New parents often know there’s a chance they won’t get a lot of sleep. But for Deanna Turner, who has adopted and fostered multiple children born exposed to substances, it’s even more difficult.
Her almost 1-year-old foster child hasn’t slept through the night once.
“I just put a smile on my face. And just go about my day,” she said. “You just have to go with it because it’s not the kid’s fault at the end of the day. You have to as a parent, you put the kids first.”
Not sleeping is only one side effect of being born substance-exposed. Babies might also be jittery, have issues with feeding and diarrhea. Long-term issues can involve birth defects and intellectual delays.
Turner, whose first foster child born exposed to substances is now 3, knows its important to get early intervention for these issues. But it’s not always easy to know where to go or who to see.
A pediatrician might only be able to see the child for 15 minutes, during which the child might be sleeping or cranky. But at Mass General’s Children Special Care Nursery and Newborn Developmental Follow-Up Clinic, doctors are with the newborns and their caregivers for an hour multiple times a year until they are at least 2 years old.
“We look head to toe — everything about the child, even how they look in their car seat,” said Dr. Leslie Kerzner, who leads the clinic.
The clinic, which was started in 2006, works with primary care doctors and specialists to provide care for at-risk infants. Although Kerzner works with at-risk infants outside of those born substance-exposed, it’s one of her specialties — and how she met Turner.
Turner and her husband had two biological children, having to go through IVF to have her second child. But after going through it again and having a miscarriage, she decided it wasn’t the right path for her. Still, her family wasn’t complete.
Instead, she turned to foster care and adoption. The Department of Children and Families asked Turner if she and her husband would be willing to take in children who had been exposed to substances before birth.
They said yes.
One child, who they later adopted, was in the hospital for 57 days weaning off of the drugs to which he was exposed.
“He had a hard time with it,” she said, adding that his younger sister, who she also adopted, was in the hospital for 15 days.
At the time, she didn’t have any previous experience with substance-exposed newborns.
“Thank God for Dr. Kernzer because I was at a loss,” she said. “I could sit there and do all the research I wanted to online but I would drive myself crazy.”
Plus, getting into specialists can be difficult. Kernzer and the clinic help with that, too, Turner said.
“The waitlist was ridiculous,” Turner said. “She says I’ll call right now. She got on the phone and got us an appointment within two weeks.”
Deanna Turner has adopted and fostered multiple children born exposed to substances.Deanna Turner
The clinic worked with both children Turner eventually adopted. Today, Turner said, you’d never know the children got a difficult start to life.
Now she has some experience but each child is unique. So, she keeps going to Mass General with each child.
But Kernzer wants to do more.
The problem? Spending that much time with families isn’t a “money-making type of clinic.” Instead, it’s philanthropically funded.
Ideally, Kernzer would expand to have a social worker, nutritionist and neuro psychologist on staff to help all aspects of the family.
She envisions a social worker being able to help biological mothers in early intervention get help if their heat gets turned off or if they don’t understand how daycare vouchers work. It doesn’t seem related but helping them helps the babies, Kernzer said, adding that this is especially true if the children can be in a stable environment sooner rather than later.
For foster parents, social workers could also help guide them along and help connect them to other services the children might need.
And it’d help both sides navigate and organize the many appointments required of the infant — a task that can be overwhelming, time consuming and nearly impossible for working parents.
Plus with more staffing, she said, they might be able to see babies for the first time even sooner than three months.
Either way, by the time infants grow to be 3 years old, Kernzer’s job is done and the children move on. But occasionally, a foster family returns with a younger sibling and the foster parents show her photos of the children when they’re older.
That makes it all worth it, she said.
“It’s amazing. They make so much progress. And it’s why I do what I do,” she said.
