This is the second time this month that a certain social worker at my agency has called and talked about how things are going in general, then slipped in a placement request. Sneaky.
So, Beetle will not be moving to grandma to join his sister, because the GAL visited grandma and wants the sister removed. Yikes. This means that his sister needs a home, and we already have the brother, so of course we got a call. And of course I want to say yes, but we decided to say no. (Well, okay, I wimped out and said please look for other homes that could take both and if you can't keep them together, call again.)
I don't want Beetle to leave, but it's not extremely compelling for them to both be here. Beetle has only had a week at home with us, and a week with me visiting in the NICU. It's not a bad time for him to move. I've met his sister at visits, and I would love to scoop up that cutie and bring her home, but there are at least three big issues. 1) She's almost 3, and we said we wouldn't have a foster child the same age as our bio children. We want to stay at least 6 months younger. 2) She has night terrors. As it is, we are taking turns holding Beetle all but one hour of the night. I literally do not know how we would be able to help her, too. 3) She's moved around a lot, and this will be another traumatic move. Beetle needs a lot of attention and has tons of appointments, so with that combined with the needs of our bio kids, and my part-time teaching schedule... we shouldn't do it.
I'm praying the right family is found for both of them. If not and they call again, this will be a hard one. Even though there are all the reasons above for not taking this placement, I've got a lot of love for Beetle from these two weeks and would like to see him through withdrawal if I can.
What a hard decision! In this case, it sounds like it would be nice if the professionals take care of the decision-making and you can just follow along! I'm just getting caught up on all my blog-commenting...I think in your last post you mentioned about Beetle maybe having some feeding difficulties and arching his back while eating? It seems a bit ridiculous for me to offer advice when I'm not a medical professional, don't know his medical history, and have never met him, but you might ask his pediatrician about acid reflux. The back arching would be one big sign. There's a lot of things he's probably got that would increase the possibility (drug addiction and prematurity would be 2 big ones), and if you can get him on medicine for it you may notice some big improvements in certain areas! Just my thoughts :)
ReplyDeleteI second the reflux "opinion". My 2 three year olds (not related) both had reflux. The one was a given. She couldn't keep a bottle down to save her life. The other I had no clue. Until we were at the pediatrician's office and she was laying on her back and then she arched her back. I remember saying "why is she doing that"? "She does that all the time". The pediatrician told me it was reflux. Its called "silent" reflux because they usually don't produce anything (their food doesn't come back up). Its just painful so it causes them to arch their back.
ReplyDeletePraying the right decisions are made and you have a peace about where they are placed.