With the first placement meeting we had pictures of the brother and sister that we were put in for, we had their names, we knew their history and we even started buying clothes for these two children that we just knew were going to be ours. We had been showing everyone we knew the pictures of the two kids that we would soon call our own. The call that came after that first placement meeting brought such sadness to my husband and me, the unimaginable loss that we experienced where they decided to give the brother and sister we were put in for to another family.
After losing those two children neither my husband nor I wanted to see picture or hear anything about the children we were in for. We thought it would be easier to forget the children we did not get chosen for if we had not seen their faces, or known their names. So when our case worker called and said she had another placement meeting planned for us we stuck to our plan of not seeing the pictures or hearing details about them until they were ours.
When the day of the placement meeting started we had no children. The meeting was called a four way this meeting would include our case worker, and the boy’s child advocate, the CPS worker and another family’s case worker. These meetings normally last a few hours and both the case workers will make their pitch to the CPS social worker and the child advocate. They give all the facts of the family, why their family is the best choice for the children. The other case worker was representing a single African American woman.
The children that this placement meeting was called for were a sibling group of two boys. They have the same biological mom just different dad’s. The oldest is 3 years old boy and Caucasian and the other is a 14 month bi-racial boy who was part African American. The single lady was only interested in the 14 month old and her case worker fought to have the brothers separated with the oldest child coming to us and the younger one to the other lady. At the end of this meeting one of these case workers would be calling the family that they represent to them that they have been chosen to adopt the sibling group they were discussing.
We had told our case worker that we were open to both children; race and ethnicity were not a concern for us. We would never consider separating a set of brothers. The meeting started at 9:00 in the morning, so when we had not heard anything by 5:00 we thought it was going to be like our last placement meeting we went through.
When my husband was almost home from work his cell phone rang and he got the news that we were waiting for that we were going to be parents. We were soon going to meet our sons and we still know nothing about them not even their names or what they look like.
See more of our process through other entries:
Becoming a Mom through adoption