Her Story: Part 4 - A Dad’s Perspective
My recollection of everything that happened is a little different then Jen’s. Like the fact that I called her “Peanut” first, but Jen swears it was her. So I am going to try and share my thoughts.
I remember when Jen started having dreams about holding a little girl. I even felt guilty at times because, although Jen hoped my vasectomy would magically reverse itself, I knew it wouldn’t. I had some crazy 1 in a million side effects, so trust me, that road was closed. The guilt came from not being able to give my wife what she desired and not being able to take that desire away. When she first started talking about fostering, my immediate response was “no way”. I knew that in the emotional state Jen was in, she would not be able to keep herself from becoming overly attached to a foster child. Then to have the child taken away to be reunified with her parents would break her, and that thought scared me. I even remember her asking me, “Why can’t we just get a baby that has no parents”? “Because it doesn’t work that way”, I responded. Not knowing that it would actually work that way, 10 months later.
Not getting a single call after getting certified as foster parents is unheard of. The reason I agreed to it was because I knew of kids who were being placed out of the county due to a lack of foster homes. Yet, we still didn’t get any calls or placements. My initial thought was they took one look at our kids and thought, Nope, not placing more kids there. Were we that bad? Jana was our first and only foster placement, which is crazy when I think about it. From the beginning, God was writing an amazing story, and we had no clue.
I remember the initial call and hearing the excitement, hesitation, and even fear in Jen’s voice. “What do you think? What do I say”? Even after we said yes, we chose not to tell anyone, not even our parents. We invited them over once we received her and basically said, “Tada, meet your granddaughter”. We were so afraid. What if it doesn’t work out? What if she gets placed with someone else? What if people try to talk us out of it because she has Down Syndrome? The truth is that a lot of our fears became a reality over time, but I won’t dive into that now.
I can honestly say that initially, I wasn’t scared. The diagnosis didn’t scare me because I worked with individuals with Down Syndrome for years, and growing up, my best friend had a sister with RETT Syndrome. I was honestly ok with everything up until the day they brought her to us.
My fear came from the fact that Jana was a ward of the State. I feared that they would come back and take her away from us. It didn’t help that she was so small, and I was worried I would hurt her just by holding her. She really was tiny and beautiful, but I also struggled with feeling like she was fragile, and as Daddy, I needed to protect her.
When a child is a ward of the state, you must get permission for everything, and you are not allowed to make medical decisions for her without court permission. Since we already had a family trip to Montana scheduled, we had to get permission from the Judge to leave the state with her. We had to notify the social worker of all of her doctor’s appointments, medications, recommendations, and any trips to the emergency room had to be reported immediately. Well, Jana had 180 hospital visits with a specialist and admissions in her first two years. So we got to know her social worker very well. Every incident and appointment had to be documented and reported, and each appointment escalated my fear that she would be taken away.
My fear was always, what if? What if she gets hurt, what if something happens and they don’t believe us? In the end, my real fear was, what if they take her away from us?
We raised three other biological kids, and although they ran us through the ringer, especially our Jaylen, starting on the day she was born. I was never afraid that they would take her or her siblings away. Honestly, this fear really affected me in a negative way and turned me into an overly protective Dad. It's something that I struggled with until the judge signed the paperwork and officially made her ours.
On January 28, 2016, Baby Girl SSB (Safe Surrender Baby) became Jana Lynn Benito. The little girl we never planned for, but by divine intervention, Jen dreamed of, became ours!