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“On a Friday evening in December of 2020, my husband, Brandon, and I were getting our two year old son, Hudson, ready for bed. Hudson asked Brandon to play airplane so they played for a while, with Brandon holding him up in the air making all the airplane sound effects and Hudson laughing, saying ‘again! again!’.
After, as we were putting on Hudson’s pajama shirt, we noticed a quarter sized bump on his upper abdomen. We went to gently touch it, but Hudson pulled back and said it hurt to touch. Although he was happy and seemed fine, we were concerned that the bump felt very firm and was in an unusual place. We didn’t feel comfortable letting Hudson go to bed without knowing what the bump was so we took him to a pediatric urgent care affiliated with our local children’s hospital just to be on the safe side.
We never expected what would happen next.
I went into the urgent care with Hudson (Brandon stayed in the car due to Covid protocol). After explaining that we were pretty sure this bump appeared right after playing airplane, the Family Nurse Practitioner said, ‘We know this doesn’t happen from playing “airplane”’ using finger quotations around the word airplane. She told me she played airplane all the time with her child and this didn’t happen. And the questions and insinuations just kept coming.
I didn’t know what to say. I was shocked that within minutes of meeting me, she was so bold as to basically accuse me. This FNP had not even explained yet what the bump was so I thought it had to be something very serious with the obvious accusations she was making. All of a sudden, this visit had gone from seeking medical help for my child to finding myself being accused of harming my child.
Note that in Hudson’s medical records, he was described by the doctor at this urgent care as ‘active, playful, and well-appearing.’
The FNP told me she couldn’t sleep if we didn’t go to the children’s hospital to get Hudson checked out by ultrasound because she was worried the bump could be a blood clot that had been dislodged while playing airplane (which was terrifying, but also seemed like a scare tactic because no doctor who saw Hudson that night mentioned this possibility and the FNP chose not to document this theory of hers in the medical records).
I agreed to go, saying it would give me peace of mind to make sure Hudson was okay. She then said she could force us to ride by ambulance, but would trust that we’d go straight there. She warned me that she’d be watching and if we didn’t check in downtown, she’d report us.
We drove straight to the children’s hospital in hopes that if we complied, the hospital would surely see our son wasn’t abused and we could avoid being reported to CPS. Hudson was examined at the ED and we were so relieved to hear his small bump was just a bruise that had formed a hard goose egg, but he was fine.
Days later, I got a call from the children’s hospital saying they were very worried about Hudson, concerned that he could have ORGAN DAMAGE, and that they wanted us to schedule an appointment to bring him in for more testing.
On one hand, I was absolutely terrified for my child. Organ damage?!? But my intuition quickly kicked in. This explanation didn’t make sense because 1) Hudson seemed totally fine, 2) the doctor at the ED had reassured us after an ultrasound that he was fine and 3) this was days after the bruise had been noticed and if he truly had potential organ damage shouldn’t I bring him in right away rather than wait another day for an appointment??
With the threats of being reported by the FNP in my mind, I decided to ask if they were truly concerned about Hudson’s health or if this was related to the accusations made by the FNP. This medical professional (who it turns out was with the child abuse pediatrician’s/CAP team, but had not disclosed that) then explained that this appointment I was scheduling was actually due to abuse concerns, that there was an open CPS case against us, and abuse workup would be run on Hudson and I would be “screened” at this appointment.
I was in disbelief. I expressed how wrong it was that she had not been forthcoming to me about this info and was instead going to allow me to think I was scheduling an appointment for potential “organ damage” for my child.
With hearing there was an open CPS case, I thought I was obligated to schedule the appointment, so I did. When I got off the phone I burst into tears, filled with panic. I couldn’t bring my son back to this hospital that had just been so dishonest with me. I couldn’t trust them with my child. We had fully complied to this point and it still wasn’t good enough. I can’t describe the terror of wondering if they were going to take my son at this appointment.
That’s when my husband and I decided to call back and see if we could run this abuse testing with our own pediatrician who knew us well. This member of the CAP team said I COULD run the tests with our own pediatrician, BUT she advised me against doing so, warning me that if something was seriously wrong with Hudson, we might not get test results back fast enough with our pediatrician. Another scare tactic. I cancelled the child abuse visit and went forward with meeting with our pediatrician, telling the CAP team employee that I would keep her updated on how the appointment went to make sure I was still being cooperative due to the open CPS case.
