• Fertility The journey of a pregnant woman thanks to a donated embryo: "If I had known, I would have frozen my eggs sooner"

  • Mother's Day Estela, blind and mother: "I do the best I can, like everyone else"

  • Crianza Adrián, 'father by commitment' with two shared custody in Madrid and Menorca: "I live on the edge, but I couldn't let go of my children"

María Algueró (Madrid, 38 years old) always wanted to be a mother.

She married her boyfriend in 2016 and her dream was to start not only a

family

, but a big one, like the ones they had both grown up in.

She is a Early Childhood Education teacher and has also dedicated herself to supporting families and teaching courses on parenting.

The world of children, then, was his thing.

But one thing is what you want and another is what life has planned for you.

Soon the

difficulties

in getting pregnant began and they went from doctor to doctor.

María even underwent surgery to try to pave the way for her motherhood, but nature was not on her side.

"We were clear that this was not going to stop us. That the children were

biological

, of course, was not essential. What we wanted was a child in our house," she says.

The decision of her story is almost overwhelming.

She and her husband have fulfilled their desires, very similar to those of any young couple, although the path taken has been against the current: they have three children in foster care and another one up for adoption, aged between 15 months

and 7 years

.

They are an atypical family, unprejudiced and built with determination, dedication and a lot of love.

Their story is written day by day, because nothing they planned, except becoming parents, has turned out as any couple would have predicted.

It started with two brothers "20 and 30 months old" walking through the door in foster care;

He continued incorporating a third party with just 7 months;

and ended with the adoption of a newborn, the youngest of the family, who suffers from a

serious neurological disease

of possible genetic cause.

The whole family.DR

"A year after we got married we already started the procedures for an international adoption, but right at that moment many countries that interested us cut off the flow," explains María.

Once again, life was going to take them on a different path, but they clung to every nail that appeared, without a doubt.

"I had heard about foster care and I started to ask my husband about it. As soon as he told me to look for information, we went to a talk. They

make everything very dark

, I guess it's a way of sifting," she adds.

One morning, months later, the phone rang.

She was receiving the children who entered the school where she worked: "When they told me they had two

little brothers

, I stopped listening. I went into the bathroom to cry."

They were the first members of that family that began at that exact moment: a boy and a girl.

This was almost five years ago.

"I didn't want them to be left alone and we offered to take in another one again," he says.

Like everything in this story, they repeated in determination.

They lived in a two-bedroom house, a problem for this new file to be resolved favorably.

In just a few months, they were already living in another, larger apartment.

The phone rang again.

"They had a 7-month-old baby. My heart almost stopped, because I wanted to experience that stage of parenting. When we went to the residence to meet him, the children were crazy about their new brother."

And she gets excited, of course.

Ten days after arriving home, that good news phone rang again and it was the first time that María and her husband

said 'no'

: "We had started a national adoption process for children with special needs and they had one. I gave it a lot of thought, but we had a newly arrived baby and the priority was to take care of him."

The reader will find few more negatives in her story.

It was not the optimal time, but the couple's hope of adoption remained.

"For many years the lists of ordinary national adoptions in the Community of Madrid were closed, but they were opened. We started the procedures, although we knew it was very difficult because 1,600 families showed up."

When the psychologists went to their house as part of the process to 'approve' their suitability, they told them that they were crazy, that how they wanted to get together with four children under 6 years old, that this was nonsense... And, indeed,

again They called them by phone.

The disease: the other part of the story

Maria with her little son.DR

María and her husband, until this moment, had built a special family, theirs, with difficulties, paperwork and moves, but more or less common.

Once again life had a script twist prepared.

"There began another part of our story. This baby came from the ordinary

adoption

list , that is, it was not a child with special needs. They told us that he was premature, 30 weeks old. He was 15 days old and was in newborns. "With medication and a breast pump we induced lactation," he recalls.

Again the will and again the decision.

"I'm a lactation consultant and I wanted to try it. I've actually kept her up to 7 months," she says.

The boy was fine and they went home.

"After eight days

he stopped breathing

. The middle one has respiratory problems, so I have resources at home and we knew how to see him quickly. He was admitted to the ICU," he says.

That was not an isolated episode nor was it derived from his prematurity.

At this point there are hospitalizations (in the first four months he was

admitted for more than 100 days

), portable oxygen and a child of only 15 months who is monitored.

"He stops breathing every day. His brain forgets to do it. That's why I can't separate myself from him. We don't have a diagnosis yet, but it could have genetic causes."

María tells this with relative calm, which only someone who lives

each day as a gift

can have .

"I live by and for him. With him we value every second. Sometimes he stops breathing and he comes back alone, but only sometimes. I can't be in the kitchen and he in the living room, for example."

María has a 99.9% reduction in working hours for a child with a serious illness (called Cume) and she dedicates her entire day to him.

The child takes a few steps and says "mama" and "bread."

For some it will be little, but not for her: "We have come this far, even though this child was dying. He is wonderful."

And be careful, in the afternoon, of course, the four children occupy her attention.

"They are my life, what truly fulfills me," she says.

It's time to ask where María is, not the mother, but the woman: "Right now I don't have time for myself. I'm never alone. With a baby like that it's impossible and he is now my priority. The time will come when I miss being stuck to him all day."

And she is already there.

She and her husband have learned

not to have expectations

.

Therefore, every minute counts.

This Christmas she got worse, but she did not need hospital admission.

Well so happy.

Permanent host family

See this post on Instagram

The older children, ages 7, 6 and 3, know that they have two families, the biological one, which they see once a month, and that of María and her husband.

There are three reception regimes: emergency (with a maximum duration of six months), temporary (when a short-term return is expected) and

permanent

(with no expected return).

This last case is that of the oldest children in this family: "They could be with me until they were 18, but we don't know. You are never prepared for a return, but the foster care has allowed me to be the mother that I am. If they returned with their biological families tomorrow, it would still have been worth it.

Clearer, the water.

María, although it may seem like a lie, has time to accompany other families, in an attempt to approach foster care naturally.

Through her IG account

@nuestrafamiliaespecial

she spreads her story to be a reference for her, just what she and her husband did not have when they began their unusual family adventure.


  • Maternity

  • Adoption