Her mother’s drug use is etched into Baby A.’s brief, painful life.
The 3-month-old infant has known only tremors, diarrhea and foster care.
She’s tested positive for methamphetamine and now, in her heart-wrenching way, is dealing with its consequences, state Children and Family Services officials say.
Baby A. is among dozens of North Olympic Peninsula children newly thrust into foster care during the past two years because their parents — mainly moms — did meth.
Many meth moms snort, smoke, inject and even eat meth in combination with other drugs during pregnancy, like Baby A.’s 22-year-old mother.
It’s left the infant in a condition that “can be attributed to withdrawal,” said Maureen Martin, state Children and Family Services supervisor in Port Angeles.
Scourge of addiction
The scourge of drug addiction has been brought to sordid light recently on the North Olympic Peninsula.
The murder trial of Robert Gene Covarrubias in Port Angeles, who was convicted April 21, focused on a sorry side of street life, mainly in Port Angeles.
Testimony related to the December 2004 death of a 15-year-old Melissa Carter exposed the meth use by down-and-out teens and adults alike that tears families asunder.
Born in mid-January, Baby A. was just 3 days old and still at Olympic Medical Center in Port Angeles when Children and Family Services placed her with foster parents because the agency feared for her safety.
“She still has slight diarrhea and slight tremors, but she is getting better,” Martin said Friday.
But Baby A.’s mid-January separation from her mother marked the last time her mother touched her.
Baby A. never went home.
“We don’t know where Mom is,” Martin said. “This is a sad drug, a sad job, sad for everybody.”
The 300 percent increase in Port Angeles and Sequim and the half-dozen new cases in Port Townsend in 2005 — compared with none in 2004 — goes against a static statewide trend in foster care, state officials said.