Always room for one more

LYING in the dark, the baby cries.

His foster parents long to hold him, but they know the touch of their hands will cause him more pain and turning on lights will be more than the newborn’s eyes can handle. Because the slightest change in texture sends pain shooting through the child’s sensitive nerves, they carefully place a specially made blanket of soft material with rounded corners over him.

The baby suffers from methamphetamine withdrawal – a devastating result of an addiction of his birth mother. The baby’s caregivers are Tim and Erin Bonine of Sandpoint, foster parents who have helped many newborns through this excruciating process.

“There is so much that isn’t known about the effect of meth on kids,” said Tim, a Sandpoint physician. What is known is that for the first six to eight weeks after birth, the drug-affected child cannot tolerate touch, is jittery and sensitive to noise, vomits excessively and cannot filter out any of the sensory information he or she receives. The Bonines say there is an ever-growing need for more foster families who are willing to take these medically needy children into their homes.

“We would like to get to the point where we help (the baby) through the first six to eight weeks of (meth) withdrawal,” said Erin. “Then we will train another foster home to take care of them after that.”

The couple’s journey into foster parenting began in Oregon in 1996. Erin’s aunt had been a foster parent, and Erin knew she wanted to do something to help foster children. Single at the time, Erin chose respite care for foster families. It took one 30-day stay with a foster child for her to know that being a foster parent was her calling.

During the time Erin began fostering children, she became friends with Tim. They were colleagues at the hospital where Tim worked as a resident and Erin in staff and patient education. As they grew closer, Tim became an integral part of lives of the kids that Erin fostered. They married the day after Tim graduated from his residency and moved to Great Falls, where Tim was stationed in the Air Force. With them, they took the first two children whom Erin had fostered: a brother and sister who had been in seven foster homes early in their lives. The couple eventually adopted the two children, now 10 and 12 years old.

During their four years in Montana, Tim and Erin continued to foster children. They adopted another little boy but were devastated when they could not adopt that child’s half-brother, a child who had lived with them for nearly two years. “Losing him was very traumatic,” said Tim. And because of that pain they considered not fostering anymore.

When they moved to Sandpoint three years ago, the Bonines and their three adopted children sat down as a family and discussed what they could do to help kids. When the three children realized they may not have any more foster siblings, they all began to cry. The oldest child looked at Erin with tears streaming down his face and said, “But Mom, this is what we do as a family.”

The decision was clear – they all wanted to continue as a foster family. Eventually the little boy they had left back in Montana came to live with them in Sandpoint, and they are in the process of adopting him.

All the children know they are part of a family and are aware that when the family makes a decision to accept another child into their home, there are sacrifices and choices to be made.

“They know it may mean only one activity per year they can sign up for instead of one per season,” said Erin. Tim points out that there are also significant sacrifices such as one-on-one time with his kids. But they are proud of the choices the kids have made. They are always willing to sacrifice to help out another child.

Over the past eight years, 44 foster children have passed through the Bonine family’s doors. They have adopted four of the children and are in the process of adopting three others who live with them. The ages of the children living in their home range from 2 to 16. Six of the seven have been affected by drugs or alcohol from their birth mothers, the long-term effect of which can be attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other learning disabilities. The 2-year-old needs constant monitoring and is fed through a feeding tube.

The Bonines admit that taking care of seven children leaves them exhausted at times and in a constant state of juggling choices. But they would not have it any other way. Even their first wedding anniversary was spent in the neonatal intensive care unit, feeding and bonding with a newborn who subsequently lived with them for eight months. In the last seven years, they have been away as a couple once. They have never had a honeymoon, and when members of their church offer to take the kids so they can have a night out, they decline.

“This is where we want to be,” said Erin. “It is a selfish act on our part because we get so much from these kids.”

Tim agrees. “A social worker once told us that the children may not always remember our name or face, but they will always remember that we were the first people who loved them,” he said.

Tim understood what the social worker was talking about when a young boy they had fostered for the first 18 months of his life returned to see them when he was almost 3. He instantly climbed onto Tim’s lap and within five minutes was calling him daddy. It is moments like that which make it all worthwhile.

“Feeling you are doing God’s work is amazing,” said Erin. “I have no doubt in my mind that is why we are here.”

They have one extra bed in their home and are keeping it open in the event another medically affected child needs it. In the meantime, they say they are blessed and know they are doing the work God intended them to do. “We are making a difference in the world,” said Erin, “one child at a time.”