We Came to Foster. We Stayed to Adopt.

We always wanted to adopt. But the private adoption process felt overwhelming and expensive. When someone told us about foster-to-adopt, everything changed.

Our agency explained that while the primary goal of foster care is always reunification, some children do become available for adoption. They prepared us for both outcomes — we needed to be willing to support reunification AND be open to adoption if that became the plan.

Our daughter — I'll call her Sofia — came to us at three months old. From the first night, she felt like ours. But for the next 18 months, we lived in uncertainty. Would she go back to her birth family? Would the plan change? Every court date was agonizing.

The hardest part of foster-to-adopt is the in-between. You love this child completely, AND you know they might leave. Both things are true at the same time. You have to hold both.

When the judge finalized the adoption, we ugly-cried in a courtroom full of people. Sofia was almost two. She has birth parents who loved her and couldn't keep her safe, and adoptive parents who will spend their lives trying to give her everything.

Foster-to-adopt isn't the easy path. But for families open to the uncertainty, it can lead somewhere beautiful.