Woman, 21, Legally Adopts All 4 of Her Younger Siblings, Says They Finally Feel ‘True Peace’ (Exclusive)

Baylee Laine is now mom to her four siblings and biological daughter

NEED TO KNOW

• Baylee Laine became a foster parent to her four siblings at just 19 years old
• She gave up a softball scholarship and paused her education to raise her siblings, later officially adopting them when she was 21
• Laine’s story went viral on TikTok, inspiring others in similar situations to share their experiences and seek advice

Baylee Laine was still in high school when she was left with a decision that would shape the rest of her life. Would she leave the situation she was brought up in, or would she step up for her siblings? 

Laine tells PEOPLE that her parents were separated by the time she was 5 and got divorced not too long after.

“By the time I was 8, CPS got involved,” Laine, now 28, shares, noting that her dad later took her and her brother into custody.

During that time, she notes that her mom went on to have four more kids with two other men. 

“If I wanted to spend time at my mom’s apartment, my dad would let me, but it was mostly because she was having a baby, so I would go and help her with the baby,” she explains. However, she noted it often left her in “bad” situations, as her mom would “have these men in and out of the house.”

“I would be like, ‘I’m out of here.’ I’d go back home with my dad, and it would only be for weekends at a time, and then a new man came along,” she shares.

When her mom got pregnant with her half-sister, Laine found herself going over more often to help raise the little one. Soon after, her mom got pregnant with twins, and Laine, overwhelmed and feeling like they were already in over their heads, says she had her “biggest breakdown.”

“I was like, ‘I can’t keep spending my summers taking care of your kids. I can’t keep doing this.’ I was a softball player and had a full ride to play softball,” she shares. “Then I started panicking. ‘What am I going to do with my life if my life basically revolves around helping my mom?’ She had twins, and then I took a step back.”

“My senior year of high school, I thought, ‘I’m not doing this. I’m going to go play softball. I’m going to move out of state and I’m going to get away from all of this.’ “

However, later that year, something changed. As she prepared to move away, she couldn’t quite shake a creeping thought.

“These kids are going to be all alone,” she remembers thinking.

“Then, I decided I’m going to stay, and if I stay, I’m taking them,” she says.

In the end, Laine “decided to stay home,” attending a community college while working with a paralegal.

“I was working two jobs. I used all my money, and then all of my teenage friends would donate money to me, and we ended up doing a GoFundMe. Most of it was word of mouth; friends of family and people donated to me,” she says. “We got close to $10,000, and I fought for two years with a paralegal to basically become a foster parent at 18 and get that approved.”

“Once we did that, I had to fight all three parents to get their rights taken from them, and for the state to see that clearly I can do this,” Laine adds.

During the custody fight, Laine says she was sleeping in the paralegal’s office, trying to figure out how they could prove that, despite being a teenager, she was fully capable of raising the family. 

After a few months, on Oct. 25, 2017, CPS dropped them off at her door.

Laine was 19 when the children were placed with her through foster care and officially adopted them two years later, when she was 21, making her the adoptive parent to her now-17-year-old brother, her now-14-year-old sister and now-12-year-old twins. She has also since welcomed a daughter, who is 3 years old.

“The minute they dropped them off to us in October, you’re full-time mom mode. There were no breaks,” she says. “I wasn’t leaving anybody’s side. The difference from fostering to adoption wasn’t that big of a difference in our day-to-day life, but it was like I could finally breathe. I struggle with this. I feel like I have to do everything perfectly to prove myself.”

Laine, who notes that their biological mom has been incarcerated since 2023, says there was a pressure to be “perfect” and a fear of “messing up” before the adoption was finalized.

“After the adoption, our life got a little bit smoother because there’s not so much of a schedule that we have to go through in the state. With the court dates and the visitation and catering to all the rules, we didn’t have to do that anymore,” she shares. “The fact that we were solidified and we were our own unit and we could walk away from it was the biggest difference.”

While Laine was still in college when she got custody, she paused her education and stopped working for a bit to take care of the kids full-time. 

“School also became too much because the twins were too little for the state-funded preschools, so I ended up quitting school,” she shares. “I did play softball at the school for a little while. Once I hired a paralegal, I stopped playing softball at the college. Then, I ended up dropping out.”

She tells PEOPLE that her partner at the time helped provide for them, in addition to state funding they received for the kids.

At the time, she was dealing with a lot, and says both she and her therapist agree she “zombied out.” 

“There were no emotions, no feelings. I became robotic. I had a job to do,” she shares. “I’m religious, so it was like, ‘God has put me here to do this. So if this is my one thing, then this is what I’m going to do.’ “

“I was dealing with kids with a very traumatic past. It wasn’t this peaceful,” she admits. “They were in my bed with me. They were never leaving my side. We had to take showers together because we could not be separated. It took a while for them to adjust to the fact that we have a comfortable home life now, but it was hard at first.”

Laine says it wasn’t until around 2020, when COVID-19 restrictions hit, that they started to feel more settled, since they were all together and she no longer felt like someone would take them away.

“Once COVID hit and we were all stuck at home, that was the most calm we all probably felt, because it was always a scary situation,” she says. “Is someone going to come and take us?”

“That has to do with being in the foster care system. Kids are always worried this isn’t forever. CPS is going to come pick me up or my parents are going to come pick me up, and they’re going to run away with me,” she continues. “Once COVID hit and we were all confined to our house and doing our nightly walks, that is where we felt true peace.”

Now, she is happy to share that her children are “100% past all of it.”

Recently, Laine was inspired to share her story by a TikTok trend.

“I saw someone post the trend of ‘Willing and Able’ with Noah Kahan’s song. She was a single mom and it was her and her daughter, and I was like, ‘Wow, I can totally post pictures of us,’” she shares. “I posted the pictures, the photos of me and the kids from the very start to the current day, and it blew up.” 

The video quickly went viral and amassed 6 million views, with many commenters sharing their own stories. 

“Hearing people have similar stories, even if they’re the aunt or they’re the grandma, or whatever it may be, it was nice to hear that there are similar stories,” she says. “I want our life to be normal. So seeing and hearing from other people that this is their normal… it validates that I don’t need to go find normalcy. We’re normal because there are so many other people who get to live life how we live.”

“You don’t know until you try and go find them,” Laine adds.

She also had several people reach out asking for advice, but she acknowledges that every situation is vastly different.

“It’s hard. I don’t know how realistic our story is for other people’s lives. But I encourage everybody who’s messaged me and said that they were in the same boat or they want to do that for their siblings,” she shares. “I encourage them, ‘Stay strong, girl. You can do it.’ If I can do it, anybody can do it. But it’s a lot.”

“I’ve said that to quite a few people, but just the fact that you’ve had this thought or this feeling, it says more than just the fact that your family life is in some sort of chaos and you feel like you should do something. Having that thought alone, you’re already steps ahead.”

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