slimvictor
Bluelight Crew
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Lori and Craig Gertz, parents from Long Grove, Ill., were faced with a heartbreaking and unimaginable choice: to keep their family together, or to give up one of their kids in order to protect the others.
Seven-year-old, adopted daughter Ellie was out of control, hurting her siblings and trying to hurt herself -- all because she was born with a condition called fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
When Lori Gertz brought the eight pound adoptive newborn home from the hospital, she quickly noticed Ellie's inability to bond.
She was virtually impossible to soothe and would cry for hours, Gertz said. Touching and rocking only made Ellie worse. As she grew older, Ellie lashed out at anyone who would say no, and even pushed her mother -- then eight months pregnant -- down the stairs.
By the age of six, she'd had four psychiatric hospitalizations and made numerous suicide attempts.
"Last fall things really got pretty bad and she started to run into traffic with intent to kill herself," Gertz said on "Good Morning America" today. "The responsibility was solely on me to keep her from running into traffic."
(...)
Instead, Ellie's lack of impulse control, inability to bond and neurological problems were diagnosed as having been caused by FASD -- a condition that affects as many children as autism, yet gets a fraction of the medical attention and resources.
The child's biological mother was an addict, but the worst of her vices -- crack cocaine, PCP, heroin and methamphetamine -- were nothing compared to the alcohol that had ravaged Ellie's developing brain in the first trimester of pregnancy.
"Even after all the drugs our birth mother did, it was the alcohol which left Ellie with the legacy she had," Gertz said on "GMA."
full article at
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMo...hild-fetal-alcohol-spectrum/story?id=11734402
Seven-year-old, adopted daughter Ellie was out of control, hurting her siblings and trying to hurt herself -- all because she was born with a condition called fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD).
When Lori Gertz brought the eight pound adoptive newborn home from the hospital, she quickly noticed Ellie's inability to bond.
She was virtually impossible to soothe and would cry for hours, Gertz said. Touching and rocking only made Ellie worse. As she grew older, Ellie lashed out at anyone who would say no, and even pushed her mother -- then eight months pregnant -- down the stairs.
By the age of six, she'd had four psychiatric hospitalizations and made numerous suicide attempts.
"Last fall things really got pretty bad and she started to run into traffic with intent to kill herself," Gertz said on "Good Morning America" today. "The responsibility was solely on me to keep her from running into traffic."
(...)
Instead, Ellie's lack of impulse control, inability to bond and neurological problems were diagnosed as having been caused by FASD -- a condition that affects as many children as autism, yet gets a fraction of the medical attention and resources.
The child's biological mother was an addict, but the worst of her vices -- crack cocaine, PCP, heroin and methamphetamine -- were nothing compared to the alcohol that had ravaged Ellie's developing brain in the first trimester of pregnancy.
"Even after all the drugs our birth mother did, it was the alcohol which left Ellie with the legacy she had," Gertz said on "GMA."
full article at
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMo...hild-fetal-alcohol-spectrum/story?id=11734402