Femammal
Femammal
Being a Foster Mom
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[00:17] Greer:
Hi, this is Greer, your host for Femammal, the podcast that holds space for women to explore what it means to live well in our bodies and celebrates moving through this world as female mammals. This season, we are listening to women share their stories of how they formed their families, especially when health factors or medical issues impacted their decisions. Women's health matters for its own sake. At the same time, for many women, health issues not only impact their own quality of life, but also their paths to forming families. And many women have wanted to share those stories here, too. For our purposes, forming families means the creation of any home life that generates safety, belonging, connection, and joy, and it doesn't exclusively mean becoming a parent and raising children. I hope you will listen to each story this season with a sense of curiosity and compassion. And if you're going through something in your life right now where you're not in a place to listen to stories like these, I hope that you find compassion and support for what you're going through, and you can return to this podcast when you're ready. Today's guest is Rachel Bergin. Rachel is a middle grade science teacher in Nashville, Tennessee. In her free time, she is also a Contra dance caller who is particularly adept at calling family friendly dances as well as techno/pop dances. In this episode, she shares the story of how she and her husband became foster parents, with all of the joys and challenges that the role of a foster mom brings. Welcome, Rachel. Thanks so much for having this conversation with us. I wondered if you could start by telling us a little bit about how and when you and your husband embarked on bringing children into your family.
[02:39] Rachel:
Hi. Yeah, thanks for having me, Greer. So my husband and I have been married, it'll be eight years in August. And about two years into that, we started trying to have kids just the biological way. And after about like a year, we kind of realized something was up and did a few tests and couldn't figure out anything specifically that was wrong. So we were looking at other options and it kind of came down to, in our minds, either going like IVF route (or there's plenty of steps for IVF), but working hard on the biological side, or pursuing a foster and/or adoption route. So we kind of looked into all of that. We thought adoption, just non-fostering adoption, would probably be too expensive for us because it is often especially international, but even domestic can be pretty expensive. And then sort of the route leading to IVF. I thought a lot about it, but my sister did that, and it was really emotionally and physically hard for her. And then I did one round of Clomid, which is just like sort of the first drug you can take to increase fertility. And I got really nauseous, which I'm still not sure if maybe that was partly just like a food poisoning thing or something. But the nurse that I talked to said it was the Clomid, but then an OB later said that seemed very unusual to throw up every hour from Clomid. So I don't know what the deal was with that.
Greer:
Woah.
Rachel:
Yeah, it was like every hour for 9 hours, I was like, I can't do this again. And so that kind of felt like a sign or something. I was like, let's maybe look into fostering. And then I'd thought about fostering before, just like, as a really cool thing to do. I'm not even sure why, what put it on my radar, but I'm a teacher, too, so I just like kids, and my husband was open to it. And then we started looking into becoming foster parents in 2021.
[05:13] Greer:
Wow. So what were some of the questions and hesitations you had when you first started thinking through the option of fostering?
[05:23] Rachel:
Yeah, so we knew that there would be a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through, which there were as far as just like, paperwork, background checks, classes. So we knew there was going to be some legwork with that and kind of looked into that and then just knowing, coming to terms with the fact that it's emotionally hard and there's a lot of uncertainty. It's hard, there's a lot of emotional uncertainty. And because you don't know when you foster a child or children if they'll go back to their birth parents or when that could happen. So we were definitely hesitant about that.
[06:14] Greer:
Yeah, it's definitely a lot to think through. What gave you the clarity you needed to walk down that road of fostering and take that leap into all the bureaucracy?
[06:24] Rachel:
Yeah, such a good question. I guess part of it is sort of a cop out, but part of it was just this kind of feeling. I mean, we prayed a lot about it and did a lot of research, but partly I just knew I didn't want to go through the stuff with my body that I would have to in terms of testing and hormones and steroids and procedures and stuff for What is it, IUF, IVF? Like, the different interventions you can do that way. I know there's like, a better word for that whole gamut of things, but I can't remember what it is. And also, I should say, my sister fostered and adopted before we did, so that definitely was kind of inspirational for me. She lives in Vermont, and we're half sisters. We're, like, 15 years apart. But knowing that she had gone through a very harrowing time with IVF and it hadn't worked out in the end, and then she had turned to fostering and ended up adopting this beautiful daughter, it gave me that courage and clarity of that this can turn out well. So I think that was really big for me.
