opinion

After 5 kids, my wife and I became parents. Here's our story.

From time to time, members of The Enquirer staff will write personal essays to give you a sense of the journalists who bring you the news. Cameron Knight covers city hall for The Enquirer.

She was crying, something she hadn't done all day. Bedtimes are hard, sure, but it seemed like something else. Did she realize she wasn't home? Was she traumatized? Did her parents keep her up all night?

Then the training kicked in.

"Maybe she has a blanket?" I asked Jennifer, my wife.

She ran out and dug through the garbage bags of belongings that were delivered to our home along with the 1-year-old girl.

It was yellow with turtles printed on it, made of fleece, now worn and pilled. We handed it to her over the rails of the crib. She shoved it to her face, took a deep breath and quickly fell asleep.

That blanket stayed by her side from then on. We waited weeks to wash it, afraid it was the smell that was comforting.

My wife and I are foster parents. The blanket trick, which seemed like magic, happened the first night we ever had a child in our home. We learned it during our foster care training, which we completed just over two years ago.

Since that time, five children have come into our home. We've said good-bye to four. Those who left are back with their families, not their parents, but other relatives.

On Thursday, we adopted the fifth. Lucas is stuck with us forever. He's lived with us for over a year now. About three months ago, Hamilton County moved to the adoption phase of the case. In some ways, this was our goal all along, but fostering kids has changed us.

After battling major health problems for about eight years, my wife and I developed a motto: We do hard s***.

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So when we were told having our own children would be a bad idea for health reasons, we looked into other options. Private adoption seemed far too expensive, but "fostering to adopt" was a good cause bundled with parenting.

The more we learned, the more we felt compelled to help. Last year, there were more than 1,200 children in foster care in Hamilton County, and so few families willing to foster that nearly half were being sent to other counties.

We took the classes, turned over extensive biographies, had our home and finances examined and filled out a pile of forms. Then we got a phone call.

That first girl (forgive me for leaving out names) stayed with us for about four months. She was and still is a dense ball of light and joy. She taught me that I could be a dad, something that I was not convinced I could be.

Then we got another phone call. There had been a hearing and a relative had come forward to take the girl in. Family, any family, always comes first in the foster care system.

It was sudden. My wife and I cried, barely able to breathe, as we packed her things up that night and wrote a letter to her new caregiver. We added our phone numbers and prayed this wouldn't be the last time we saw this little girl.

It was a pain unlike any other, like the death of a relative, a sudden and definitive break-up, and losing a best friend all rolled together.

How quickly would she forget us? Would she be safe?

A few days later, we got text with some photos. We eventually met for dinner, and we even got to babysit. Later, the relative did some babysitting for us.

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Our newly adopted son adores her. She calls him "Lukie", and when they play together, she leads him by his hand.

She's exactly where she needs to be. As we were falling in love with her, a loving relative was fighting to find her.

After our first girl came a newborn, then a pair of sisters. Then came Lucas.

Every case has had one thing in common: heroin or other opioids. By all accounts, Hamilton County Job and Family Services is overloaded with heroin cases.

It's not clear what long-term effects the children of parents suffering from addiction may endure, but Lucas is like any other 2-year-old.

At Thursday's adoption hearing, he ran laps around the courtroom in socked feet, his shoes abandoned as soon as he could claw them off. Judge Ralph Winkler not only endured it, but encouraged it. Lucas clapped loudly at the end. He was the center of attention, which makes him pretty happy.

Suffice to say, we will do it again.

A phrase we learned in our training is "big feelings." When a kid is overwhelmed with emotion, we use it. We tell children it's OK to be sad and angry because they miss their parents. It's OK if they need to cry or punch a pillow, so long as they aren't hurting anyone.

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Well, during the adoption hearing my wife and I were both having big feelings. I cried more than I would like to admit. What made it all more emotional was the incredible support we've received from Lucas' birth family, particularly his great aunts.

Foster care isn't neat and clean. It's messy, complicated and full of compromises. You'll interact with people you'd never thought you'd meet. You'll feel awkward and unwelcome. But foster parents do it because the kids come first.

Consoling a toddler because mom canceled a weekly visit, again, is one thing. Greeting that same mother with a smile the next week when she does make it is something else. But that toddler will be smiling, and you don't want to do anything to ruin the moment.

We met Lucas' great aunts for lunch after Thursday's hearing. I can't imagine what this process has been like for them. All I can do is promise that Lucas will never forget them. They will always have a place in his life.

Being a foster parent has now provided both the best and worst days of my life. It's been the hardest challenge and the biggest reward.

For me, it's not that the good days outnumber the bad. It's that the bad days are a battle worth fighting regardless.

To learn more about becoming a foster parent, you can visit the Hamilton County Jobs and Family Services website.