When I became a parent for the first time, I had only one thing on my mind: how can I make sure my beloved baby is safe and gets everything she needs?
Therefore it’s unsurprising that I get shocked, sad, and angry when I see or hear of parents mistreating and neglecting their innocent children.
Sure, there can be underlying problems that explain the behavior of some parents, but there is no excuse for a mother or father who risks their newborn child’s life through sheer neglect.
Fortunately, there are some fantastic foster parents out there, who stand up and make themselves count when biological parents give up on their children.
The story of LeAnne and Eric left me in tears and I don’t think anybody could read what their family went through without being touched.
LeAnne and Eric decided to take care of a little boy, Easton Matthew, who suffered from shaken baby syndrome. His biological parents chose not to feed him because they had better things to do, like sleep or go to work.
Thankfully, Eric and LeAnne heard about the case and started on the beginning of a tough, tear-jerking journey that would showcase a beautiful demonstration of unconditional love.
We have been given permission to publish their heartbreaking, remarkable story. I hope you read it to the very end because I promise – it’s worth it!
“The doctor handed over a frail, blue, tiny 2-month-old baby boy weighing just over 7 pounds, and he said, ‘Take him home, love him, and feed him because, in a few days, this could be a different story!’ For the first time in my entire life, I was afraid to take home a baby!
It was a fall day in 1996 when Eric and I, excited to start our forever together, said, ‘I do.’ We settled into our newly renovated home and began planning on having children, 2 kids, to be exact. We had always planned on just 2 kids, and that’s exactly what happened… a beautiful baby boy first, then a beautiful baby girl. By the year 2000, we were a complete, perfect little family enjoying life in the suburbs and living the fairy tale life.
But a few years later, Eric was listening to a radio show called ‘Focus on the Family’ and they were discussing raising children with special needs, and Eric felt in his heart we should have another baby. So in 2005, we had another beautiful baby boy, followed by another beautiful baby girl a little over a year later! Now we were a complete family!
Then the day came when we moved out of the suburbs and into the middle of the country. A smaller home with lots of land for the kids to play and explore. Our home was full and our lives were busy, but our hearts were pulling us to fill a need that was great in our community. Foster care! Caring for children who, by no fault of their own, were removed from everyone and everything they had ever known.
But I was hesitant. My parents had been foster parents for many years, and I knew the toll it took on biological kids. I knew how much time and attention the foster kiddos needed, which in turn, took time away from myself and my siblings, and I could only think about what effect it would have on our kiddos, the very children God had blessed us with.
So for 2 years we discussed, prayed about, and researched foster care. We found there were way more kids in the system then there were foster parents to care for them; and because of the drug epidemic, the number of kids going into care was rising. The need was great, and after talking it over with our children we began the classes. In 2014, we were licensed for Foster to Adopt and the same day our license was finalized, we took in our first placement of 2 kiddos.
Ready or not, we were foster parents.
It was February of 2017, we had had many foster placements by then, and we were considered seasoned foster parents. We had a decent relationship with the caseworkers and supervisors at Children Services, and they knew which kiddos our family fit best with. Not every child and foster family fit well, and for a child to thrive in care, they need to be matched with the right foster family. We were finishing up dinner one night after having just recently surrendered an amazing baby girl who we had loved and cared for over the past year for reunification when a call came in. ‘LeAnne, we have a 2-month-old baby boy, failure to thrive. He is at the hospital, and we want to know if you guys could take him?’ ‘YES! Of course,’ was our quick reply. ‘Thanks, the caseworker will call when he is ready to leave the hospital.’
That call unknowingly would change our lives forever!
We couldn’t wait for the caseworker to call, so Eric and I headed to the hospital. When we arrived, we were escorted to the room where the caseworker was sitting holding a baby. I had never seen anything like him. He was blue! Blue, not pink like most babies. His skin showed all the little veins that ran through his body. He had no fat on his little bones. His head was huge and the ‘soft spots’ were ridiculously obvious, not to mention the sutures where his skull came together were completely visible. He was so pitiful. He was tiny, frail, motionless, and he honestly resembled an alien. I know it sounds awful, but it was the only way to describe it. The caseworker handed him over, and I was nervous to even hold him, but the moment I did, I knew Eric and I were going to fight with everything we had to keep him safe.
My big strong husband had tears in his eyes as the caseworker began to fill us in on his case. He was starving. The people who brought him into this world chose to not feed him because they had better things to do, like sleep or go to work. You see, he had just spent 10 days at a top-ranking children’s hospital where they had diagnosed him Non-Organic Failure to Thrive. NOFTT meant there was nothing medically wrong with him that would cause him not to gain weight. During that stay, he had packed on a whopping 11 ounces, which proved he was capable of gaining weight, but after he was released from that hospital things for him got worse.