[08:02] Greer:
Yeah, that sounds really key to have that personal connection to someone who has been through the whole social, emotional, legal process. That's really great that you had that connection. And it's different everywhere. I'm sure some of her insights were relevant and some less. So you're in Tennessee, she was in Vermont. And there's different routes you can go through in terms of going through, like, a nonprofit agency versus going directly through the state. What route did you wind up taking? And what was that process like to get certified as a foster home and get matched with children?
[08:40] Rachel:
Right. So we started by just going to the Tennessee DCS, Department of Children's Services website and putting in a generic, you know, filling out a form, and we got an automatic response. But then we didn't hear anything back for, like, a month. Actually, we never heard anything back from that. But after about a month, we were like, well, that's weird. And someone had told us that they knew someone who'd worked through a nonprofit called Agape. So we reached out to them and got an answer within a day or two, maybe, and ended up just, like, having a FaceTime conversation with one of their employees who was just really helpful and answered lots of questions. And we were like, okay, this is the way we want to go because there are some benefits to going directly to the state, but in terms of just the personal touch, I guess, of having a smaller agency, we figured that was key for us. And, yeah, just getting that support. We've definitely been grateful that we did go that way because we've gotten a lot of support. We actually have a DCS case worker with our foster kids as well as an Agape case worker. Just kind of funny. But so I think that's kind of a benefit, too, is that we have more people to help us out.
[10:14] Greer:
What would some of the benefits have been to going straight through the state that you decided it's not worth it, we would benefit from the support of the nonprofit?
[10:25] Rachel:
Right. Yeah. Good question. The main one is, that sounds so weird. It's all very bizarre. Right. So when a child goes into custody of the state, the state first contacts their direct foster families and says, like, hey, we've got this kid or these kids. Here's what we know about them. Can anybody take them? And then if none of them can take them, that's when they reach out to the partner, nonprofit agencies or private agencies and say, we've got these kids, can you ask your people about this? Does that make sense?
[11:05] Greer:
Yeah, that does make sense.
[11:07] Rachel:
Yeah. So I think that's like, the main benefit. I'm trying to think if there are any others that I can think of through going directly through the state. That's really the main one.
[11:20] Greer:
It doesn't necessarily sound like a great benefit because sometimes they have so little information, the removal has happened so fast, they might not even be giving you accurate information to make a good assessment of whether that child would be a good match for your home.
[11:35] Rachel:
Yeah, really, in hindsight, it didn't really matter. But although I will say, and I mean, this would come up later, too, but we were surprised once we became certified, everyone had given us the impression that it would be really fast, like, so many kids get taken out of homes and need foster families, that we got the impression it would just be like, we get certified and then the next day they'd start bombarding us with calls and emails. But it actually did not happen that way. We just got a trickle of things, like every couple of weeks something might come in for like six months. So I was pretty surprised. And I wonder if we had been directly through the state, if we might have gotten more. I don't know.
[12:30] Greer:
Yeah, that's interesting. How long did the whole process take from the time that you reached out to the nonprofit, Agape, to the time that children were placed in your home for the first time?
[12:44] Rachel:
Yeah. Let's see. So we reached out to them in, it was like late November, early December. We started our classes, well, really we took an intro class in January, and then we had to move houses, so we kind of took a break, did the rest of our classes in May and June, and then there's like the home study and some interviews you do and some paperwork. And so we were certified in October, so about a year later. But then we didn't get a long term placement until late March of last year of 2023. We did some respite care from October to March, which is where you take kids who are in a foster home. You just take them for like a weekend or a few days to give the foster parents or the foster family a break. So we did that a few weekends. But, yeah, first long term placement took about six months, from October to March, from late November 2022. I'm really bad about years.
[13:57] Greer:
It's close to a year and a half. Like, from the time that you first reached out to the state, it was really like a year and a half. That was a long runway, right?
[14:07] Rachel:
Wow. Yeah.
[14:09] Greer:
Did you have to move homes so that your home could be approved or was that unrelated?
