But when I looked into the financial end of fostering, I discovered that in our area, foster parents were given stipends that covered all the costs associated with the child they were caring for. When I showed Shimshon that our finances would not be harmed by becoming foster parents, he agreed to go ahead.

Now the question was what type of child to accept. We were wary of taking in a child who had been abused or severely neglected, as we weren’t sure how that would affect our own six-year-old daughter. We were also afraid that the parents of such a child would be dysfunctional and difficult to deal with. We decided, therefore, to offer to foster a child with special needs. Such a child, we figured, would have been given up voluntarily by the parents, rather than forcibly taken away by child services, which meant we wouldn’t have much contact with the parents.

We applied to a local Jewish agency to become foster parents, and after completing the paperwork and undergoing the requisite interviews and inspections by social workers, we were approved. Several months later, we received notification that a month-old Jewish baby with Down syndrome needed a foster home.

The agency set up a meeting between us and the Cohens, whose baby we’d be fostering if they gave their approval. Zack and Eleanor Cohen, a poor immigrant couple who had three children other than this baby, were devastated by the birth of a child with Down’s, and the thought of caring for him was too overwhelming for them. The baby was still in the hospital, due to Down’s-related medical issues — he had a hole in his heart, and he was not eating well — and the Cohens did not think they could bring him home.

We had thought, naively, that dealing with parents of a child with special needs would be easier than dealing with parents who were dysfunctional. But already at our first meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Cohen we realized that this was not going to be a smooth process.

That first meeting was brutal. The Cohens were very suspicious, wondering aloud why we — or anyone — would want their son. Eleanor cried her way through the meeting and kept asking her husband, “Are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” It was heartbreaking to see the pain of parents giving up their child.

Another tearful meeting ensued when we came to the hospital to pick up our foster son, after the Cohens had given their approval. Eleanor was bawling, and even the nurses, who had cared for the baby for the first month of his life, became emotional. I was emotional, too, but for a different reason: The moment I laid eyes on the baby, lying there waiting for someone to take him home, I immediately thought to myself, This baby is mine.

The baby had not yet had a bris and did not have a Jewish name. His English name was Jeffrey, a name I couldn’t bring myself to use for this holy, pure neshamah. Although the doctors had assured the Cohens that the baby could undergo bris milah despite his health issues, Zack and Eleanor were too worried and beleaguered to make the necessary arrangements. As traditional but not fully observant Jews, the halachic requirement of performing a bris on the eighth day or as soon as possible thereafter was not high on their list of concerns.

Our first priority, after becoming foster parents, was to see to it that our baby had a bris. We didn’t want to step on the Cohens’ toes, however, so rather than arranging the bris ourselves, I asked Eleanor each time we spoke what was happening with the bris. “We already waited past the eighth day,” she would say. “Maybe wait a little more.”

I understood that the bris was a sensitive issue for Zack and Eleanor. On one hand, they wanted to host the celebration themselves, but on the other hand, they were embarrassed to show their baby with Down’s to their family and friends, especially since they had already given him up for foster care and were not planning to raise him. It was easier for them to just keep procrastinating.

Shimshon and I consulted with our rav, who told us we should arrange for the baby to have a bris immediately. Legally, however, we could not have the bris done without the consent of the biological parents, and they kept dragging their feet and pushing us off.

Then, one day, Eleanor Cohen called with a proposition. “We’re prepared to do a bris,” she said, “but it’s hard for us to pay for the party. You and your husband are American Jews” — the implication being that all American Jews are wealthy — “so you pay for the bris, and we’ll throw a big party in our synagogue for all our friends.”

I was speechless. Shimshon and I lived frugally, just barely covering our bills, and the foster agency had assured us that we would not have to bear the financial responsibility for any child we took in. What a chutzpah of the Cohens to ask us to pay for their party!

Then Eleanor followed up with a knockout punch. “This wasn’t my idea, Batya,” she added. “Our rabbi said you should do this as a segulah for children, and if you do, you’ll make your own bris within a year.”

I am generally an easygoing, nonjudgmental person, but that statement made my ears grow hot. Not only was Eleanor asking us to foot the bill for her party, she was trying to blackmail us into doing it by dangling the bait of a baby before us!

