CINCINNATI — He almost died.
Both of his adopted parents tell me that in different ways over the course of our interview. The details involve a breathing machine and several different medical opinions. But after the young boy survived, Jenn Ryan said doctors told her the child they began fostering at 16 days old might never walk.
Ryan's standing by the slide at a park near where they used to live. The boy she's talking about, Nova, is now 2 years old. He runs past her, laughing. Several times.
Ryan smiles, because now they worry about him running away.
“He’s the love of my life,” she said.
WATCH: As the number of foster parents continues to decline, a local couple pleads for help
Ryan and her husband adopted Nova last summer.
"He’s just a joy to be around," said Ernie Ryan. “He loves life."
Ernie had just changed a diaper and is holding another young child who keeps reaching for the camera. Ernie is telling me about how they eventually got custody of Nova, and then he starts crying. He apologizes and takes a deep breath.
“We feel that if we didn’t have him, things may have gone south,” Ernie said.
He's a mailman. His wife's a social worker. If you asked them a few years ago, they both said they wouldn’t have felt equipped to handle all the challenges becoming a foster parent has brought them.
But they have.
Ryshel Bowling is a foster care and adoption program manager at Beech Acres Parenting Center. At any point last year, she tells me there were about 3,500 children in the foster care system in Hamilton County.
“We simply don’t have enough parents to meet that need,” Bowling said.
Several times, she acknowledges that being a foster parent is hard work. But she points to the Ryans as an example — they're extraordinary because of how ordinary they are.
“Normal families can be foster parents and make a huge difference,” Bowling said. “And they do that because they have support."
As a social worker, Jenn told me she often saw the bad side of the system. She and her husband started fostering by helping out friends, with no intention of doing more than that.
Then, they said they fell in love with the children.
"Nova is a special boy. He's my shining star," Jenn said. “I couldn’t be happier."
A few months after the couple adopted Nova, the couple began fostering two other kids.
