Fostering a Child

From what I know, "fostering" means taking care of a child (who is not related to you) temporarily. I guess this is what my family is doing now.

J, a child of my father's friend, is staying with us in the past month. Her mother just gave birth and as the mother spends time healing and taking care of the newborn, J was brought to us. Her mother is unemployed and her father had occassional jobs. They live in a small room and they barely make ends meet. We have met J when she was just 2 weeks old and she spent 2 Christmases with us. She is treated like a family. We adore J like our own.

A neighbor told my mother that it is good karma to foster a child, even if we are not adopting her. She said that if I'm having difficulty getting pregnant, maybe fostering J will help add up good karma points. People in my community believes that adopting a child or even fostering one will tell the Universe that a couple is capable of bringing up their own child. There are many cases in our community wherein couples who've been trying to conceive for several years have adopted instead, thinking they would not be able to have a child of their own, and then a year or so later, got pregnant. It also happened to my colleague. They've been together for 10 years and had no plans of having a child and then she got pregnant after adopting a baby. They were not trying. The Heavens gave them their own baby.

Some people might raise their eyebrows at us for taking care of the child. It's hard work but we want to help and our house has so much joy now that J is there. Inay said I should "practice" taking care of a child. :)

We know that her parents will take her back soon. Parting with her will be difficult, especially with my parents. I guess this is what foster families need to go through.