OK, I am about to be really vulnerable. You can tell because I began this post with the word "OK".
Last night I went scrounging around the internet looking for some information on FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, what Alex has). I was doing this because I know I have recently read many research studies claiming that even a little alcohol drunk during pregnancy can have adverse affects, and I was discussing it with some friends but of course this is a radical claim and I had not memorized my sources so I was trying to see if I could re-find those links. I found plenty of articles and lists and even some YouTube entries (the best one was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uip8sv9tCKw), and as I was calmly reading through everything I started to bawl. Not just cry, bawl. I think everyone who reads this blog knows me really well (I would love to know how Mandy knows who reads her blog, that sounds really handy), so you know that I don't do this crying thing often. The last time I cried was when I trusted a friend to watch my kids and she nearly killed them through willful negligence and the very real thought of them dying made me lose it (coupled with total and complete anger toward my friend the likes of which I have never experienced before). Anyway. Back to crying. I was crying for Alex. I was crying for what had been done to him, for how he struggles every minute of every day just to live life and how "normal" will forever be unachievable for him. As he gets older he is going to become more and more aware of the invisible gap that exists between him and everyone else he knows, and already I see him gazing around in bewilderment when he loses control or can't remember something he knows he ought to know.
I've read all these things before, I've even seen a few very moving videos on FASD, so what triggered this? And what is it that was triggered?
I know what triggered it--I have a friend that encouraged another friend to drink while pregnant, because it was really "no big deal" if you only drank a little each day. As for what it is that hits me so hard that I had this sort of reaction...I've been aware all along that Alex's birth-mother's drinking is the cause of his issues, of course, but I guess the total helplessness of my little guy in utero while his mother poured liter after liter of alcohol into her son just sort of hit me. For some reason when I saw the healthy and FASD brains compared side by side (also see YouTube video), the report of Alex's initial physical exam came into my head, the one where they did an ultrasound and there was so much fluid where his brain should have been that they called it "hydrocephalus" despite Alex's very small head. That was his mother's doing. I am sure she didn't mean to do it, I am sure she was struggling with her own awful life and she couldn't get up enough hope or energy to quit drinking and it is very likely that she was unaware of the awful effects her drinking was having on her unborn child. I have no beef with her. Just overwhelming pity for Alex. But my friends, the ones who were comparing notes on how much they drank and were saying these things in front of another friend of mine who was still pregnant (yes, everyone seemed to get pregnant this year) made me feel so frustrated. Alcohol is a known tetarogen (substance causing birth defects). They see that Alex and Sam are two years apart and yet Sam is taller and heavier than Alex. They see that Sam's speech development after two months home from his orphanage is already surpassing Alex's after he has had two years of speech therapy. They see Alex who can't sit still to save his life despite the fact that he is denied every fun or even typical food known to every other child in the church. Of course he had a lot of alcohol in his system during his development but his issues are extreme. By logical conclusion therefore a little bit of alcohol will give you a little bit of his issues...but which ones? Who knows where the boundaries lie? No one. Why do they have to push that envelope? Who says, "oh, a little thalidomide won't hurt this evening, honey." I am certain that Alex's mother didn't think these things through because she was ignorant. But my friends are not.
So I crept into Alex's room and held him and cried and he was so light and felt so fragile and that made me cry even harder because that, too, comes from his mother's drinking. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not crying for myself. We chose him, I am excited to be his mother, he challenges me in ways no one else can and I am grateful for it. I just needed that moment to grieve for him. And now I am finished, and can move on.
Don't drink when you are pregnant. http://www.come-over.to/FAS/LowDose.htm.
Pavel is getting baptized this Sunday. Kind of fitting that it's Pentecost Sunday, isn't it? In honor of the occasion I pulled out these REEEAALLY cute outfits my mother got all the kids and made sure everything fit and then I couldn't resist, I had to take a few pictures. Getting five kids to all look cute at the same time is impossible! Honest. I cleared my camera, took over five hundred photos of the kids, and not one has all five looking good at the same time. The one I put on this post is the best it gets.
Inga asked if she could read tonight before she went to bed. Andrei asked if he could practice the cello tonight before he went to bed. They are growing up! (and they don't want to go to bed).
