This mama adopted a 3rd sibling after learning she was fostering son’s biological sister ❤️

Families are made in all kinds of different ways, and for Katie Page, motherhood came through fostering to adopt as a single parent, a process she hopes more families in the United States will consider.

But Page’s journey through foster care and adoption didn’t just make her a mom, it also reunited siblings. This mama first learned that her two adopted children, Grayson and Hannah are biological siblings. Then, she adopted their little brother, Jackson. She suddenly had three kids under 25 months!

It’s been a long journey to becoming a mama of three. Jackson was born in 2018, and because Page had already adopted his two older siblings, she was the one adoption workers called when he needed a home. After two years of fostering, Jackson became her legal son, as she announced this week.

Jackson’s Journey to Adoption

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Page’s family’s story is beautiful. It all started after a divorce changed her life plans and Page looked into fostering as a single parent and helped multiple children by providing a loving foster home temporarily. In 2016, Page began fostering an unnamed newborn boy who had been left at a local hospital. She fell in love with that baby boy, called him Grayson, and was thrilled when she got to adopt him 11 months later.

Two weeks after Grayson was officially adopted, Page got a call about a baby girl who needed an emergency placement. She says her heart told her to say yes, and that yes let a miracle into her life.

“I adopted Grayson on the 25th of May at 11 months old,” Page tells Motherly. “Then Hannah was born June 2nd, so this is less than two weeks after all that.”

Page started to notice that the two babies had a lot of similar features, but the paperwork did not indicate the babies were related, because of the way Grayson had been placed at the hospital by his biological mother.

Slowly, more and more clues (and Page’s intuition) led her to suspect that her babies were related. A DNA test proved her right, and in 2018 Grayson and Hannah were recognized as both biological and legal siblings when Page adopted Hannah.

Page is grateful that everything lined up as it did, even though it meant some crazy times as a single mom (who didn’t get maternity leave as a foster mom) with two babies at home, juggling day care schedules and a lack of sleep without the support of a partner (although a friend and her mom helped at different times).

“I took Hannah and had no idea how I was going to take care of her. I’m like, ‘I don’t even know how I’m going to figure this out,’ but it worked out,” Page tells Motherly.

Fate and the soon brought another foster baby, Jackson, into Page’s life. The three siblings are thriving and so is Page as a mom of three, as she’s documented on her blog and Instagram.

Page tells Motherly she hopes more people realize that single people can foster children and even foster to adopt. Early in her journey she had many people question if she was even allowed to and she was happy to explain that yes, single parents (or would-be parents) can be foster parents. There are so many children in the United States who need foster care.

“So the message needs to be clear that you can be a foster parent and change a child’s life [without a spouse],” says Page.

There are about About 400,000 children in foster care in the United States and about a quarter of those kids need an adoptive home, government data shows.

While certain groups (like LGBTQ+ people) have had to fight for the right to foster children, Page wants people to try, no matter their marital status, sexual orientation or religion. People didn’t believe that a single woman could create a family for foster kids, but this mama shows any loving parent can.

[A version of this post was originally published May 26, 2020. It has been updated.]