[14:16] Rachel:
No, it was pretty much related. Yeah. Because technically we were renting a 750 square foot house with one extra bedroom, like our bedroom, and then one extra bedroom, and we got approved in that space. So we took the class in January, the sort of intro class, and they told us that it would be really tricky to move in the middle of getting certified. So we would need to either get certified and then move or move and then get certified. So we took, like three months and tried to buy a house in Nashville, Tennessee. Epic fail. Because Nashville's housing market is crazy. So that's when we, in late April or May of that year, decided we just get certified in our current house and then worry about moving, which we did end up moving to a bigger rental, which is like, way better. We couldn't have our current foster situation in our old house, I don't think, because we have two toddlers, but, yeah, that's right. The break was to look into buying a house and then we decided not to.
[15:40] Greer:
So there is some specific guideline about how many people you can have and how many square feet and you would have been maybe kind of on the line where you were.
[15:50] Rachel:
Right. We technically in our other house could take one kid, but, like, long term because you've got to have--and again, it's different by state and all that--but a certain amount of square feet in your extra bedroom, like, more if you're going to put two kids in there. And depending on the kids sexes and ages, like, you can put a girl and a boy together only if they're both younger than five. And then after that they having separate rooms. So you could technically have, like, two girls together in a spare room, but that room would need to be slightly bigger. So. Yeah. Yay, bureaucracy. It's just lots of little rules.
[16:38] Greer:
Yeah. So that was kind of a lot of major transitions for your life to be able to do this. That's a lot. Wow.
[16:49] Rachel:
Yeah.
[16:51] Greer:
I'm wondering how you navigate that tension that you touched on between being a parent who's focused on standing in the gap in a temporary way for your foster children versus being open to permanent adoption if your foster children are not able to return to their original home and sort of being able to hold both of those possibilities at once in your heart.
[17:15] Rachel:
Yeah. No, it's a really good question. I think that's sort of. There's a lot of hard things about it, but that's one of the hardest things. My first response is just that we stay so busy that I don't actually have a whole lot of time to dwell on the different possibilities or brood, because it's just not a lot of time. And the two toddlers we have, they're 14 months apart, and the little boy is 20 months and the girl is about to be three. And so they basically just treat us like mommy and daddy. I mean, that's what they call us and stuff. Especially the girl. She knows she has another mommy and daddy, I guess, but she doesn't see him that often. So she'll talk about mommy, other mommy, that kind of thing. But it's sort of just day to day. It's just like I'm just being these kids mom, and then I am exhausted once they go to bed, and then I watch TV or do the dishes or whatever and go to sleep, and I don't really have that much time to think about 'But I'm not really these kids mom, and what if they go away?' and that kind of thing. I do think about that, but mostly I think my strategy is to not think about it. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's hard. You do sort of have to keep some boundaries. And I bet for people who have their own biological kids, too, it's different as well, because there's such a difference between your biological kids and your foster kids, but because this is sort of the only mom-ing I've ever done, I just kind of do it and I don't really hold back. But then Nick and I got pregnant. That was a fun surprise. So I've definitely been thinking about it a little bit differently, being pregnant, just like it is going to be really different. So I don't know. I remember in the foster classes, they used some wording of, like, you need to be able to just completely love these kids fully and also be willing to let them go, which is this very radical position, and you fail at that all the time. Either I'm not loving them fully, or I'm getting attached to them and angry at the birth parents. And those things happen. And it's kind of humbling, I guess, when I'm not in it, I can say that it is a good thing to be humbled and just realize, like, you know what? I'm going to fail at this. And it's like, I don't have to be a perfect foster parent because I can't. And it's still good for the kids, like what Nick and I are giving them, even if we're not giving it perfectly. So I think a lot of it is just being able to keep going. Even when you're constantly metaphorically falling down, getting up again, and you just kind of keep doing it.
[20:34] Greer:
That sounds really wise. And just like it takes a lot to give yourself that space and that understanding, that self compassion. I'm wondering: it's so exciting for you to have a baby on the way. And also, as you mentioned, there's things to think through about how that will impact your foster children who were there first, and how the connections might be different. Because there's those newborn memories that you don't have of your foster children that you will have with your baby on the way, all of that. How do you think through steps you can take to make sure that your foster children don't experience any deficit of your love and attention that they've always had up to this point, which is difficult anytime a new baby is on the way in a family that already has some young ones?
