I’ve been trying to write  post about T’s first visitation with his bio mom for ten days. In those last ten days, we’ve had six visits scheduled by CPS. The first one happened today and actually was pretty anticlimactic.

It started the Monday after we picked T up. His bio mom had a court hearing that morning. The first hearing is the detention hearing. Basically this is when the court decides if CPS was justified in removing the child from the home. If CPS doesn’t present enough evidence, the judge can return the child to the home. This didn’t happen, although his bio mom did show up in court to testify. I don’t have details about what was said and we chose not to attend that hearing, wanting to protect our anonymity a bit longer. I got a call at about 12:30 that afternoon saying that T had his first visit at 2:00 pm. That day. Suddenly it all became a little more real. Missus Turtle was at work, so I would have to deal with this myself. T was just about to go down for a nap, so I hurried to get him down so that he would be awake in time for us to leave. While he was asleep I ran around the house like a mad woman trying to figure out what I should pack in his bag. Enough to keep him happy but not his favorite toys, in case anything didn’t return with him. I searched his clothing for the perfect outfit. I worried about how much formula to send (for an hour visit, yes I know, I’m insane), how many diapers, what brand of diapers, and pretty much everything else I could think of to worry about. For once, T slept longer than 30 minutes, and I had to gently wake him to to take him to CPS. I was pulling into the parking lot at 1:58 when I got the call that the visit was cancelled. No explanation, just cancelled.

After the false alarm we headed home and I tried (unsuccessfully) to make up for the fact that I had ruined his one good nap of the day. I struggle with describing my feelings about the visit and the cancellation. On one hand, I felt immense relief. I already had become so attached and protective of little T, the idea of handing him over to a CPS worker at the back door seemed wrong. However, for his sake and for his bio mom’s sake, I felt such disappointment. Luckily for him and for us, he is young enough not to know the difference. The only hurt he felt that day was due to the fact that I woke him up from his nap and took him for a car ride. He recovered quickly and other than having a fussy, overtired afternoon, he was no worse for the wear. At the same time, every missed visit is one step further from her getting him back. One step further from her getting her life together. As much as we love him and would adopt him in a heartbeat, for his sake I hope that his bio mom can work things out.

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Later that day we got another call saying we had visits scheduled three days per week at nine in the morning. At least now we had a predictable schedule of when visits might happen. They happen to fall right around when he likes to go down for his morning nap, but there’s not much we can do about that. We prepared ourselves for the visit the next morning and felt much calmer and more centered going into it. We drove him in together and the stress level was much lower for all of us. On the way in, we got another call. The visit had been cancelled again. We both sighed sighs of disappointment and relief and turned around to head home.

The next three visits were also cancelled. For two of those three there was miscommunication and we weren’t notified that they were cancelled. Let me tell you — it’s really fun driving twenty minutes, all the way up to the back door of CPS, thinking that the time had finally come just to have the social workers come out and ask you what you’re doing there.

This morning started off similarly. We actually got the cancellation call before we left the house, which was quite a relief. I put T down for his nap and he was sleeping soundly in his crib (AMAZING!) when we got another call. Turns out there was more miscommunication, and the visit was on. They would wait for us but we had to head in to CPS immediately. I cannot even begin to explain my frustration. Again, we would have to wake our little delicate napper up. He had just passed the magic 25 minute mark without stirring, a small miracle. I opened the door to the bedroom and started getting his clothes out to change him, hoping the noise would wake him up. Of course, it did, so I put on my happy face and went to get him. All smiles, we got ready and quickly headed out the door.

Like I said, the visit was anticlimactic. We arrived at CPS, the social worker came to get T from our car, and told us to be back in an hour. I dropped Missus Turtle off so she could go to work and headed back to pick him up. At exactly an hour after I dropped him off, the social worker came back out the back doors with a very sleepy looking T and handed him off. No visits through the weekend, she said, and Monday was up in the air. It is bio mom’s second hearing Monday morning and sometimes they schedule visits afterward, depending on her drug test. We won’t know until that morning.

So far, working with our agency has been nothing but rewarding. They are helpful, prompt and they communicate well with us. They have offered any support they can give us, and we really like our social worker. Working with CPS has been a different story. We got the impression we were being blamed for the mix up this morning, when it is CPS that has consistently failed to communicate with us. We plan to attend the hearing on Monday as we feel that having more direct knowledge about the case trumps our desire for anonymity at this point. I will certainly write about the hearing afterwards. It should be an interesting day. For now, we plan to relax, enjoy the weekend, and try not to stress too much about the future! “One day at a time” is our new motto.

However, I can’t imagine what a burden a story like his would be for a kid to carry around his whole life. That part of me wishes she could just get it together and give him the life he deserves, even if it means we have to give him up.