Our journey of fostering in the hopes of adoption all started in 2009 when Rob and I met the most beautiful four-year-old who would be called our niece. Rob’s brother Mike and his wife Jill adopted Sova-Grace from India and after a long road to adoption, they were finally able to bring her home in the summer of 2009. Sova met her brothers Jacob and Caleb and slowly she was introduced to the big extended family. The first time we met Sova it was love at first sight…a babbling little non-English speaking child with so much to say and so much love to give. Sova cuddled up in her new bedroom with dozens of stuffed animals and dolls surrounding her in bed. She wanted to be surrounded just like in the orphanage…except these dolls didn’t share her journey. To this day, even at the age of 14 and 10 years (yes a decade) later, Sova still loves to be surrounded by friends and family. In 2011 Mike and Jill decided to embark on another adoption journey but this time from Ethiopia. Since M&J already had two biological boys, Jacob and Caleb, and Sova who was right in between them in age, they decided they wanted to adopt a baby. Well boy did things change over the next few months. It was taking a while to find a young baby to be matched with and there were no prospects in sight. M&J were on an email chain of adoptable children their agency was trying to place and twin 11-year-old girls were being promoted without much luck. After spreading the word about these girls, M&J realized that maybe this was a sign from God. Maybe these twin girls were meant to be Turners! Helen and Jerusalem grew up in a 10’x10′ thatched roof home in rural Ethiopia and entered the orphanage as 11 year olds when their mother was too sick to care for them. There was some expected culture shock when arriving in the U.S. but these pre-teens quickly fit right in. Almost eight years later, the six Turner kids are all together and blend as if they have always been together. Although their adoptions went smoothly, not every day was perfect.

September 2018
Now back to our story. Our three beautiful nieces were our inspiration for adoption. Rob and I hope to have a full house including biological children, adopted, and fosters too! Our first placement included three siblings in September and they stayed for two months. These kiddos were premie twin babies right out of the NICU (boy and girl) and their 18-month-old sister. They were the easiest and happiest placements. We miss them terribly and although we had hoped to be able to adopt them, they are now living with their dad and we know they will have wonderful lives. Contact is minimal but they are safe and happy. Maybe one day we will be allowed to visit them.

November 2018 Three days after the kiddos left on a Friday night we received a call about a baby girl…we missed the opportunity by five minutes. Monday we received an email about a opioid-addicted two-week old baby boy needing placement within a few hours. We said yes! We were told that this baby had a four-year-old sister and his parents were very involved. We knew this would be a short term placement.

We had baby K for three months. We were able to share Thanksgiving and Christmas festivities with our little man. We made sure to take a lot of photos including his first photo with Santa. We gave this to his parents on Christmas Eve when we made a special trip to his Mom’s rehab facility so that she could see him.

Opioid-addicted babies cry, rarely sleep, and generally have a rough beginning. Baby K was a super fussy baby with many issues but before he left us he would smile and giggle on demand. He was learning how to enjoy life for the first time!

Our next placement should be pre-adoptive kids. This means they are “less likely” to be reunified. It’s still a huge risk of potential heartbreak…again.

The heartbreak is difficult to get through but we have so much love to give. We know that one day we will be able to call some kiddos our own.

March 2019
Baby B came to us two days after he was born and stayed with us for three months. He was a “pre-adoptive” placement, meaning it was unlikely that he would reunite with his birth parents. Mom was young and had a sad life story to date, Dad wasn’t allowed to be around Baby B so DCF took him into care. We picked up Baby B at this hospital and instantly fell in love with this dark haired easy baby. Rob and I had a running joke of saying, “my baby” because we literally  always would want to hold him and didn’t want to let the other. Baby B was a little angel that we hoped we could adopt. He spent his first 6 weeks with my mom everyday. Everyone was in love with him, my parents were also devastated when he left to go live with his grandparents. We were so worried but his paternal grandparents embraced our bond and allowed us to continue to see Baby B every weekend. I would cry leaving his house every weekend at drop off but now that he’s two months shy of two years old, I’m happy to say we still see him every weekend. He’s one of our boys and always will be.

July 2019
Baby A, now called Teddy came to us right out of the hospital at two days old as well. He had a 22 month old brother in care as well but he was already in a foster home. We committed to Baby A and his brother Artyst, who wouldn’t be placed for a couple of months. Baby A was a tiny little baby and again, so easy! He threw up his formula every feeding but thrived and turned out to be huge, 99% percentile!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton