Thursday, May 01, 2008

OK, This Is Scary

From a municipality near my hometown of Herndon, VA comes the following story: Arlington County CPS apparently took a child away from her parents because... wait for it... she lost 10 ounces after birth.

Now, as anyone who has had a child knows, babies are supposed to lose 10% of their birth weight in the first two weeks. As such, our 9lb 10oz baby lost - you guessed it - 10 ounces before she started gaining weight again. You can expect Cesarean babies (like ours, and the one in the story) to lose a little bit more. We were hardly starving our baby - she's been in the 95th percentile for weight all her life, and she's 13 pounds now - and I doubt this couple was either. There are all kinds of reasons why a child would be losing too much weight - sickness, severe reflux, allergies, etc.

Obviously I don't know all the facts here, so there may have been real reasons why the parents were judged to be unfit. But on the basis of a 10 oz. weight loss? Hell, by that standard they could have taken our baby away. That's what's scary.

H/T: The Agitator

2 comments:

Whimsicalife said...

That's...horrific.

Mike said...

There have got to be extenuating circumstances here. Still, scary.