RENEE | FLORIDA

“My son was born at 25 weeks, weighing only 1lb 5oz. We brought him home after a 100+ day NICU stay. He had been diagnosed with osteopenia of prematurity (metabolic bone disease) and we were instructed to give him supplements with his formula. I brought up concerns with our doctor because my son kept throwing up the liquid supplements, but I was told he’d be fine.

The morning of — we went about our day as usual: numerous FaceTime calls with my mom who lived out of state, tummy time for my little guy, meals, etc. and we did some shopping.

After returning home from shopping, I noticed our son was more fussy than usual and he wasn’t moving his left arm so I called his pediatrician. They said it could be a nursemaids elbow and told us to take him to the hospital to get him checked out. So my husband and I took him straight to the hospital.

Never in a million years did I think that the x-ray would reveal a broken arm. The doctor told us there was no need to worry, he could tell by how the arm ‘broke’ and the lack of any bruising that he knew this wasn’t abuse. But he said he notified DCF because it was the hospital’s protocol and told us they were sending us to the children’s hospital to get a full skeletal survey done.

We were transferred to the children’s hospital, the same hospital our son had just been released from 7 weeks prior after a 100+ day NICU stay. They did a full skeletal survey and the resident doctor came in and said everything looked great, the only broken bone was the arm and we should be able to take him home soon once they finished everything up. He said CPT would be coming in to do an interview and get photos of our son (I didn’t know at the time that CPT stood for Child Protection Team.)

A member of the Child Protection Team came in and the whole script flipped. She looked at our son, and said externally he was fine.. no bruises or anything, but said the x-ray had showed what looked like numerous healing fractures. We explained to her that we had JUST talked to the resident on his case and he said there were no other fractures, so we asked her if we could see the x-rays. She said to give her about 10-15 minutes and she would be back. She came back and told us she had ‘no way’ of showing us the x-rays, but we could ask for them the next day when the radiologist would be sending over the full report or we could request his medical records.

We were then told to have family come to get our son so he wouldn’t go into foster care and that we needed to leave the hospital. My mom flew out that same day to ensure she would get him.

The next morning the hospital called— this time it was the radiologist. She explained that our son had 23 fractures, in his ribs, his legs, and the left arm. I said ‘that just isn’t possible’ and asked if they had looked at his bone health because he had a diagnosed bone disease — it was in his records. She stated this wasn’t relevant and wouldn’t have caused any of the fractures, and we would not be allowed back at the hospital without a worker from DCF to supervise visitation.

I felt like my whole world had literally been flipped upside down. I cried and I couldn’t stop crying. I fell to the floor and my husband came quickly to hold me. I was crying to my mom and said there’s no way — he didn’t have any bruises, he was a happy baby. We had hundreds of photos and videos of him, kicking his legs and moving his arms around.

The DCF worker came to our house and explained to us that the state would be taking our baby, my mom could NOT get him after all. He would be going into medical foster care and we would be put on a case plan in order to get him back.

Our case worker ended up being a God send. She told us numerous times something wasn’t right and she KNEW we didn’t hurt our baby and she was going to do everything in her power to make sure he came back home to us. Our son’s foster mom was also amazing — at maybe our second visit at her home she said, ‘they gave me this. Don’t tell them I gave it to you though, I’m not supposed to.’ And there was our son’s medical diagnosis of his metabolic bone disease. The foster mom came to our court dates and also helped ensure that we got our son back.

Our son was gone from our home and care for 2 months until the case was closed. The criminal charges were all dropped within 2 weeks of our son being placed in foster care because the hospital wouldn’t even give the sheriff’s office the x-rays of the broken bones. How is this possible? I have no idea. I didn’t think they could refuse to give law enforcement medical records. Still to this day, almost 3 years later, we have not seen the x-rays, despite requesting them ourselves numerous times and even despite having our attorney subpoena them.

My husband and I are still healing from the trauma this caused. Sometimes when they put the pinwheels out during Child Abuse Prevention month I want to just take one down — knowing there was a pinwheel for our son and he wasn’t a victim of child abuse, he was a victim of the system having way too much power.”