[blparent] Involvement of Child Services (was introduction, expecting)

[Jo Elizabeth Pinto]

Hi.  It's very, very unfortunate when your own family members, the ones who 
are supposed to believe in you and support you no matter what, are suddenly 
your enemies in a battle you shouldn't be fighting to begin with.

Some on this list know my story, but I'll give a synopsis of it for those 
who don't.  I found out I was pregnant on a Tuesday night, after having 
endured years of fertility issues which had culminated with a doctor telling 
me that I would never conceive.  On Thursday evening, less than forty-eight 
hours later, I got a call from my sister, who was in tears, asking why I was 
going to let my brother adopt my baby instead of giving it to her.  I told 
her I had no intention of giving my baby to anybody.  She said my boyfriend 
and I were expected to show up at a family meeting on my mom's back porch 
Saturday morning so we could all figure out what to do--I wasn't allowed 
inside the house because the last time I was there, on the night I found out 
I was pregnant, I got queasy and vomited in my mom's kitchen sink.  Anyway, 
my sister said I needed to do some research on the Internet about blind 
parents and bring it to the meeting.  Knowing now what I couldn't see then, 
going to the meeting was a bad idea.  I wasn't in crisis, nobody needed to 
figured out what to do for me or my baby, and the baby wasn't up for bid at 
auction.  But I thought I could still convince my family to give me their 
support.  So I found a wealth of information on the Internet about blind 
parenting, both the practical everyday "how-to" kinds of things, some of 
which I borrowed from the archives of this list, and other articles taking 
the long view of how grown men and women looked back on their lives as 
children of blind parents.

Anyway, I showed up at the meeting with my boyfriend and my pages of 
information, and my brother was there with legal papers that would grant 
guardianship of my baby to him and his life partner.  He actually thought I 
was going to sign those papers, that day, in my twelfth week of pregnancy, 
after having only four days to come to that decision--a decision which had 
in no way even entered my mind.  My sister brought up some of the usual 
concerns first--what if your baby swallows a foreign object, what if she 
runs away from you and goes into the street, etc, etc.  I had answers for 
those kinds of questions because I had read these list archives, and my 
biggest answer was, blind parents, as few of them as there are, don't keep 
the emergency rooms open all by ourselves.  Blindness isn't the cause of 
many accidents in the home; a moment of inattention is.  So then she tried 
the guilt angle--you have to do what's absolutely best for your child. 
Blind parenting has been done, but is it the absolutely best situation for a 
child?  Think of your baby, not yourself.  I started to get angry at that 
point, and then my brother jumped in, saying there was another whole body of 
research that showed growing up with blind parents was harmful to a child, 
but not giving me names or any information about where to look up his 
sources when I asked him for it.  Instead, he brought out the guardianship 
papers and said he had the money to get the baby better insurance than I 
could.  My boyfriend stepped in and said he was the father, and I was the 
mother, and if there was some reason I couldn't keep my child, he would be 
next in line.  There was no way I'd be signing guardianship away to anybody. 
I later found out that his wife, as angry as she was at me--they were having 
problems but they weren't separated yet--had been outraged over the thought 
of anybody taking my baby away, and she'd said if it came down to that, she 
and my boyfriend would take custody and I could move into their basement, 
and raise my baby without any vultures circling overhead.  It's pretty crazy 
when the soon-to-be ex wife of your child's father is in your corner, and 
your own parents and siblings are not.  The meeting ended with a lot of hard 
feelings on all sides.

I wrote all of that down, Jessica, to first let you know you aren't alone in 
having to convince your family of your worthiness as a parent.  It shouldn't 
happen that your family ever doubts you, but it does.  Secondly, it's sad, 
but the best thing you may be able to do is cut off contact with anybody who 
brings negativity or a doubting attitude into your life.  Once you try to 
win the doubters over and find out they simply won't let go of their 
misgivings, all you can do is walk away.  My daughter has had only very 
limited contact with my parents or my siblings and their families, and she 
would have even less except that we all live in a fairly small city.  So we 
run into them from time to time, and it's getting to the point where it's 
hard to explain to my little girl why she doesn't talk to her grandma and 
grandpa, and aunts and uncles and cousins, like other kids do.  But I'd 
rather deal with her questions than expose her to people who are always 
nit-picking about what she eats or doesn't, or why she has spaghetti on her 
dress, or how late she stays up, or any number of other criticisms I've 
heard through the grapevine.  I hope things turn out differently for you, 
but right now, I've deliberately chosen to shut out my family so my daughter 
doesn't land in the middle of their drama.  It's sad; her grandparents and 
the rest of them will never get these years back.  Maybe something will 
change one day, but Jessica, your responsibility is to your daughter and 
your boyfriend.  The rest of them can take that or leave it.  And I agree, 
if you're going to typically be traveling with your daughter, then taking 
her with you on mobility lessons makes sense.  If the state of New Hampshire 
in all its wisdom won't allow that, then at least take a stroller or wagon, 
whatever you are going to use, and pull it in the way you intend to when 
your daughter is there.  You have to get used to the stroller sometime.

Jo Elizabeth

I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's 
brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and 
died in cotton fields and sweatshops.--Stephen Jay Gould
-----Original Message----- 
From: Jessica Trask
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:39 PM
To: blparent at nfbnet.org
Subject: Re: [blparent] Involvement of Child Services (was 
introduction,expecting)

Hi,

What do you do when it's not the hospital staff but other family
members whom don't think you can raise your own child  I first
oringially thought that it was my mom in the beginning whom had
reported at the time my fiancee and I. So, I was actually shocked to
find out that that wasn't the case. It seems to be members of my family
that don't think we can do it. We've had the support of both my now
boyfirends sister and her husband since the beginnig of the pregnancy.
In fact I haven't talked to my mom in eight months. She said some stuff
at the end of one of our court dates about me not only in front of me
but the CPS worker and CPS's attorey my fiancee at the time, his sister
,my younger sister, two parent aids from Good Beginnings and the Foster
mom. About me and how I do certain things. Pretty much during the whole
time I was pregnant I was working on getting services for the blind
lined up in New Hampshire. I've tried explaining to the CPS worker that
it's going to be easier from a mobility stand point if I can have my
daughter Ashlee with me while I'm working with the O&M instructor needs
the two of us together.

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