probably continue at least until then, and nothing will happen at that hearing, so it will continue through April, when they can begin the process of filing for termination of parental rights (if things keep going the way they are), but then the judge can give an extension if he's feeling generous and so I can't really foresee a time when my baby girl won't be regularly subjected to hysterical sobbing on her dad's whim.
The evening after a visit the poor kid is all out of sorts. She doesn't want to be put down, but she is super whiny even when we're holding her. She holds on to us like she's scared of being put down. It's heartbreaking. Today is one of the days when being a foster parent is fucking hard.
Subject change! In other non-news, as far as we know things are still going fine with NewBaby. I'm ten weeks pregnant now and still worrying pretty much constantly, which is exhausting. We have an ultrasound scheduled for December 3, which feels like FOREVER far away. I am still totally exhausted - like I'm staying up late to write this and it's only 8:39 right now - and I get waves of nausea, which I find incredibly reassuring since I didn't feel crappy for most of the last pregnancy. I told NewBaby that it is welcome to make me feel as crappy as it wants, even if it means I can't eat a single bite on Thanksgiving, as long as things are going okay in there.
I've got two Tollhouse Cookie Pies in the oven right now, but honest, for the first time in my life I am too tired to stay up for pie. This is crazy. Tollhouse Pie is my very favorite and we're bringing one to Andy's cousin's Third Annual Night-Before-Thanksgiving Pie Party tomorrow, so I made an extra for me.
What's your very favorite Thanksgiving dessert?
Lizzy's visits with her legal dad were exactly like this. They had to tear her off me and drag her into the visitation room. Does you baby have a lawyer? After one very bad visit day I called Lizzy's lawyer and told him how bad it was. I also had a recording of her screaming while being taken into the visit that I told him about. It took about a month, but all the sudden I was notified that a court hearing had been scheduled to let the judge know this was going on. The lawyer then called me and asked me to testify, which I said yes to. He to,
ReplyDeleteLd me that he probably couldn't get the visits stopped, but could maybe get something done. We had the hearing and I testified, the judge ordered the the social worker/agency HAD to find a way to make it so Lizzy felt safe during the visits. The only way to do that was to have me go into the visits with her. So that is what we did. If she was upset and crying I would go in with her. She of course would cling to me and I had to try to encourage her to interact with dad. Fun stuff. All that to say, some judges would require that something be done so you child isn't being traumatized. Throw the word traumatized around a lot. That seemed to work for me.
I'd like to point out that you apparently signed up for puking for 2 straight days when you posted this. NewBaby made you regret your post, for real for real.
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