After that extended stay, the hospital set up a visiting nurse to see him every other day and on her first visit, she found him in a bouncy seat asleep. He was filthy, covered in cat and dog hair, and his diaper was soiled. The chart that was supposed to keep record of his feedings was not filled in properly. The nurse asked for a bottle because she was not going to leave until he had been fed. The biological mother went to the fridge, pulled out a cold bottle, and handed it to the nurse for her to feed him. The nurse explained the bottle was too cold for him and asked her to warm it. With an attitude, she replied, ‘If he is hungry he will eat it.’ So, the nurse began to feed him a cold bottle in an effort to give him nourishment, and he ate. She finished her visit, went out to her car, and called the authorities. Little did she know, the baby’s nurse practitioner was calling Children Services the same day.
A female detective was the one to answer that call. A mom herself, she knew what she was seeing was a life or death situation and promptly removed him from that house. Detective M saved his life that day! She collected evidence and began a case for neglect. Even though she knew what she saw was definitely a form of abuse, she had no idea what we were all about to uncover.
The night we brought that sweet baby home, we were scared. We had just been told he could die, within a few days without proper care he would be dead! His weight had him at .001 percentile on the growth chart. That night we began round the clock love and care. His little tummy was only able to handle a half an ounce of formula per feed. So, we had to set alarms to feed him every 2 hours around the clock. The tricky part: he was only allowed to feed for half an hour because he worked so hard and used so much energy that if he fed for longer, he would actually begin burning more calories than he could take in. So, even though our 1st instincts were to just let him eat till he was full, we couldn’t and he wouldn’t.
Night one, he could hardly finish his half-ounce feeds. He was exhausted. He slept, and we had to wake him for every feed. He never once cried. He never once woke to eat on his own. He couldn’t. That is failure to thrive. When a child’s cries for care are not answered, they stop crying. When their hungry bellies are not fed, they lose their sense of hunger. When they do not have the proper nutrition they lose muscle mass and body fat. Without body fat, their little bodies are unable to regulate their own body temperature. They give up the will to fight, they give up the will to live. That sweet baby boy had given up, but we were not giving up on him. Slowly his half-ounce became 3/4 ounce, then an ounce, and so on.
He had a visiting nurse come once a week, and we took him to his pediatrician once a week where he was weighed and checked over. We had a baby scale we had to use daily to weigh him as well. He was eating and putting on weight, but there was still something off. He had no real muscle tone, he was like a rag doll. His arms and legs just hung to his sides, and he couldn’t control his own head… and his head kept growing. When he would actually have the energy to stay awake, his eyes seemed void, almost as if he was blind. He still was not crying or making any noises at all. The second week the nurse visited, we explained our concerns and told her we would be discussing them with his pediatricians. She listened carefully, and when we were finished, she asked if we had ever heard of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
Shaken Baby Syndrome, you know… NEVER EVER SHAKE A BABY! We quickly did some online research then called his nurse practitioner. She was on vacation, so we explained everything to the nurse and waited for someone to call us back with what to do next. That evening, the phone rang again. It was Emily, his NP. She said she had been sitting on the beach and praying and thinking about this sweet baby boy, and she came up with the same thought. Shaken Baby Syndrome. She ordered an MRI and an Ultra Sound. The same hospital he had stayed at before would call and set everything up.
A month after we first held that frail baby, he was put under, and an extensive MRI was done of his big head. Because he was high risk, he had to stay the night. We settled in for the night, prayed for answers, and awaited the results. The next morning, a team of white coats filled the room. I had not seen so many doctors in one room. They began to explain to us that the MRI showed blood in both ventricles of his brain (the middle portion of the brain) and blood behind his eyes. The bleeds were consistent with non-accidental head trauma. There was newer blood and older blood.
Next, they needed to do a full skeletal scan to check his tiny body for breaks or fractures. We again waited for those results and were relieved to find out that there were no injuries to his skeletal structure. That day we spoke to several specialists as they began to tell us more about what was to come. More MRIs, EEGs, EKGs, CTs, appointments, therapists, and more. There was not a lot of time to digest all the information because we had to focus on getting more answers, what had actually happened to this sweet baby boy, and who had done it. And we had to do it quickly because the goal for his case was still reunification. That sweet baby had to do visitations twice a week with people who very likely were his abusers.
There are a lot of details we could fill you in on, but ultimately, all of the details led Detective M to get a confession. You see baby boy was crying because he was hungry. He needed to be fed, and his biological father decided his crying was bothering him, and since he wouldn’t stop, he picked up that sweet baby boy around his rib cage, shook him several times then threw him on the couch. He then bounced off the couch and hit the floor. When the Detective asked what happened next, that man replied, ‘Well, he stopped crying.’
