Did you hear about the 22-year-old woman who burnt her newborn baby to death in New Jersey? This was a recent example of women in crisis who abandon or kill their babies, a situation that is not unique to the US. Recently, a cat in Russia helped to keep an abandoned baby alive by cuddling with him, keeping him warm while also meowing until help arrived. In the US, there are safe haven laws in all 50 states plus DC that allow women in crisis to leave their babies in hospitals, police stations, or fire stations. However, babies still get abandoned, two-thirds of such abandoned babies die. The state of Indiana is considering 'baby boxes' as a way to decrease such deaths, an additional measure to their safe haven process.
I recently found out about an organization that is dedicated to saving babies from abandonment and death - Project Cuddle - a non-profit charity that helps
frightened girls and women in making safe and legal decisions instead of
abandoning their newborn babies. Since finding out about them, I have been following them on Facebook, I am so appreciative of the work that they do that I chose to highlight them on the blog. I also realized my naivete - see, I didn't expect child abandonment to be such a huge problem in this First World USA...but it is. That's why there are safe haven laws. And since those laws are not enough, that's why there are organizations like Project Cuddle, providing women and girls with the chance to do the right thing - whether that is the support to parent or to make an adoption plan. Project Cuddle is not an adoption agency or facilitator, thus rescue families willing to adopt babies through their program work directly with lawyers and the birth mother. Rescue families apply to Project Cuddle, and only get a call if a birth mother is interested in selecting the family to rescue her baby.
Beyond discovering the wonderful lifesaving work of Project Cuddle, the past few weeks also involved about 30 additional hours of training in order to qualify to adopt from foster care. Who knew you can do a 3.5 hour training on car seats? We sat for two days learning about (mostly) the challenges of adopting from foster care - the physical, mental and emotional problems that children from foster care are likely to be struggling with. My reaction after the training - anyone who adopts from foster care after that kind of training has to be both brave and compassionate! Our trainers said they were giving us information so no one would walk into fost-adopt with their eyes closed. Well, our eyes are definitely open. Mostly, with compassion.
So that's whats going on in our neck of the woods. Our training for fost-adopt is complete, now we wait to complete the mountains of paperwork to update our homestudy for foster care (generally, it takes about 6 months from placement to finalization in fost-adopt, thus we have to be licensed as foster parents). We have also applied to be rescue parents with Project Cuddle. That makes three programs - domestic infant adoption, rescue parents, and soon, fost-adopt. Whichever path the Lord chooses to bring a child or children into our home, we are open, available, waiting and hopeful. Your continued prayers are very much appreciated...
Hope-filled Faith