[21:36] Rachel:
Yeah, no, it's definitely something we've thought about. I think the first thing is, again, sort of knowing that it's not going to be perfect, that they probably are going to be jealous of the baby and they are going to have less attention. And hopefully it'll make them strong and resilient in the long run. But that doesn't mean that we're not trying to mitigate that difficulty. It's just newborns take a lot of attention, I think, involving them as much as possible. Dior, the girl, she loves babies in general. So I'm hoping that she will love, at least sometimes when she's not feeling jealous, that she'll just enjoy making baby smile. And we've read a couple of books with her about having a new sister. It's a girl, could be a brother, too, but the books we got, we picked the sister one because we know it's a girl. And. Oh, actually, one of them is about being a big sister, which can actually be for a little baby boy or a girl. But Dior will be a big sister. So we read that, and she sort of likes that story. We kind of talk about the baby in mommy's tummy sometimes, and she'll kind of ask about it. So just trying to hope that it's not too much of a shock. And with Paul, he's so little. I don't think he really understands, but I could be wrong, but, yeah, I think it's just going to, I don't know, when it happens hopefully we'll just have plenty of time all together as a family and we know there'll be times where me or my husband will be taking care of a baby and the other one will be with the toddlers and we'll just see.
[23:33] Greer:
Yeah, it's good that you point out that any toddlers who have a new baby sibling on the way go through this. And of course they won't receive as much of the time and attention that they had from you before. But then I guess there's a piece about how they explain that to themselves in their little brains and maybe as they get older, how they explain that to themselves and helping them understand that they were no less treasured by you and you still have that strong connection with them. It's not because they went through the foster system. It's just like new babies demand a lot of attention. There's just a lot there to help them think through.
[24:19] Rachel:
Yeah, no, it's true. I don't know. It's so much because they're so little. It's hard to know with so many things how much is them being young and being toddlers and how much of it is the foster relationship versus a regular parent child biological relationship. So, yeah, I don't know. I have thought about that, especially with Dior. I don't want her to feel know she's any less loved because she's a foster. But it is hard with them being so young to know how they're going to--that's an interesting phrase to use--like narrate to themselves as they get older. Yeah, I don't know. Again, there's so much that I don't know, but it's like I just kind of have to believe at the end of the day that even if they're going to get a little less attention and stuff, the safety and stability that they're getting with us is a good thing for them. So it's going to be okay and they're going to be okay.
[25:29] Greer:
Yeah. That's a really great outlook. Are there any emotional boundaries that you try to put up for yourself to protect your own heart in the midst of some of these uncertainties or what? I don't even know what that might look like, if it looks like anything for you.
[25:48] Rachel:
It's an interesting question. I sort of use this metaphor of, like, when you fall in love for the first time, you don't really hold back or have a lot of boundaries generally, because you don't know what it feels like to say goodbye and get hurt. Right? So I kind of feel that way with this foster placement because it is my first foster placement and I don't know, it's hard to know how to put up boundaries with toddlers because they just want to love on you all the time. I don't know. But I do kind of have boundaries from being a teacher. There are certain things like I just don't let them do. And there's certain times, especially with the older one, if she's just like, having a tantrum on the floor when I just walk away and ignore her for a while. And, I mean, I think I would do that with biological kids, too. I don't know. I'm probably not the best foster parent to ask about those boundaries. I know that people have them, but because I've only had one foster placement and no biological kids, it's hard to say what it would look like if I had more or less boundaries. I'm not really sure. I feel like I don't really have any.
[27:14] Greer:
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. It must have been just a really amazing moment the first time they came into your home and that was the first time that you made that kind of connection with a child of, okay, I'm parenting you.
[27:28] Rachel:
Yeah.
[27:32] Greer:
What are some of the ways that you attend to your relationship with your husband in the midst of all the demands of parenting this way?
