Pubdate: Sun, 06 Aug 2000
Source: Akron Beacon-Journal (OH)
Copyright: 2000 by the Beacon Journal Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.ohio.com/bj/
Forum: http://krwebx.infi.net/webxmulti/cgi-bin/WebX?abeacon
Author: Carol Biliczky

COCAINE BABIES

Long-Term Effects Preventable

Eight-month-old Solomon gurgled and crawled, supremely unaware that
luck may be with him.

The Akron infant was exposed to cocaine in the womb, but his future
may be much brighter than was once feared for cocaine babies.

Gone are the dire predictions of just 10 years ago that they would be
doomed to lives of mental retardation and developmental delays,
burdening schools, the health care system and society.

While drug exposure is hardly a prescription for a healthy baby, many
children seem to be emerging from the trauma with few or no problems.
Many of the early studies extrapolated from small numbers of very sick
babies, experts say, and gave misleading information.

"There was a lot of hysteria, but it's not been documented that
there's significant effects to cocaine," said Dr. Ellen Hutchins,
chief of the perinatal and women's health branch of the U.S. Maternal
and Child Care Center.

When cocaine and its smoked derivative, crack, peaked in popularity in
the late 1980s, drug-abusing women nationwide were having 375,000
babies a year. Based on Ohio Department of Health estimates that 10
percent of babies were affected, 700 drug-affected babies were born in
Summit County each year.

"It's a muddy picture," said Dr. Jane Holan, medical director of
Akron's Blick Clinic. "You have the immediate effect" -- trembling,
nervousness, hard to pacify -- when the baby is born, she said. "But
down the road, they do well in a good, stable environment."

A 1998 University of Florida study found that three in four children
exposed to cocaine suffer no more ill effects than children who were
not exposed to the drug. But there haven't been a lot of long-term
studies about what happens to these children.

Vicki Fisher, a nursing administrator at the women's halfway house at
Edwin Shaw Hospital in Lakemore, said it's important to get newborns
out of drug-infested environments.

Fisher said that drug-abusing mothers have many problems -- such as
housing, parenting, education and employment -- in addition to kicking
the habit. These make it difficult to invest much energy in their children.

Solomon's story

That's what's happened to little Solomon. He's in permanent custody of
the Summit County Children Services Board until a suitable permanent
home can be found.

In the meantime, foster mother Kelly Harrison lavishes attention on
him, and the results seem positive. He's engaging and cheerful, a
lover of cheese curls and banana baby food.

He was taken from his mother days after his birth; Harrison, a single
mother of two other children, is the only parent he knows.

"He can't stand to have me or his baby sitter out of his sight," she
says proudly, dabbing a kiss on the top of his head as he reaches for
a plastic toy box in their toy-strewn living room. "He's just a
normal, healthy little boy."

Foster parents' views

Lily Morris and her husband, Randy, of Portage County took a
drug-exposed girl into their home just two days after her birth and
kept her for more than two years. Lily Morris calls the results remarkable.

"Actually, she was advanced," said Morris, who asked that the name of
her community not be used. "We took the time to work with her every
day. When you work with a child that's drug-exposed, they can advance
very quickly."

Of the six cocaine babies that Renee Jones of Akron has fostered, most
are doing well.

"I didn't have any bad cases," she said. "They had the shakes when I
first got them, but after that you would just really never know they
had it."

The 3-year-old girl she cares for now was premature, weighing only 4
pounds, 5 ounces at birth. But she's doing well: She is potty-trained,
speaks clearly and is teaching her 3-year-old foster brother to dress
himself, Jones said.

Birth mother keeps kids

That Latoni Watkins' children are doing well may be surprising. The
Akron woman said she smoked crack cocaine laced with marijuana -- a
so-called primo -- while pregnant with two of her three children.

Her 2-year-old son has asthma, but otherwise seems
OK.

She said her daughter, now 6, is bright although "a little evil" in a
mischievous way when she wants her way.

"I thought if anyone would have had problems, it would have been her,
but she's never sick," said Watkins, who said she is clean of drugs
and working toward a degree in chemical dependency counseling at the
University of Akron. "And if there's going to be any problems with
him, I feel personally that they will come out when he goes to school."

She worries that her children eventually may pay for her mistakes, no
matter how healthy they seem. "You can imagine what a roller coaster
I've been on," she said.

Morris of Portage County thinks she sees some of that damage in a girl
she fosters. Born premature and farmed out at first to a relative of
the birth mother, the girl didn't come to the Morrises until she was
almost 2 -- which means she spent too much time in an unhealthy
environment, Morris thinks.

Now 3, the girl is walking and talking, but developmentally she is
about a year behind other children her age and may be mildly retarded,
Morris said.

No required testing

All the numbers of affected babies are estimates. Ohio and many other
states don't test for cocaine at birth, relying instead on doctors'
voluntary reports of an infant's problems.

But for now, these numbers don't mean much to Kelly Harrison. She
doesn't see the problems -- crossed eyes, mobility problems,
developmental delays, crying and tremors -- in Solomon that she has
seen in two other drug-exposed babies she has fostered.

Despite the early setbacks, both children are doing well, and she's
hopeful.

Some babies will come out OK no matter what, Harrison said with a
shrug: "Its the way God wants it."
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