Our son Barrett was born after a high risk pregnancy and traumatic delivery.
At both his two week and two month appointment, my husband and I brought up to his pediatrician our concerns regarding feeding and some of Barrett’s behaviors. He seemed like he was almost always in pain and never relaxed. Trying to give him milk was absolutely horrific. We were told that his health was great though, sometimes feeding and the newborn stage is just hard. Everything that we voiced was brushed off.
November 6th, when he was just over 9 weeks old, we took him to our local Children’s Hospital after noticing he was favoring one arm over the other. He also had some red in his diaper. After getting there, one adult was allowed to be in the room while they X-Rayed his arm. I accompanied him but then nurses quickly escorted me out and walked with me back to the room where we were initially in. John and I were told to wait while they took him back for more tests. Neither parent could come.
4 hours later, a doctor came in. He said that Barrett had multiple bone fractures and that these injuries could have in no way been accidental. They thought we purposefully caused these and were claiming non-accidental trauma. He also had significant weight loss; which they claimed was most likely due to us neglecting to feed him. The red in his diaper could be from “punching him in the kidneys”. However, he didn’t have a single bruise and his organ function was great. His head scan came back normal but that didn’t matter as DHS was on the way. Police officers and detectives were coming. We were separated, questioned, and escorted to his hospital room where for the next week we stayed and were watched even though DHS had stated “we weren’t there typical clients”. The child abuse pediatrician who made the claim said she “didn’t think we hurt our baby but had been burned before”.
Although the criminal case got nowhere with absolutely zero evidence, our fight for custody and to be able to be legally alone with our son has and will forever change our perspectives as the trauma is deep. Triggers are everywhere and we have severe PTSD. Our nightmare lasted approximately 24 court dates, countless meetings, and over 15 home visits.
We had to juggle the fight for our child while navigating our true concern, his health. We became investigators, advocates, and doctors all at the same time. Countless hours researching, emailing, and reviewing his and my medical records led us to know more about metabolic bone disease and different genetic conditions than we ever thought we would.
The egos of the doctors at Children’s Hospital were too strong and took away the first 9 months of us being parents. We were robbed of so much. Not only has it affected us, but Barrett does indeed have medical concerns that we need to pay attention to that were completely overlooked. While we appreciate that mandated reporters exist and are not naive to the fact that there is truly child abuse out there, we sure hope that they are able to attempt to understand the gravity of what follows when their accusations are wrong. The harm that was caused not only to us as parents but to our young infant who they completely gave up on is unacceptable.
Dr. Holick was the first doctor who cared for our son and wanted to actually take the time to look into his health. He was able to give us a diagnoses and reason for the fractures. At the airport as we were leaving for our appointment with him in Boston, I held Barrett in my arms while we watched planes take off and I promised him that I was going to find him an answer. Dr. Holick allowed me, a postpartum first time mother who was made to feel like a monster, keep that promise.
Dr. Holick is all who a doctor should be. He has helped so many other families who have been in the same nightmare that we were in. He was the first (of multiple) doctors who could explain his fractures and his medical report allowed the court to take one of the highest steps in our case.
We were granted 2 hours a day of unsupervised time after flying back from Boston. I will never forget our first trip to the grocery store we took as just a family of 3. A simple errand that was monumental. We wouldn’t have gotten there without Dr. Holick’s report and I hope that he knows just how big of a blessing he has been to our family.
– Sarah
