One day, my sister and I found my mom, phone in hand, with a smile across her face.
“I just got off the phone with Barker,”
I stared at her because this meant very little to 11-year-old me.
“Barker?”
“The Barker Foundation! We’re going to be a Cradle Care family!”
That’s how it all began. After that, she explained to me and my three siblings that we would be the transitional family for a baby between the time he or she was born and then adopted or returned to their birth mother. At the time, this seemed like any of my mom’s other ideas: slightly outlandish and definitely not directly relevant to me. Little did I know that this would change my life in the best way possible.
I can remember my mom explaining to me that they weren’t just guests in our family, but members of our family during their time with us. This didn’t entirely compute with me, because I couldn’t understand that it would really make a difference to them...
For the next few months, we worked with The Barker Foundation to become approved as a Cradle Care family. Throughout the home studies, I learned little by little just how big of a deal this was. A baby, a real, tiny human, was going to join our crazy clan of 6. I was
In most of my milestones growing up, I can remember having a baby in the family. I have pictures with babies before school dances, at my high school graduation, and over countless holidays. They are just as much a part of my story as I am of theirs, which is something I am forever grateful for.
Being part of a Cradle Care family taught me so much. It taught me that everyone has a story, that everyone has a future, and that everyone deserves to be loved in each stage of life. I feel connected to the adoption world, and I feel I am more understanding of the process and those involved than perhaps someone without these experiences. Beyond the lesson of unconditional love and understanding for birth mothers, babies, and adoptive families, these experiences shaped my own future. I now study nursing at The University of Virginia, with the goal of one day becoming a midwife, working with mothers and babies. I am a skilled newborn care provider, which has been put to use with my current job at a company called Let Mommy Sleep, which provides overnight care for newborns. In my everyday life, my experiences as a Cradle Care Sister are called upon in some way or another and definitely are presented in my passions and career goals. I suppose I’ll never know if I would have had these goals and passions without The Barker Foundation, but one thing is for sure: my life changed for the better the day my mom placed that very first baby in my arms.