Throughout our years of secondary infertility, Shimshon and I had always refused to succumb to self-pity. Yes, we wanted more children, and yes, we were struggling with fertility issues, but we were grateful to Hashem for the many blessings in our lives, and the last thing we wanted from anyone — least of all the biological mother of our foster son — was pity. Yet here was Eleanor, who had just given up her own child, exploiting my desire for children for her own selfish benefit. The nerve!

For the first time I could remember, I actually felt sorry for myself. We had nobly taken in a child whose parents couldn’t or wouldn’t raise him, and now his mother had made me feel like a nebach instead of a benefactor.

Besides, Shimshon and I weren’t the type to run after segulos. A chashuveh rav who taught me in seminary had explained, in one of his classes, that segulos are like icing on a cake. “When you eat the icing without the cake, it tastes disgusting,” he had said. “Only if you have the cake, the mitzvah, together with the icing, the segulah, is the combination meaningful.”

We certainly were not going to pay for Baby Cohen’s bris purely as a segulah to merit our own baby boy.

But our rav had said that the baby should have a bris immediately. We called him again and updated him on the latest developments.

“How much will it cost to make the bris?” he inquired.

“It’s not going to be cheap,” Shimshon replied. “The parents are planning to throw a big party.”

“Let’s forget the parents for now,” the rav said. “Imagine that this baby is simply a needy Jewish child, not theirs or yours. How much would you be willing to spend on the zechus of making a bris for a Jewish child? Keep in mind that even if it’s just a matter of making the bris a few days or weeks earlier than it would otherwise happen, it’s still a huge mitzvah.”

The rav’s question completely reframed the situation for us. Rather than viewing the idea of paying for the bris as capitulating to blackmail, or chasing after a segulah, or doing the Cohens a favor, we began to see this simply as an opportunity for a mitzvah.

Shimshon and I sat down and calculated how much we could afford to spend on a bris. Then, we called the Cohens and told them that we’d be willing to contribute up to that amount to cover the cost of the bris. “You can decide if you’d like to invite a lot of people and have a simpler menu, or host a smaller crowd and make a more upscale affair,” I told Eleanor.

In the end, the Cohens decided to throw a big bash but keep the food simple. Well-attended as the celebration was, it was a very painful event. The baby’s older siblings cried the whole time. They were confused as to what was going on with their little brother, as were most of the guests. Apparently, Zack and Eleanor hadn’t informed their relatives and friends that they had put their baby — whom they named Efraim, or Effy for short — in foster care. Even the baby’s grandmothers had no idea who I was; apparently, Eleanor had told them I was some sort of nurse who was taking care of him for the time being because of his medical issues.

Two of my siblings who lived nearby came to the bris to be there for me. I was very grateful to them, because otherwise I would have had no one to talk to the entire time.

Exactly nine months after the bris, I gave birth to a baby boy.

At the time of Effy’s bris, I had been undergoing non-invasive fertility treatments, but since we had been pursuing those treatments for a while without results, we had started to consider more invasive options. “Let’s try the lighter treatment one more time,” I had told the doctor.

This time, it had worked. “Makes sense,” the doctor remarked when I told her that the successful treatment had coincided with Effy’s arrival. “When you’re taking care of a baby, your body is in nurturing mode, and that gets the hormones flowing.”

When Effy’s mother learned, several months later, that I was expecting, she had her own explanation. “It was the rabbi’s blessing,” she told me confidently.

I saw it differently. We had shown Hashem that we were prepared to take care of His child, and He had responded by giving us our own child.

Effy was an adorable, delicious baby, but one who needed tons of therapy and medical attention. In the meantime, I was going through a pregnancy and then taking care of another newborn, our son Yitzi. And Effy’s mother remained very much a presence in our lives, even though the contact between us was supposed to be limited. Often, Eleanor would call me late at night or early in the morning crying that she missed her son. While her pain was certainly understandable, it was not my job as her son’s foster mother to be her therapist or even her friend, and I found these calls intrusive and disturbing.

