Providing for Care of HIV Babies : Volunteers Are Needed to Nurture Children Robbed of Parents by AIDS

Megan Ross, at 50, is a new mother. Her 8-month-old boy, Buddy, has big brown eyes and plays with her hair. It all looks quite normal.

But when the baby arrived at Ross’ home last April at 3 weeks of age, he was severely underweight and she had to hold him tightly in a blanket to calm him as he suffered withdrawal from addiction to heroin, crack cocaine and PCP.

The boy had acquired more than the addictions from his 24-year-old natural mother, who abandoned him at the hospital just three hours after his birth. He tested positive for the antibodies that may indicate he has HIV, the virus that ultimately develops into AIDS.

Ross is one of the minority of foster mothers willing to take on the challenge of caring for such children.

“He was just what I wanted,” said Ross, who has dedicated herself to helping children and families stricken by AIDS.

In January, 1991, Ross founded a volunteer organization called Baby Buddies, which provides home services ranging from child care to gardening and housekeeping, as well as friendship, to families with HIV-positive children.

“We want to replace the parents, the neighbors, the friends who have turned their backs and walked away from these people,” said Ross. In two years, she said, the organization has attracted 132 volunteers who have helped 176 families scattered throughout Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The organization currently assists 30 families on a weekly basis, she said.

But she said that about a year ago she began to realize that as the disease spreads and progresses in the heterosexual community there will be a burgeoning need for foster homes to offer care to children whose parents die of AIDS.

The Orange County Social Services Agency reports that it currently has four foster homes willing and specially trained to take care of the HIV-positive children. Another three foster homes are headed by the relatives of HIV-positive children.

Sally Wurth, senior public health nurse for the county’s foster care program, acknowledged that there are enough foster homes to care for the 11 children in the HIV program but added that there are no backup homes prepared to take on more.

“These children need to be loved,” Ross said. But she said she has learned that many people who might become foster parents are constrained by baseless fears about touching a baby that might have the HIV virus.

“A lot want to help by donating money and articles of clothing. They help--but at a distance,” Ross said.

Partly to encourage other people to take the children of AIDS sufferers into their homes and lives, Ross earlier this year became a foster parent. “It is like practicing what you preach. It gives me more credibility,” said Ross, a divorced mother of two grown daughters and twice a grandmother.

She has had to worry about such things as Buddy’s allergy to milk and finding a formula substitute that he likes.

But she also has to deal with his bouts of sleeplessness and “night terrors,” which jolt him awake trembling and screaming and which are probably associated with his early exposure to drugs. Until he was 4 months old, she said, he continually clenched his hands.

And then there are the frequent visits--more than 40 since April--to doctors and clinics to assess Buddy’s development and determine the strength of his immune system, which will fail if he develops AIDS. Ross carefully guards the boy from contact with sick people and washes his highchair and crib with a disinfecting mixture of bleach and water.

While Ross downplays the possibility of contracting the AIDS virus from Buddy or from any other AIDS victim, she keeps latex gloves handy in case he cuts himself or has a bloody nose. Only the contact of his blood with her own, she said, could cause spreading of the disease.

Ross emphasizes that Buddy won’t necessarily develop the deadly disease. She said that although all infants born of HIV-infected mothers will test positive for HIV antibodies acquired from their mothers, the antibodies will disappear in about 18 months if the child does not have the virus.

In 70% of the cases, Ross said, the children of HIV-infected mothers do not have the virus.

Wurth said that since Orange County’s HIV foster-home program began in 1985, 19 children born to HIV-positive mothers have been placed in foster homes. Of those, eight have turned out not to have the HIV, including six who have been adopted or are in the process of being adopted, she said. In addition, she said, four children infected with HIV have been or soon will be adopted by relatives or foster parents.

While most foster mothers of HIV children keep a low profile and won’t be identified by name, Ross always has Buddy at her side in public. A week ago, they appeared before the Fountain Valley City Council to accept the city’s proclamation giving recognition to World AIDS Day.

Ross and Buddy are also expected to attend a series of performances in south Orange County over the next two weeks that are intended to raise community awareness of the plight of children touched by AIDS.

They will be helping to solicit contributions of diapers, baby food, blankets and other necessities that will be distributed before Christmas to financially needy families with AIDS children.

“Most people don’t think of the babies and the children. They are innocent victims of the disease, and Megan can’t do the job alone,” said Alicia Butler, producer and director of Children’s Theatre Productions, which will be using teen-agers to present the show “Gifts of the Magi.”

Originally Ross had agreed to provide a home for Buddy only until he completed his withdrawal from drug addiction. Two weeks ago he was scheduled to go to the home of a relative in Riverside County. As that day approached, Ross said, they made the rounds of the people who know Buddy, from City Hall employees to restaurant waitresses, to say goodby.

She recalled getting a call from Buddy’s relative saying she could keep him and then immediately applying to adopt him.

Ross said she would not regret adopting Buddy even if he has the AIDS virus. “I love him,” she said. “I just can’t imagine him being alone and going through an illness, especially a terminal illness, without me.”