Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2004

http://www.post-trib.com/cgi-bin/pto-story/news/z1/08-18-04_z1_news_11.html

Mom mourns tiny baby kept in shoebox
Aug. 18, 2004

By Jonathan Lipman

Daily Southtown staff writer

An infant boy was found dead in a shoebox in the home of his 15-year-old mother
in Lansing, Ill., on Monday.

That girl wants you to know she didn’t kill the baby. She wants you to know
what really happened to her infant son.

How she hid her pregnancy from her family for seven months.

How she gave birth on her own, in a bathtub, at 4 in the morning last Friday.

How she slept next to the tiny body, born two months premature, for two days,
without telling a soul, even though she knew her child was dead.

About his name — Raphael Pierre.

She wants you to know she was trying to do what she thought right. But she made
mistakes.

“I would like people to know I loved him,” she said. “And I tried to do
the most responsible thing I could do.”

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s office lists the child’s first name as
“Baby Boy.” On Tuesday, the medical examiner ruled the infant died
naturally because it was born premature. Police are investigating, but already
have said they don’t believe a crime occurred.

The teenager, whose name is being withheld, nevertheless feels at fault. With
hair pulled back by a headband and a black Snoopy shirt on her small frame, she
looked at the ground and described what happened to “my baby.”

“He was born premature because I didn’t get any natal care,” she said.
“And because I was so young.”

The teen said she got pregnant Feb. 4, by a boy she knew from school whom she
had been dating for three months. She learned about the pregnancy in May and
knew it was a mistake.

“I regret making that mistake, but I understood my pregnancy,” she said,
her voice full of conviction. “I wasn’t going to have an abortion ... if I
couldn’t give him away, I would have just left (with the baby).”

The girl lives with her parents and brothers in a two-story home on a quiet
street in Lansing. Proud of her family, she was afraid of letting her parents
down.

“I would rather be a missing girl than have me living off my family like
that. Why should they provide for me and my mistake?” she said.

So she made a plan: She would conceal the pregnancy and would arrange for the
baby’s adoption on her own. She started calling adoption agencies and settled
on The Cradle, based in Evanston, in June. The agency agreed to work with her
without telling her parents.

“I wore big shirts,” she said proudly. “And it was a small pregnancy. The
day I tried on my graduation dress, that was the day I almost got caught.”

But her parents never figured it out. Last Thursday night, she was supposed to
meet a counselor from the adoption agency at a nearby restaurant.

But she began to feel cramps and couldn’t go.

“I didn’t know I was in labor, I just figured I was cramping up,” the
girl said.

Determined to keep the pregnancy secret, the girl crawled into the bathtub.

She had no medication, no medical help, and no idea what to do.

At about 4 a.m., she gave birth, all alone.

“It wasn’t bad. I figured it would be worse. I just kept that in mind.”

Right away, she knew the baby was in trouble. He came two months early, and the
girl could hear no heartbeat from her new son.

“He didn’t cry. He just shook a little,” she said.

Within 15 minutes, newly named Raphael Pierre was dead.

“I just sat there, I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I didn’t
call police. I didn’t have a phone, and I still didn’t want to tell my
parents. ... After watching him die in my arms, I just couldn’t do that to
them.”

Instead, she took the body of the infant back to her room and curled up with
him in her bed.

She kept him there for three days.

“Even though he was dead, I still wanted to be with him,” she said, crying.
“Because he was so pretty.”

She spent as much time as she could with the little boy’s body, but still
tried to hide what happened from her parents. On Friday, the day she gave
birth, she spent the afternoon doing yard work. On Monday, she decided it was
time to tell the boy’s father. She placed the baby’s body in a shoebox and
went to meet him at school.

After he saw the child, the couple decided to call the adoption counselor.

The agency told them to call police, who came to the home, found the baby, and
told the girl’s parents what happened.

She still hasn’t talked to her parents directly about the pregnancy. She says
she can’t.

The girl’s parents declined to be interviewed.

The mother said this has happened too fast for her to explain clearly what she
feels.

“My daddy, he was worried about my health, and my mommy, she was just
confused,” the girl said. “She was so confused how I could go through labor
and then smile the next day.”

The girl was hospitalized briefly with an infection, but was told she’ll
recover. What she doesn’t know is how she’ll face her family again. She’s
still afraid of what they may think.

And she doesn’t know how to make it up to Raphael Pierre. She said she know
she owes him.

“I would rather be,” she said, speaking slowly and fighting back tears,
“in his situation.”

-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown