Woman Who Was a Foster Child Adopts Husband's Ex-Wife's Baby

Christie and Wesley Werts met and fell in love five years ago. When they married, her children, Megan and Vance, and his children, Austin and Dakota, all became part of a blended family.

Now the family has a seventh member, Christie told Newsweek. She has adopted the baby of her husband's ex-wife, a boy called Levi.

Christie, 48, and Wesley, 45, finalized Levi's adoption in January 2023, after a 16-month process. He now lives with his family in Ohio and is about to celebrate his 2nd birthday.

A Difficult Start

Levi was born in Texas in August 2021, the child of Wesley's ex-wife and her new partner. Both parents had drug problems and Levi's mother was using while pregnant. She gave birth prematurely, at 33 weeks, and died four days later, because of complications linked to her addiction and a COVID-19 infection.

"When Levi was born we had no idea his mother was pregnant," Christie said. "No one had heard from her for over a year. Her sister got in touch with us to tell us what had happened and that there was this baby with no one to care for him."

Christie had been a foster child herself and was concerned Levi would end up in the foster care system, so she felt they had to step in.

"When my husband called me and told me about the situation, I think he already knew I was going to say we need to take him."

There are around 391,000 children in foster care across the country, according to the nonprofit Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Just under a third are eligible for adoption, the institute states, and they wait three years on average to be adopted.

That's not what the couple wanted for Levi, though it was undoubtedly a "strange situation."

They had been hoping to expand their family too. "Before Levi, we had wanted to try to have a child of our own," she said. "I'm in my forties so we knew that we would probably need fertility treatment, so I thought let's just think about it and what will be will be."

During this period, Christie was having a recurring dream about a blue-eyed, blond-haired baby. "For three months I kept having this dream. Sometimes he was a baby, other times a toddler," she said.

"I had to fly from Ohio to Texas to meet with Child Protection Services and meet Levi for the first time. I had no idea if I was going to be able to connect with this baby I had never met.

"But when I walked in and saw this blond-haired, blue-eyed baby, I immediately fell in love. It was a very surreal feeling. This was my son. Even my daughter [Megan] when she first saw him said, 'He has our button nose!'"

It was odd for Wesley too, she said. "At one point he was in love with this woman and it didn't work out, and now he has this child from her and another man, so it's equally as strange for him. But we have always thought of Levi as ours."

Christie had already begun the process of adopting her stepchildren. Austin, 14, and Dakota, 10, have the same biological mother as Levi, so adding him to the family seemed natural.

"It's a lot to process for a lot of people but honestly, it seems a lot crazier than it was. At the time it just made sense," she said.

The Long Road

Adoption of a newborn in the U.S. is not quick. The National Adoption Foundation says it can take between two and seven years, though "the longest part of the process is finding an available newborn."

The adoption of an older child from foster care can be completed in six to 18 months, according to the foundation. Laws vary, but paperwork, home visits and background checks will be required in any U.S. state.

Wesley and Christie were not expecting the process to be easy, but they did think their particular circumstances would make a difference.

"We thought because the aunt was involved and we had his half-siblings that the process would be fairly straightforward," said Christie. "It wasn't."

Levi's biological father was still in the picture and had parental rights despite his substance use problems. Until those rights were legally terminated, the baby couldn't leave the state of Texas.

So, the family moved instead, relocating to Texas so they could attend court hearings and be closer to Levi. "We sold our house and moved our four children to Texas a month after Levi was born, in September 2021, to wait out the time until the courts terminated the biological dad's rights."

The couple were also obliged to pass all the tests and checks for adoptive parents.

"We had to take 40 hours of classes, CPR classes, tuberculosis tests, two home inspections, many hours of interviews, financial checks and we had to give our fingerprints for background checks twice," she said.

It took 16 months from the start of the fostering process in September 2021 to the completion of the adoption in January 2023.

Throughout this period, the baby did not have a first name. His biological mom had not given him one before she died, but she had specified that his surname was Werts. "He was known as 'Infant Werts' for 16 months," said Christie, "even on the court papers."

Even though the biological mom had not spoken to Wesley in years, and had not even used his surname during their marriage, she wanted the baby boy to have that name.

Christie believes this was a signal. "I think in that hospital she knew how sick she really was," she said. "She had already had two other children taken away from her, and two more in care, and I think she was trying to leave a sign that we should take this one."

While all this was going on, Wesley and Christie were also considering bringing another child into their home. "I said we have room for one more, and we looked into adopting a 17-year-old, but by the time we got licensed he had already aged out of the system."

Teenagers ageing out while they wait for a family is a sadly common feature of foster care in the U.S. The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute states that of the 19,130 children who aged out in 2021, "a majority left without the emotional and financial support necessary to succeed in life that other children can receive within a family."

Levi now has that support. Once his paperwork was finalized, he moved with his parents and his siblings—Austin, Dakota, Megan, 21, and Vance, 15—back to Ohio.

Happily Ever After

The baby was born prematurely, weighing just 4lb 9oz, and he did have some problems at first. "He had quite a few issues with his hands," said Christie. "They were clasped tight and he couldn't move them to his mouth. But this only lasted a couple of weeks.

"He's fine now, he's super-smart. Now he knows how to count to five and he knows a lot of colors."

Wesley and Christie intend to "tell him where he came from when the time's right," she said.

When she shared Levi's story on social media, she said the reaction was predominantly positive but one comment came up a lot: "Don't forget to mention his bio mom."

"We have no interest in erasing her," she said. "Of course he will know about her and her memory will be a part of his life, and we're still in contact with the aunt and grandfather."

They will explain "when he can fully understand that he didn't come from my belly—and he'll have his half-brother and sister to support him through that, as well as us and his other siblings."

That time is still a way away. "At the moment, he's mainly interested in his toy trucks."

Ultimately, Christie said: "I think we took a bad situation and turned it into a love story. We did it all for the children, for Levi, and we wanted our children to have their sibling."

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