[27:39] Rachel:
Yeah, it's such a good question, too. It can be really hard. Through our whole relationship, I think we've talked about a lot of stuff. We talked about how communication is really important to us. And so after kids go to bed, we're usually really tired and we still have more cleaning to do and stuff, but we try and make time to talk about things as we need to. It has been really interesting. Just like he and I had very different experiences with fostering, I think it's been a little harder for him to feel attached to the kids in the same way I have. We've had a lot of discussions around that. It's interesting, too, because before we became foster parents, I had just a lot of, I guess we could just say, like, grief about not being able to get pregnant. And I kind of lived with that for a couple of years, and he was really supportive of me in it. And he has said this himself. He didn't feel the same sort of grief. It didn't feel as real and as much of a loss for him. But actually, in fostering, he's had more grief of just like, why does this have to be so hard? Why couldn't we have just had our own kids? It would have been so much easier, which is not in all circumstances, true, but in some things. So it has been really interesting. We've had to work through things in our relationship that we didn't really anticipate as foster parents. And then the other piece to answer your question is we have to take breaks. That's one reason they have respite care for foster families. The idea is that someone else, another foster family, can take your kids for a weekend. It sounds maybe a little bit callous. Like, here, just like, take these kids. I can't deal with them anymore. But sometimes you really can't, and you just need some space. And even I think all parents need some space sometimes. But especially when you've got kids who've been through a lot of trauma and you didn't cause that trauma, and you're not blood related. So there's just things about them that I just do not understand. Yeah, we have to take advantage of those breaks sometimes. My parents do that because they're in town. They'll take the kids for a little bit, and then a couple of times when they haven't been available, we've done the formal respite thing, but right now we're on a little trip, which we haven't done since we got these kids about a year ago. But it's been really nice just to get away for a little bit. So that's important, whether it's like a couple of hours, like a date night or a trip, just being able to just be together as adults, definitely.
[30:42] Greer:
That's so good to hear that you can give each other space to each be yourselves and process things on your own terms and have your different feelings about it. And also that you can give yourself space together to be together to foster your relationship, which was really the bedrock of the whole family.
[31:05] Rachel:
Yeah.
[31:07] Greer:
What surprised you about this parenting journey you've been?
[31:13] Rachel:
Hmm, what surprised me? Well, kind of what I was just talking about with Nick surprised me that he would sort of feel these emotions that I've been dealing with, of grief, of not sort of having biological kids in the midst of having foster kids. It was like the opposite for me. I felt this, even though it's been hard, just this emotional burden sort of lifted, of like, oh, I can be a mom, and I can parent and snuggle these kids. And that kind of thing. It just feels very fulfilling. Whereas for him, sometimes it's sort of just like when things are really rough, his thoughts just go to 'all my other friends who are dads, they don't have to deal with x, Y and z that we're dealing with,' whether that's they have a visit with their birth mom and then they're just like emotional wrecks afterwards, or having to document every time we give them Tylenol and turn it in on time, and just those things where it's like, it's just not the same. Him sort of having that emotional, just like grief is the word that I keep coming back to. That was surprising also. Let's see. Mostly I don't like surprises. Generally as a person, I like to know what's happening. So mostly I think of it in terms of negative, but actually a positive thing is I really was surprised at how not weird it has been for Dior, the three-year-old, or almost three-year-old, to talk about me as mommy, but then also her other mommy. It's sort of you know right now she doesn't really know anything else. And I know that it's hard for her emotionally. She's a very emotional person and she breaks down at various things that even other toddlers, I don't think are quite so volatile. But just talking about like, oh, mommy got me these pants, when her mom has bought her clothes and she sees those clothes, or like, my other mommy does this. So that's been kind of nice, I guess, that it's like, because she doesn't really know anything else. So it's like, this is just her life. She holds space for me as her mommy and for her birth mom as her mommy.
[33:47] Greer:
That's really beautiful. What do you celebrate about how your path has unfolded to growing your family?
