7. How to Burp a Heroin Addicted Baby
How to Potentially Head Off a $10,000 Mistake by Attending the Custody Hearing
CPS inspected our home the month Andy Jr. arrived, three times plus. They lost the first inspection papers, had to do yet another when we were fingerprinted and background checked, and more came later. “Your house is very clean”, they always said. I looked at the toys and legos scattered around and smiled at what I referred to as “controlled chaos”. Fingerprints littered the sunroom windows and doors, and they looked beautiful and artistic to me as long as no one was visiting. I had attempted to wash the windows frequently in the beginning and had given up on keeping up.
The first inspector looked at the crib, playpen, high chair and swing. She looked in our frig finding milk, yogurt and baby food. She checked to see that there was hot water and a flushing toilet. She turned to face us,”You’ve watched him before he came to live here, haven’t you?” and we nodded yes. She spoke clearly but with some surprise, “the parents told us he’d only been away four times in his life to anyone’s home.” We were silent not sure what to say. I didn’t want to make things worse for Jen, but Margie, the intake case worker, said, “Never mind. It’s obvious he’s comfortable here”, and handed us two contracts, each over twenty pages long, to look over and sign. We in turn, asked her for two things, the only two things we ever asked CPS for: birth certificates and social security cards. Andy was alarmingly nonverbal for his age, so we wanted to get him speech therapy through a program in our local preschool. We needed a birth certificate to register him. She agreed and left.
I decided to take a quick stop at the grocery store with Andy in tow. I quickly grabbed a few items with the little guy in the front seat of the cart. With my first set of children, I had always avoided taking them to get the weekly items needed because they got bored and quickly were more distracting than cute. It wasn’t unpleasant with this quiet toddler. Feeling like super mom smugly heading into the checkout isle, I spotted two old gray haired female Q-tips ahead of me. As I unloaded the groceries onto the conveyer belt I heard, “Parents today just don’t watch their kids anymore!” I realized slowly that they meant ME. I glanced down at Andy trying to zipper his coat pocket over a large candy bar he was trying to hide by stuffing it more deeply, looking at me innocently. I took the candy bar and he threw a small fit (as if any fit in a grocery store is ever “small”). I returned the chocolate to the rack. I calmly, with a growing audience of onlookers, paid for my purchases as I held him screaming and kicking in one arm. I pretended nothing was happening as we left the store, head high but my cheeks burning red with embarrassment. Later Ned and I reflected that Andy, at two and a half years of age, knew to try to hide the theft, and wondered how that was “a thing” already.
We drove to the hospital with Andy, again quiet, in his carseat, and I was thankful that I had bought necessities at garage sales to babysit initially (carseat, crib, stroller, a swing, etc.). This act was a throw back to my mom helping me with my biological babies as we critically examined high end sales in the ritzy neighborhood my first set of children grew up in. How do people do this who haven’t acquired all the massive amounts of equipment? In addition to furniture, there were clothes, chicken nuggets, books and toys.
Takeaway: Shop garage sales and consignment stores. Save money knowing you will need it for other children’s items, possible attorney fees, and remodeling to make kid friendly rooms, or restore the damage they may cause in their anger at absent parents...
We traveled the hour drive each way everyday to visit Adeline for a month and a half. We took turns staying with Andy while the other was with Addie. We tried to hold her often for as long as we could. Fortunately, the elderly baby volunteers helped us when we couldn’t stay for the two hours needed to decrease her pain. Nurses and other professionals didn’t talk to us much. We technically had no rights since we weren’t the parents or legal guardians. The contracts we had been given to sign with the children, called us “kinship caregivers”. A month into Adeline’s detox, there was a custody hearing for the children. We asked the initial case worker, Margie, as well as the hostile ongoing one, Angel, if we should attend. Both assured us that our presence was not necessary. We were tired and stressed, and welcomed a break from the drama that court might produce, so did not attend. We also were still not grasping the permanency of our plight believing the parents would come around to changing their lives for the sake of their offspring. BIG, BIG MISTAKE! Jen and Andy had barely visited their baby, and as time would tell, did not rehab to the best of our knowledge.
Once when I pulled into the hospital parking garage, I settled unconsciously behind Jen and Suzi’s vehicle as they came to see the baby. Oddly, they had been sitting in their car awhile. Jen got out after I had gathered my things and shut the engine off. I was surprised to recognize them, and voiced a desire to meet Suzi, who I could only see from the back where I was located. I was shocked at what I could make out-Suzi was large and filled out over her seat, with scraggly thin hair, hardly the beauty I had seen in a picture long ago. Jen told me it wasn’t a good day for the introduction and I left it at that. They were upset. They were told a social worker had to be present during the visit, and had waited over twenty minutes before giving up on her arrival and heading back to the parking lot. In Adeline’s room with Morphine and Fentanyl dripping into her IV, I saw a need for their supervision. I also didn’t think twenty minutes plus was long to wait in a big city hospital when visiting unannounced.
