Background story

I guess some background would be good to start with.  I'm, Mo4 and you can probably guess that means mother of 4.  I have 3 biological sons and 1 girl (Kit*) who was adopted from the foster care system.

Our sweet Kit was born in 2005.  We had been Foster Parents for about 4 months and had cared for several other babies and toddlers during that time.

When I got the call from our Caseworker there wasn't much information available.  A baby girl had been born that day (a Friday).  Shortly after birth her birthmother had a "Psychotic Episode".  The baby was taken into protective custody.  They told us that birthmother had a history of drug addiction, homelessness and bipolar and she had already lost custody of several other children. The baby would likely be released over the weekend and they needed a foster family to care for.  We agreed to take her, I was excited to get another little one as our previous foster baby had gone home just 5 days earlier.

On Sunday morning I got the call to come pick her up.  I took the itty bitty, but amazingly beautiful baby girl home to my husband and children.  Our entire family promptly fell in love with her.

Alarming symptoms and developmental delays began showing themselves almost immediately.  The first few weeks she was very easily overstimulated.  She simply could not tolerate more than 1 stimuli at a time.  We spent many days and nights sitting with her swaddled up tight, in the nursery in the pitch dark. Being careful not to rock in the chair or pat her little bottom. She would have been happy to just be left in there alone but we knew how much she needed to bond and so we took turns sitting there quietly holding her close.  By 2 weeks she was in Occupational Therapy for feeding therapy due to a weak suck reflex.  By 1 month, Physical Therapy was started for poor muscle tone and one sided weakness.  At her 4 month well baby check she couldn't lift her head off the table to turn it from one side to the other, something she should have been doing by 2 weeks and she hadn't even smiled yet.  The Doctor warned us at that visit that she was showing clear signs of Fetal Alcohol Exposure and the prognosis for her was not good.  I cried the entire way home but I was not going to give up on this baby!!  We increased the services and I worked with her frequently.  Speech therapy started by 9 months and we pressed on.  Slowly, but surely, she began to catch up. 

The biological parents visits had been cancelled because they weren't working their plan by the time she was 6 weeks old and before long caseworkers were talking about adoption.  It was as if she was meant to be ours!

By 3-4 our sweet girl was completely caught up and was pretty much on target developmentally but she was clearly not a typical child.  She frequently had a black cloud over her head and an extremely short fuse.  She was extremely impulsive and didn't seem to learn from her mistakes.  We always had to go above and beyond normal child proofing measures to keep her safe.

Recently, we learned that her birthmother had drunk alcohol "almost daily" during her pregnancy to self treat her drug addiction cravings.  Now we wade through the distinct possibility that she likely has FASD *and* the mood disorder genetically passed down from her mother.

All the love and therapies in the world did not change anything.  It's something we are still coming to terms with and we're in it for the long haul.

*All names used in this blog have been changed for privacy