From assumptions to adoption: Follow one Louisiana woman's journey to motherhood
Michelle Marcotte had made several assumptions about her life. She had assumed that she would marry one day, and children would follow. As the years passed, she dedicated her life to the work of journalism, and year by year, as she watched her friends marry off and then have children, she continued to assume that it would happen to her someday.
But then she turned 40.
By this time, she had changed careers and was in public relations at Swepco. The company provided her with the stability and support she needed to meet the demands of parenthood, but she was left asking herself, “I’m by myself, can I really do this alone?”.
No assumptions were needed to answer that question. Michele had been proving what she was capable of throughout her career, she knew she could take on this challenge. The only question left was how?
Dusting off her journalism skills, she started researching the options available to her. Both adoption and fertility treatments could be costly, leaving her to wonder if fostering might be a good fit.
She had known several people who had fostered, which helped her to visualize what it would look like. “I knew I would provide a child a safe space and I knew I would be committed for as long as the child needed me,” Marcotte said.
After she attended the orientation meeting, she completed the pre-service training and submitted the application for certification. Marcotte followed every step, including going to the office for fingerprinting, providing documentation from a physician that she was free of communicable diseases, giving references, and participating in the home study process which included a safety inspection of her home. Within a year she was certified.
When asked what kind of child she would be willing to foster, she turned to her handy bag of assumptions. Boy? Girl? “Better stick to what you know,” Marcotte thought and asked to foster only girls. Age group? ‘Definitely not newborn, toddler age should be easier’, Marcotte thought, as only a person who has no children can.
So, it was set, she was going to foster a sweet non-infant female child. She just had to wait for their phone call.
Then COVID paused everything.
Fast forward to a Zoom meeting and Marcotte saw an unknown number come up on her phone. With Zoom etiquette not clearly defined just yet, she waited until after the meeting to listen to the voicemail telling her they have a girl for her. By the time she called back the child had already been placed with another family.
After a quick conversation with her boss about if it was okay to start answering her phone during Zoom meetings, Marcotte went back to waiting.
And waiting.
By the time she received a phone call inquiring if she would be willing to foster a newborn baby boy, there was no time to check with her assumptions before she ecstatically said yes.
Not long after, two caseworkers were at her house with diapers, formula, clothes, socks, and a 4-pound, 4-day old, hazel-eyed boy. As one caseworker checked the house to make sure all was well, the other placed the baby in Marcotte’s arms.
When they left, Marcotte was left standing in her living room alone, except for the baby who was named Michael. “Looks like it’s just you and me,” Marcotte recalls thinking, “better buckle up”, she jokingly adds.
Marcotte stopped assuming and started counting on her Shreveport community making the road smoother than she had feared. Well as smooth as parenting can be, that is.
Within an hour her friend Holly Roca, who herself is adopted, was there to help. “She never showed doubt. The minute she got Michael she stepped into the role of ‘I need to protect this child,’” Roca said.
Marcotte knew her life would change, “One minute I was going out to dinner at 8 p.m. the next I was waking up every two hours in the night,”.
What she did not know was how she would love all the changes, “As soon as Michael came, I instantly loved being a mother, everything about it, even the lack of sleep, having him throw up all over me, poop all over me, even then. There was something about holding him and knowing he was relying on me completely.”
Yet, no matter how easy it was to slip into the role of mother, Marcotte knew that there was a process with fostering. The objective is to reunite the children with their biological parents, when possible.
Michael was born underweight and tested positive for amphetamines, “He was so tiny, I thought I was going to break him,” Marcotte recalls.
There were court dates and visitations with the biological parents, who had a history of addiction problems. “In the beginning, I did not know what to expect about the relationship with the parents, but they were very cordial, I wanted to help them.” During visits, they would joke that Michael had two moms.
Marcotte always made the court appearances but within months the biological parents did not.
“I did not let myself think about having him permanently until the state started the process of terminating the parents' rights,” Marcotte said. “The longer he was with me, the harder it would be when I thought about separating from him, but I did not let myself think about it too much”.
Marcotte remembers hearing people say that they were “called to adopt from God”, but in the beginning, she did not feel that. She did pray before the process, but it was not until time passed that her faith changed, it grew deeper, and she felt that God’s plans were greater than hers. “Everything fell into place, it was like it was meant to be, my life had a purpose now, to give him a home and to be his mom.”
That became official on April 5, 2023, in the Benton Courthouse by Judge Michael Nerren. Marcotte wore a light blue dress and Michael a matching shirt, Roca was there to help with the rambunctious toddler that he has become. A sign was made which read “For 738 days Jesus has written foster care in my story, today he wrote adopted”.
May 14, 2023, will be Marcotte’s first official Mother’s Day.
This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: How a Louisiana woman became a mom through adoption