Takeaway: Attend the custody hearing. If you are caring for children and believe that the parents genuinely want to recover, reuniting the family, then you can support them. If you can assess that mom and dad do not think their problems require a lifestyle change, get custody away from Children’s Protective Services (CPS) and commit to being in the situation for a long while. Practice self care! Children’s Protective Services vary greatly from area to area in practice. The metropolitan one we were dealing with was our biggest nightmare, but our local county one gave custody to caregivers quickly by comparison, and was very supportive of us. (I have heard of others dealing with our local CPS who say they were a nightmare as well. It just depends who you talk to.) Our absence from the hearing cost us ten thousand in lawyer fees later getting custody away from CPS. They were not our friend in the parent’s county. Their goal of reuniting the family, along with enabling the parents to be irresponsible without consequence, made the situation quickly unbearable. There is no guarantee you will be granted custody, but you have a zero shot if you don’t attend. If you are part of CPS’s “permanency plan” (plan B), you might eventually be awarded custody if parents don’t clean up, but that would have been a risky two year plan for us without a guaranteed outcome. I didn’t trust the agency to make safe choices regarding the children, and CPS hadn’t been our friend. In fact, they had been salt in our already open wounds.
“I’m Mary. I understand you’re taking the baby home today. Do you want to know how to take care of her? Some tips?”, asked a tiny older than dirt and very bent over woman in the traditional volunteer’s red vest. I studied her for a split second before saying, “Yes, please.” She was the first to directly talk to us, and offer any information without a worried attitude. I thought that after raising two babies of my own, I had it covered but something told me to listen to her. “She was born addicted to heroin so she will be kinda full of gas more than most. It seems rough the first time you see it, but at some point, you won’t be able to calm her, so here’s how to burp her.” I watched in amazement because I was sure this lady was too crooked to sit down in the chair next to me, let alone burp Adeline. Even her fingers were bent at the joints. She took the baby upright on her knee, straddling her thigh and stepped her foot firmly to the point of sudden drop down to thump on the floor, jarring the month and a half infant, multiple times. “You try”, she commanded as she handed the wiggly package who did not seem at all out of sorts from the volunteer’s actions to me. Addie was smiling! “Are we concerned at all about shaken baby syndrome?” I asked seriously and immediately was quiet with one look from her-the kind of evil eyed glance that my mom would have shot me. I tried but was too ginger. “Honey, she will be in pain, and you have to do it harder to get the gas out”. I tried again. “That’s better”, said Mary. She went on to tell us other tips about rocking her side to side to comfort her as opposed to back and forth, and holding her more upright. Somethings I recall didn’t seem to have a basis scientifically, like the direction to rock her, but all of Mary’s advice proved sound as the days went by. Addie rocked herself side to side in her crib as time went on.
In the middle of the night, that woman spoke in my head, looking like a ancient crooked Italian goddess, because when Addie shook from withdrawal for the next four to five months after, and screamed her distinct warbled cry of pain. She was hurting. Often the only way to stop her agony was to put her on my knee and jar her to burping amazingly huge and loud gas bubbles-when I got up with her….and boy could she fart! Ed took the lion’s share of nighttime Addie to let me sleep to work early in the mornings. He was so naturally connected to her, and so good with her. Whenever she’d have a fit like a small convulsion, he held her tightly till it passed. People say that addicted babies have a cry that’s different from other babies. It sounds like a tremor or warbled higher pitched noise of agony. Numbers of addicted babies are rising rapidly in our hospitals, who detox them, and then hand them to us to go through months of withdrawal at home. (Mary, wherever you are, I deeply thank you.) I wondered how Jen, Andrew and my son, James, were faring… Were they going through the same pain? We saw Addie’s anguish, and thought about what the others must experience, if they were ready.
Being “ready” is the part we cannot control for the addicts in our lives. I was not ready to accept the things I could not change. Time has a way of introducing acceptance very slowly, often after suffering, when the reality seems unbearable at first. It’s the sunshine that squeezes between clouds that linger.
Coming next time: How to Register a Baby’s Birth
I am so glad you both were able to see the sun light shining through the clouds (or as you eloquently expressed). The children have found their own courageous angels in you both to love and care for them forever. Love you both very much!