The next morning at our appointment, our pediatrician walked into the room wide eyed, telling me she couldn’t believe how hard the children’s hospital was pushing against us. She said, ‘I just got of the phone with [CAP team employee]. They’re saying you guys left AMA.’ Meaning we took Hudson from the hospital against medical advice, without being discharged. Our pediatrician thankfully didn’t believe it, and of course we had full discharge paperwork. She explained that since I had been told by the hospital that there was an open CPS case, CPS would be coming by our house due to protocol, but that she would help us however she could. I was so relieved she didn’t make Hudson go through the invasive abuse workup that the CAP team was pressuring us and her to do.
I went home to prepare for CPS to show up, not really knowing how to even prepare for that. My husband and I also had a consultation with an attorney because were concerned about what false info CPS had been told since there seemed to already be so much false information coming from the child abuse team.
And then we waited. Every knock at the door, every phone call was so anxiety inducing. I was scared to let Hudson play and just be a two year old for fear he would get any bump or bruise for when CPS showed up. But CPS never showed. We wondered if they were working with the CAP team and urgent care to build a case against us? We didn’t know how these situations worked.
Finally, we just wanted answers, to know if our case had been closed, but no one could give us those answers. CPS said they couldn’t share details over the phone and the children’s hospital said mandatory reporting laws prevented them from helping us with our questions. So we filed a written request for our CPS case records.
About two months after our ordeal started, we got our answer back from CPS… there was never even an open CPS case against us.
That brings me to why I’m sharing my story and why I created Parents Behind The Pinwheels:
I want parents to be aware of the tactics used to schedule child abuse appointments because you want to prevent one of these appointments if at all possible. If something seems off, question it. Know your rights. The steps you take early on are the most important.
Every April I had seen the blue pinwheels displayed at our local children’s hospital and my heart broke thinking about what must have happened to all those children represented by pinwheels.
The first time I saw the pinwheel display after our ordeal, I had to read the sign again as it sunk in. ‘Each of the 1,642 pinwheels reflects a child abuse appointment’… Hudson had a child abuse appointment scheduled. My son. He would’ve had a blue pinwheel if I hadn’t cancelled (and who knows, maybe he had one displayed for him even though we didn’t go). All because we did the right thing as parents to seek medical care when we saw something abnormal.
As I saw the comments about these pinwheel displays and people sharing the post, asking ‘who are these people?’, saying ‘one pinwheel is too many’, some calling the parents behind the pinwheels awful names… it hit me, I am one of those parents behind a pinwheel. But I’m not a ‘monster’ and my child is not in any way abused. Yet, Hudson would still have a pinwheel next to a child who had been through unimaginable trauma.
Ironically, the most traumatic thing Hudson would have ever been through in his two years of life would have been the CAP team’s child abuse workup if we had complied. And worse, he could’ve ended up with the lasting trauma of becoming part of our very broken child welfare system.
I wanted to believe our experience was an unlucky, one-off occurrence, but I wondered how many other pinwheels were just parents like us who did the right thing seeking medical care for their child?
To be clear, I, along with the families who share for this page are heartbroken by actual child abuse and acknowledge that so many pinwheels do represent actual abuse. However, I couldn’t help but ask the questions, how many other pinwheels were cases built on a foundation of lies? What happened to families who didn’t have the privileges my family had, the benefit of a pediatrician who would help them, money for an attorney etc.?
As I connected with so many others within the Fractured Families community, I realized in horror what was happening to these families accused by child abuse pediatricians. I know how easily I could’ve been in their shoes (turns out Hudson and I likely have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, like so many on this page, which can cause easy bruising amongst other conditions that can mimic abuse) so I vowed to do everything I could to support these families.
My hope is that someday this page won’t need to exist anymore because there will be more awareness about medical conditions that mimic abuse and the system will have better checks and balances to prevent these nightmares, but until then, Parents Behind The Pinwheels will continue sharing these stories.”
Genesis 50:20 Romans 8:28
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