Officially, Eleanor was supposed to visit Effy once every two weeks. But she completely disregarded those guidelines, and at least once a week, she would call to tell me that she was on her way to visit Effy, and I should meet her in such-and-such place. If I told her it wasn’t a good time for me, she would moan, “I’m going to kill myself!”

During one of her visits, she noticed a scratch on Effy’s face; he had accidentally scratched himself, as babies often do. “I’m going to call the police!” she hollered at me.

One time, she complained that his nails were too long. “You’re neglecting him!” she accused me. The next time, I made sure to cut Effy’s nails right before his mother’s visit. “His nails are so short!” she exclaimed. “Why are you hurting my baby?”

In the summer, when the air-conditioning in my house was on most of the time, I dressed Effy in long-sleeved stretchies. When Eleanor saw that, she called the foster agency to complain that her baby wasn’t being dressed appropriately, and a social worker came down to our house to look through Effy’s drawers. She left satisfied that his wardrobe was adequate, but Eleanor still wasn’t placated, and continued to report to the agency that Effy wasn’t being dressed right.

Many times, I would make up with Eleanor to meet her at a certain time, and then she simply wouldn’t show up. When I’d call to ask where she was, she’d say, “Oh, it wasn’t a good time. Let’s meet tomorrow, okay?”

And then I’d have to put my foot down and tell her, “Sorry, our next meeting will have to be in two weeks.”

It was very difficult for me to tell Effy’s mother she couldn’t see her son — and that difficulty was compounded when she responded by screaming, “You want to kill me, Batya! How can you be so cruel?”

She would beg me to let her come to my house, even though the foster agency’s official rule was that our meetings had to be held in a neutral place. Much as I would have liked to accommodate her, I knew that allowing her into my house was asking for trouble. She’d tattle to the social worker that the paint on the wall was chipped, or that she had seen an ant in the kitchen.

The first time I made an exception and invited the Cohens to my house was for Effy’s second birthday party. I scrubbed the house top to bottom in advance of that party and made sure to prepare an impressive menu and program so that Eleanor would have nothing to complain about.

At the party, she confided to me, “I hate all the boundaries you set in place for me, but I know it’s the right thing.”

My heart went out to her. Deep down, she really was grateful to us for caring for Effy, but that gratitude was buried under layers of pain and self-recrimination.

Effy is now two and a half, and we have a fourth child on the way, baruch Hashem. Recently, the foster agency called to ask whether we could take in another child, and I happily replied, “I have my hands full right now, but one day…”

Effy is quite a handful, and his mother is a handful as well. Recently, we took a family trip to Eretz Yisrael. Before the trip, when I called Eleanor to request her consent to travel abroad with Effy, she said to me, “I could use a vacation, too. How about buying me a ticket to come along with you, hmm?”

I had come a long way since Effy’s bris, and her comment did not ruffle me in the slightest. “You really should go on vacation,” I agreed. End of conversation.

I’ve certainly grown a lot through the experience of being a foster parent. And the brachah our family has enjoyed since Effy’s arrival has been nothing short of astounding. Most obvious, of course, is that we’ve been blessed with another child of our own, plus another natural pregnancy. But we’ve also seen blessing in so many other areas.

For one thing, our finances have eased considerably since Effy joined our family. Several months after we took him in, I received a promotion at work, along with a considerable raise. Shortly afterward, Shimshon was fired from his job — but he quickly found a different job with better pay. In addition, because Effy has special needs, the foster agency pays for babysitting and household help, which has made my life a lot easier. And Racheli, who was a pampered only child before Effy’s arrival, has blossomed into a doting, responsible older sister who is delighted with her little brothers (although she’s davening really hard now for a sister).

Shimshon and I have also grown much closer as a result of this whole process. Our shalom bayis was fine before we took in Effy, but we did experience considerable stress in our marriage, mostly related to fertility and finances. Today, even though our life is a lot busier, things are somehow a lot smoother, and our relationship has become deeper and more harmonious.

But the biggest brachah of all is Effy himself. To the rest of the world, Effy might seem like an “undesirable” child. Yet when I look at him, I see someone who’s loving, kind, and sweet, someone who’s valuable not because of what he does or achieves but simply because he’s Hashem’s child.  —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 724)