First, we got to keep Lucie Kennedy during the day on
Friday. She is 3 weeks older than Emmeline. Peyton and her Daddy were great
friends in high school. Her mommy and I have become great friends since then.
And now they get the opportunity to play and hopefully become great friends. It’s
fun to watch them starting to interact and laugh and play.
Friday evening Emmeline and I picked up my mom and headed up
to Cincinnati. I had the pleasure of getting to help out with my best friend’s
baby shower on Saturday. It was so good to see her cute, pregnant belly and
spend some time with her.
We headed back to Louisville after the baby shower. Peyton
got home from work, we ate dinner and Peyton went straight to bed because he
had had some sort of food poisoning that day (and worked through it…tough guy).
I got Emmeline to bed and was trying to decide what I was going to do with my rare
free evening when I got a phone call. It was our fostering agency and they
asked if we could take a teenage mother and her 7 month old baby that night.
They had somewhere for them to go starting the next evening, but really needed
a place for them to stay Saturday night and Sunday during the day. There had
been a family emergency with their current foster placement. I spent the
evening getting their room ready (we really need to do some Spring cleaning…sometimes
I feel like I just keep moving the junk we’re getting rid of from room to
room).
They arrived around midnight. I got them settled in and a
bottle for the baby. The teenage girl seemed like a sweetheart and the baby was
a cutie pie. It was kind of a tough night. The baby was a good sleeper but
getting her to sleep was kind of tough and then Emmeline was up as well in the
middle of the night. I spent some time in the morning giving the baby her early
morning bottle. We spent Sunday at home. A sweet gal from church brought us a
pizza and some goodies by for lunch.
The 7 month old was an angel. She was such a good baby! She
didn’t cry or fuss like Emmeline had always had the tendency to do. But, the
mother mentioned to me that she had fallen off a bed on Friday at the previous
foster home. She had been up crying from 11pm – 6am the night she had fallen.
And ever since then she wouldn’t put any weight on her right leg. She also
cried if her leg was moved a certain way. The mom had a mama instinct and
wanted her to be taken in on Saturday. If she hadn’t been such a happy baby and
so content, red flags probably would have gone off sooner than they did for me.
I didn’t complete understand my options, as I knew I only had them in my home
for that day. In my mind, I was going to tell the foster family they were
staying with starting Sunday evening that she needed to see the pediatrician first
thing Monday morning.
We took them to my cousin’s graduation party Sunday
afternoon. While at the party I touched her leg the wrong way while holding her
and she cried out. It hit me then that we needed to take her in. This wasn’t
normal. So the mother, baby and I arrived at the hospital’s ER around 8pm. The
baby was SOOOO good the whole time we were there, even with it being past her bedtime. They took xrays
of her leg. The dr came back and announced to us that her femur was broken all
the way across. I got tears in my eyes and the teenage mother started crying. I
was crying for this baby and her mama. To be a mama and find out your baby had
lived like that for 2 days with her leg being poked and prodded like normal was
a hard thing to swallow. Along with the fact that she felt guilty that the baby
had fallen off the bed in her care. I, personally, felt so guilty
for not bringing her in first thing that morning when I noticed she wouldn’t
put any weight on that leg. I tried to encourage her that she was a great mama
and had tried to get her help as soon as she could.
We were transferred to the Children’s hospital where more x-ray
were taken and lots of questions were asked. I felt so bad for this teenage
mother. I knew she was exhausted and dealing with a lot emotionally and she was
continually asked her address. In reality, she didn’t exactly have one. She had
only been with the foster family for a couple of months and didn’t know their
address. I tried to intervene where I could to prevent her from having to
answer questions that weren’t necessary for her to answer.
We were in the Children’s Hospital ER until 3:30 in the
morning. They finally moved us to a room where we could all get some sleep. I
stayed until 9:30 in the morning when the social worker got there. I filled her
in and she took over. I felt badly leaving this mother I had connected with, and
walked through this with, but I was going on very little sleep and was supposed
to work that day.
I spoke with the teenage girl later that afternoon. They were
still at the hospital and she admitted it had been an emotional roller coaster for her. They
had had to put the baby under anesthesia in order to put a cast on, which I’m
sure was tough for her to watch.
In the end, the baby’s leg is expected to heal and they are
heading to what sounds to be a great home for the next few months until she turns 18. She was such a sweet girl and I haven’t stopped thinking
about them both since they left. I was able to have several really great
conversations with her and I continue to pray that she doesn’t choose to return
to a specific, bad situation when she turns 18. It sounds like she has a much clearer
view of things now and even desires to pursue a college degree in social work
because of how foster care has changed her life for the better. Please pray for both
of these sweet girls!
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