shellshock

ok so here is our week..as close to as it happened as i can recount...
Mon- taught my class/training in the evening. it went wonderfully!! three foster moms ended up taking slings (i brought some old stock to give away for free). and everyone seemed quite entertained by my changing sweetpea in and out out of all the carriers.
towards the end of the meeting, the agency got a referral. a "teenager" had just given birth at a birthing center. they needed a home for her for 72 hours because there was a restraining order preventing her from leaving the county. they had lined up a home that could take her and her three kids (all under 4), but the home was out of the county. court was lined up for thurs to decide if she could leave the county.
We said yes. no one else did. CPS had to make up a group home to be able to take both her and her baby. we were the best place, seeing as i was a postpartum doula for two years. plus, we were the only ones crazy enough!
so this was a very high profile case and we had to have a police car out front of our house 24 hours a day during the whole placement. my neighbors about had a fit!
ok, so imagine my days.. i cant leave the house without police escort, and she isn't allowed to go anywhere except the pediatrician. In between caring for my babies who are getting sick, and making a billion phone calls pertaining to this placement, i am running up and down the stairs over , and over , and OVER. to bring her food of every imaginable kind (which mostly she won't eat) and to be the phone carrier. we only have cell phones and she was constantly on the phone. i was exhausted by Wednesday. that morning i discovered , via an article on the Internet, that she had used my phone to call the freakn news station and tell then that she was sleeping on a mat on the floor, in a bare dark and dirty room...sigh. this had been all over the news the night before. it was very hard to read after feeling like i was doing everything possible for her.
she was given the furniture we had, which was a single bed, a cradle and because she was nursing and wanted to co sleep , a full size futon mattress without a frame. the news ran wild making out like she and her baby were force d to sleep on the FLOOR!! like all those impoverished Japanese...lol








i brought her the article with a little note reminding her that she should be careful throwing those who are helping her under the bus.
that being said...by the end of the placement i felt terrible for this lady, who was determined to actually be 22, not 17.. she loves and cares for her children. she was kind and attentive to her baby. her children are in no immediate danger just because she lives with other people who live alternative lifestyles.. CPS did not have justification to remove in this case. the infant should have never been in care. they took in the mom because she was pregnant and they wanted the baby, even though she had IDs saying she was 22. because CPS said she was 17, the were able to the baby because it was a minor of a minor...sigh
the sad thing is CPS can be overly aggressive, destroying families in some instances, and then in others sit back and do nothing while parents ,no where near suitable, destroy their children.
i dont understand the system, and am feeling completely overwhelmed with emotions over this experience.
yesterday, before the placement ended i got into a heated argument with a head of my county's cps, advocating for her. that she should be placed with all her children. if the lady could have burned me to pulp from across the phone she would have, but i had to advocate for my placement, that's my job and it was what was right. thank you GOD, it seems to have worked! here