[33:59] Rachel:
As we were going through the process of getting certified as foster parents, we had lots of different people just tell us anecdotes about someone they knew who fostered or adopted and then got pregnant. And we were like, well, that's cool. But we didn't really think it was going to happen. But it was just such a sweet surprise after so many years of not having any kids around, realizing that I got pregnant after fostering and I don't know, I'm guessing it has something to do with hormones or something, but that just felt really beautiful, especially because it is really hard sometimes going from zero to two and just figuring out all this stuff of changing diapers and managing emotions and packing daycare lunches and all this stuff. It was just such a whirlwind and, like, a fire hose. And then to be like, oh, and now we're pregnant. Kind of back where we started wanting to get to. That was really cool. And it's also just like, two other things, I guess. One, I don't like to say this a lot, but I'm really proud of us going from zero to like, these kids are still alive. They are, in a lot of ways, thriving. Like Dior had a speech delay. She didn't even talk when she came to us, and now she's talking all the time. Paul couldn't even barely sit up because he'd just mostly been in a car seat all his life. And now he's just like the most active little almost two year old you ever met, running around and stuff. And so just, like, when I have a chance to just stop and look back, it's like, we've come a long way in a year, so that's something to celebrate. But, yeah, I think definitely just celebrating the progress we've made is huge. And then, well, this is another thought that occurs to me. We've had so much help from people around us, and it's cheesy, but the whole thing of, like, it takes a village to raise a child is so real, especially in the foster world. But we have a really good relationship with daycare teachers, with my parents, with people at our church. Yeah. Again, so much of it has been humbling, but one humbling piece of it is just like, we just need all these other people to help out. And thank God we have people in our lives who will help out. So the other thing is, I think there's something kind of freeing about going from this place where I had just a lot of time to think about what was not in my life. Like, when we were trying to get pregnant, it wasn't happening. I mean, we were busy with life and work and friends and whatever, but what I was talking about earlier of just not really having time to think much about, to dwell on things, is kind of liberating, even though it's also exhausting. I think sometimes just living in the present is such a gift, and having these two little people that just force you to just live in the present most of the time is something to celebrate.
[37:34] Greer:
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's so great. How has becoming a foster parent reframed your sense of identity and your relationship with your body at all?
[37:45] Rachel:
Yeah, I think that's connected to what I was just saying, actually, is like, there were so many thoughts and feelings about my body in sort of infertility. And then once we had them in our lives, which we had them in our lives for about six months before I got pregnant. So even before that, it was just like, my body is here to pick up this baby when he's crying. Or it was sort of just this shift of not even thinking about my body as much, which, again, is sort of liberating. But I'm also, when I do stop and think about it, and I like this question because it makes me think about it, it's just like, I'm just grateful for what my body has been able to do. Again, not even from a pregnancy standpoint, that's great. But just being here for someone who needs me to be here and then, yeah, same with sort of identity. It is awesome to have this identity as a mom. I've been wanting that for a long time and also just not even having that much time to think about my identity, which is, again, sort of refreshing. I don't know.
[39:06] Greer:
Yeah, no, that resonates a lot for me. Thanks for sharing that. Just one last question. I'm wondering if you have an insight that you could share with us into how we as women can listen well to our bodies and our hearts as we move through making these family formation choices in our lives.
[39:24] Rachel:
I feel like it's always going to be hard. I know you've done a few episodes of, like, there's so many different choices. I think, for me, I'm a fifth grade science teacher, and I love just having data, if I can, weighing pros and cons, like trying to use the power of thought to guide decision making. But at the end of the day, there's never a perfect data driven choice. And, yeah, just like, honoring feelings and honoring the people around you, too. It's so easy to feel, I think, a little self absorbed when you're having to think about, well, how do I want to start my family and when do I want to do that? But just trying to sort of step outside of that and think about the other people that those choices impact can be helpful, too, I think. And I mean, in our case, it was like these people we didn't even know yet in the foster world, but also just like partner and family and parents and all those people, too. Yeah. I don't know if that's a great answer to your question.
[40:49] Greer:
It's a new answer, and I love new answers. Yeah. So many different facets to think about. Thanks for highlighting that one.
[40:55] Rachel:
Yeah.
[40:56] Greer:
It's been so good to learn more about the foster process for you and how you grew into that. And I'm so happy for you and your family of soon to be five. So best of luck with everything to come.
[41:11] Rachel:
Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to talk to you, Greer.
[41:21] Greer:
If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at femammalpodcast@gmail.com. That's femammalpodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow this podcast on Facebook. Just search for Femammal Podcast and you will find a community of people who are interested in living well in our bodies. And of course, I'd love for you to rate this podcast and leave a review wherever you download your podcasts. Until next time, be well.
