While preparing for the long awaited adoption of our baby girl I find my thoughts turning towards her birth parents. While her birth father was not involved much in her life and was not an active parent with visitation with his daughter, he had definite anger and violence issues. Her birth mother is a complete mess and lives a very sad life of sex, drugs, violence, etc that has cost her all of her children. The heartbreak of the situation is that her birth mother continues to her life of destruction. I had hoped that that the reality of her losing this precious baby after losing two others would make her take a look at her life.

Sadly, when the caseworker called the birth parents to receive a more detailed family medical history before she was diagnosed with autism prior to the adoption; things had not changed any in the birth mother’s life. They were even unable to locate her personally since she is moving from one motel to another, working and involved with drugs. Her aunt that is also raising one of her children gave very limited information. Along with stating before she came to us she was fine and was a perfect baby. Hmm...not sure what that meant.

When her birth father was contacted, he was willing to give a detailed medical history. When they explained his daughter was having some medical issues and behaviors, his response was that it came from her mother, because she already had one messed up kid. Believe me I was not planning on parenting a child with autism but she was already our daughter in our hearts. Especially since my husband and I both have worked with children with autism and agree that we did not feel that we wanted to parent a child with this disability when we started fostering, funny how things happen. We know we are blessed to have this child with any of her issues and that things worked out the way they were suppose too.

None of the birth family members asked how she was doing or how serious were the medical concerns. Her birth father did ask if she was with me. My heart breaks for my little girl. I had hoped that the loss of this baby (number 3) would not be another expendable thing and would force this mother to see the horrible mistakes that she has made in her life. Allowing her to change her life becoming the mother that one day her children will look for and need her to be.

While I plan to adopt this beautiful baby girl, my thoughts cannot help but be with her birth mother hoping and praying that things will be different for her.