I can't think of enough positive exclamatory words to profess my love for respite care. After not sleeping for 4 weeks straight, we were given a two-night vacation from our foster care parental duties while all three kids spent the night at foster-certified babysitters' houses--the girls at one house and the boy at another, due to bedroom regulations and available space.
Adding the foster baby was WAY harder than bringing our daughter home as a newborn, as we didn't have the luxury of maternity/paternity leave, we had another baby that started waking us up again at night, and we had two other kids to take care of in addition to our home and work responsibilities. (Our house is still not as clean or as organized as it was on our "worst" days pre-foster care.) With our foster baby and our daughter taking shifts keeping us awake at night, we were walking zombies after a week, and nearly-dead after a month. When we were reminded of the possibility of respite care, we asked our caseworker to warn the baby's potential respite family that she doesn't sleep and that we have been waking up every 1-2 hours since she got here. She was unable to place all three kids together (hence the need for more qualified foster parents, even if they solely do temporary respite care, hint hint!), but she did find willing families to care for them for a weekend, and they later said that they'd take them again, woohoo!
I hope it doesn't sound terrible expressing my joy at having a one-baby weekend... but holy freaking crap we were absolutely exhausted. We had even mentioned to our case worker that we had dedicated one month to helping the new baby adjust, and we were willing to give it one more month to see if she would stop crying incessantly during the night, but that we would have to find a new foster home for her if she didn't show some improvement at night so that we could get some sleep.
When she came back the morning after her second night, she practically leapt into Cody's arms, giggling. He put her in her crib and she gave a big sigh, and went right to sleep. Since then, she's been slightly better--which has been really weird. We still have nights where she wakes up every 40 minutes for a few hours, but we've also had some nights where she sleeps for 3+ hours in a row. And she doesn't whine nearly as much during the day. We're not sure what changed--or if she was just feeling our exhausted energy before she left? But things have gotten significantly better, for some reason.
Cody and I have a big vacation planned with our daughter in June: two weeks in Australia and New Zealand! Foster children aren't allowed to leave the state, so they will be staying in respite care again for those two weeks. Knowing that we have this additional resource makes it so much easier to not feel trapped by foster care. We will probably use respite care again once more before our trip (and maybe twice, if I end up having to serve in jury duty, ugh) and it just feels like guilt-free, worry-free freedom to know that your children are in good hands when things get overwhelming and you just need a break. Which, again, I hope doesn't sound terrible to be so excited about child-free partying... but we totally were. :)
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