Another precall
I got another precall this morning. Both precalls we’ve had this week were for women whose babies are due in early April.
The precalls are always about situations where the mother has issues that could potentially impact the health of her baby. At the end of our homestudy, when we started talking about the kinds of specific situations with which we would feel comfortable, Brett and I told the social worker that we would just rather have them call first.
We are actually pretty comfortable with some level of illegal drug use, although I am more than Brett. I think this comes from working in the shelter and meeting moms who used while pregnant and working with their kids. Fetal alcohol syndrome still really scares me — far more than hard drug use — because I can think of some specific clients whose situations were so damn heartbreaking.
We had one client I remember in particular, R. She had a son who was in foster care and then she gave birth to a daughter not long after her second stay with us. She came back to visit us now and then and it seems like I remember that her daughter did not live with her very long either but I could have that wrong. Anyway, R. had fetal alcohol syndrome and it was the cause of her homelessness. She couldn’t keep a job, she couldn’t make good decisions, and she could be really inappropriate in her personal relationships. She also had one hell of a temper and it seems to me if I’m remembering correctly that she got kicked out the first time she used our shelter. Despite some of her more problematic personality traits, she could be very likeable.
I remember talking to her a lot even though I wasn’t her case manager. I think that the first time she was in shelter, I was a resident assistant, which means I had nothing to do with case plans anyway. I hung out in the office and got clients their meds, helped them with the food closet or just sat and talked with them. R. would come sit with me some evenings and we would talk. I didn’t know she was a mother then because she never mentioned her son. The second time she entered shelter, she was pregnant and that’s when I got to know her as a parent.
R. made lots of incredibly stupid choices because she couldn’t think things through. She had no concept of consequences and would go and make the same mistakes she made the week before. It was so frustrating because you knew that she wasn’t going to change because that part of her brain was broken. That was just who R. was. You could say, “Now R, remember that you are not going to tell your potential new boss to go f*ck himself” and she’d agree that was a very good idea and then she’d go to work and tell him to go f*ck himself. It was that kind of thing. You couldn’t exactly hold her responsible but the whole point of shelter was to help our clients take responsibility. So what do you do with people like R.? Help them access programs and hope for the best, I guess.
It scares me to think of parenting a child like that. On the other hand, whose to say what’s going to happen? The risks our child may have aren’t the sum of who that child might be.
There’s a wonderful book called Choosing Naia about the true story of a young couple who learns that their child is going to be born with Down syndrome and their struggle to make a decision about whether or not to continue the pregnancy. Reading it helped give me perspective about saying “yes” to the various precalls we’ve received.
I would be comfortable with babies with lots of potential disabilities (for lack of a less offensive term, that’s not what I mean) but fetal alcohol syndrome would give me pause, too. I think you know that my SIL and her DH adopted two children through foster care after having two bio children of their own. One of their adopted sons has FAS and it has really impacted him. He’s 8 now and still has a significant amount of cognitive impairment, aggression, and lack of understanding about what’s appropriate. He has difficulty paying attention to his bodily signals. I feel so sad for him because my SIL doesn’t have the money to get the really good therapy he needs - I think he needs psychological therapy to cope with the fact that his mom abandoned him when he was 4 and obviously old enough to know what’s going on, and OT to address some of the other issues.
I used to say that I would be willing to adopt a child that had any impairments because I really believe those kids need love as much as (or even more than!) any others. But having watched what my sister has gone through in the past 4 years, I don’t think it would be fair to the existing children in my home to take on the challenge of a child with FAS.
I love Choosing Naia, I think it should be required reading for every parent.
Have you read “Expecting Adam” by Martha Beck? I’ve been too chicken to, so far, though I really love Beck’s wit and wisdom. I’m co-guardian to my brother, Stephen, age 33, who has Down’s. He’ll eventually live with us when my parents pass on.
I just checked that web site and had a nice bawl over the photos. I’m adding this book to my reading list, for sure. I’d not heard of it before, so thanks for referencing it.
I recently saw a presentation on FAE/FAS. One of the things the presenter discussed was a study they had conducted with chicks. They exposed one chick to alcohol in utero and left the other alone and then they placed the chicks in a box with a pane of glass seperating them from their food. The unaffected chick bumped into the glass and then figured out that she could go around to get the food. The affected chick just ran into the glass over and over again, never figuring out how to get to the food. Very interesting…
Michael Dorris’s book, The Broken Cord, made it sound as if FAS made children permanently unable to contemplate the consequences of their actions. Since that is one of the temporary effects of ethanol as well, someone will eventually be able to use that effect to improve our understanding of how the brain works.
I wonder, do we have any information about the timing of ethanol exposure and the severity of its effect? We’re in the middle of January…early April is a long time from now. I assume they’re helping the mom as much as she’ll let them. Maybe it’s not too late.
I have read Expecting Adam, it was really wonderful. It’s actually a very uplifting story.
Kate:
I have no doubt it’s uplifting; I really enjoy Ms. Beck’s writings. Thanks for sharing that, as I do intend to read this book.
I should’ve shared a little more about why I’m too “chicken” to read these books. I’m not sure why, but I become extremely emotional when around anything in the media featuring someone with Down’s. Two seasons of Oprah featured her kissing someone w/Down’s, and I’d bawl my eyes out. “Life Goes On,” the TV show, used to bring me to tears. Don’t even get me started on the movie, “The Seventh Sign,” or that episode of Law and Order: SVU featuring a woman with Down’s who becomes pregnant. It’s just a very raw place for me, because I love my brother so much, and I think somehow these hyperprotective urges come up in me. So I say I’m too “chicken” to read stuff like this because I know the emotions it will bring up, particularly because I’m currently pregnant at age 36, and therefore in general at higher risk of having a child with Down’s myself. I’m on this “over 35″ due date list, and half a dozen of the women are on there saying their ultra sounds are showing this or that marker for Down’s, and it’s very scary for everyone.
Blah blah blah, but a bit of history nonetheless. I wouldn’t love a child, adopted or otherwise, any less if he or she had Down’s. But, I also know many of the realities of it, too. There are myriad joys, but sadnesses, too. Steve will never get to marry or have kids of his own. He will never be totally self-sufficient. And wiping a 33-year-old’s bum who can’t reach around is no picnic, either!
Knowing how scared my ma has felt for him since day 1, wondering what might happen to him if she weren’t around. Lots of emotions there for me, tightly bound.
It occurs to me that this is a really odd place to put all of these feelings, but there they are. I will say I’ve experienced far more joy–and empathy–from knowing and loving my brother than not.