The Friday before Labor Day Weekend, we got a call about a 6 year old boy we’ll call “Charlie” who was going to turn 7 in October and was in the first grade. Charlie’s mother had been “hospitalized and under the influence of an illegal substance.” DCS was called to take Charlie into care in the middle of the night. We were not licensed for children under 8 years old, however, after hearing about Charlie, we decided to take a shot and said “yes.” The DCS worker on-call agreed and indicated to our agency that we would be selected for placement if the agency agreed to approve an emergency amendment to our license to allow us to take Charlie. They, of course, agreed — so, about 30 minutes after our initial call, I left work to come home and wait. My husband was already home since he does not work on Fridays.
A few hours later, after not hearing from DCS, I made a “so…how long do you think this will take?” text to our placement coordinator who, in turn, called DCS to discover that, in the interim (and due, in large part, to a shift change at DCS), another family that lives closer to Charlie’s bio mom was selected.
So we were back on the “ list.” And instead of parenting, I went to the gym that night and all of my girlfriends in my group training class told me their hilarious Braxton Hicks contraction stories!