My blood is boiling..

I joined a FAS (fetal alcohol syndrome)  support group, not long after getting Lil Man. The group is mostly made up of foster, and adoptive parents. There are a few birth parents, who are raising their effected children.

Today on the group someone posted a question “Is the state responsible.” Her and her husband adopted a baby 15 years ago.  They asked about the possibility of FAS, and they were reassured that the bio Mom did not drink. Her 15 yr old daughter has full blown FAS.

The OP was saying how much hardship it has place on her bio children, as well as her marriage and finances.  She wanted to know if we felt the state should be partially responsible for her daughter. 

15 yrs ago not much was known about FAS. With most things in life there is no guarantee.  Once you adopt, (IMO) the responsibility is on you.

The moderator of the group went off on the adoptive mom for even asking this question. She was down right rude, and even told her to quit bitching.

You know I had to chime in.

At the bottom of one my emails I wrote

“While we choose to be foster parents, we did not choose for our little boys mom to drink.  She did that, and is living footloose with no responsibilities, and no consequences for her actions.”

The moderator(who is a BM)  responded with “Maybe in her case, it wasn't a choice, but a disease”

I came back with “In our case she wasn't an alcoholic she admitted to drinking one beer a day  until she was 3 months. She wasn't even legal drinking age.  Weather it's a disease or by choice, I think there should be some consequences for a birth mom's actions that cause LIFE long damage to a child.

If you were to shake a baby, and cause brain damage, you would go to jail for child neglect.  But its okay to drink, and do drugs, because its "just a fetus."

There is a foster mom in our town who has four siblings, all of them have FAS, BM is prego with number five.  Why should the BM stop drinking when she's prego, there are no repercussions.

The moderator then sent me a private email saying “I will not let you continue to lash out at birth moms.
You can stop now or be put on moderation.
And FYI I am not saying it because of "me" but the other who won't even post to talk about it because of attitudes like yours.”

You don't think losing your child is a "repercussion"???
:scratches head:

Of course I had to respond, because I cant keep my mouth shut.

In our case no, she could have careless about losing her son, because she had another baby.  Her words "I like that one (talking about our FS), but I really love this one" (her new baby).

This is a public form and I should be entitled to express my opinion without being privately emailed, and told to keep my comments to myself.  When I signed up for this group I did not see any rules that stated, I could not talk about BM. I am sorry if I offend any BM, but my feelings are just that..My feelings.. Having an effected child once, fine, but to have 2,3,4,or even 5 children is criminal.

So apparently I am supposed to sit back and say “its okay that you drank while you were pregnant.  Don’t worry honey we’ll take care of your child.  We will rock him to sleep when he has nightmares. We will beg him to stop picking his skin, because it’s clearly infected.  We will save him from getting hit by a car. We will rush him from Apt to apt, and make sure he gets his mediation. Go ahead have another drink..and why don't you have another baby while your at it?

NOT