‘Sniff mom’ shares new life

The woman known as "the sniff mom" who made national headlines more than a decade ago is reassuring pregnant teens not to worry, everything happens for a reason.

"Not everyone here will have an easy life," Miss G told a teen parenting group at a North End church.

They'd just watched a video showing her 15 years ago, pregnant and wrecked on sniffing glue, in a court battle with child welfare authorities who wanted her ordered into treatment for the sake of her unborn child. Child and Family Services told her the baby she was carrying would end up "a vegetable in a wheelchair."

Now, sober and religious with her healthy 14-year-old son at her side, she came to share her story of hope with young expectant mothers.

Warning label ‘such a simple thing’

OTTAWA -- A decade ago, a Manitoba MP convinced most of her colleagues to back her call to put labels on liquor bottles warning consumers about the dangers of drinking while pregnant.

Six health ministers and three prime ministers have come and gone since then and not one has followed through on the motion.

When she left Parliament last year, Judy Wasylycia-Leis said it was one of her biggest disappointments that the warning labels had never come to fruition.

"Passing that motion was the highest moment in my political career," she said.

Long road to solving FASD epidemic

It's been three decades since it became taboo to drink while pregnant.

But Winnipeg's Albert Chudley, one of the continent's top FASD doctors, says he still walks through hospital nurseries and sees newborns with the classic signs of fetal alcohol syndrome -- round, small eyes, thin lips and a flat philtrum, the groove between the upper lip and the nose.

"There were two babies in a row a couple of months ago, almost side by side," said Chudley in an interview earlier this spring. "It's sad."

At least one in every 100 babies is born with FASD -- an estimate that's almost 15 years old, but the best we have.

Course aims to break cycle

TORONTO -- A prenatal course for moms battling addiction aims to help kids before they're born and stop the generational cycle of substance abuse.

Most of the women wouldn't feel at home in mainstream prenatal and parenting classes, said Nerina Chiodo, a pregnancy outreach worker with Breaking the Cycle in downtown Toronto.

"They're aware they're pregnant, and there's lots of shaming," said the woman who runs the prenatal relapse prevention group for expectant moms with substance abuse issues.

Nearly 50 per cent are on welfare living in shelters. Seventy per cent didn't make it past Grade 10. About 65 per cent say crack cocaine is their main addiction.

With help, she’s sober and happy

TORONTO -- At 34, Janey was smoking crack in a public bathroom when she learned from a dollar-store pregnancy test kit she was pregnant with her third child.

"I'm totally not proud of this," she said, more than a year later.

"Here I am at the worst point of my life," the tall, slim, fair-haired woman recalled. "I didn't know if I wanted the baby. I kept using," she said. "A week and a half later I freaked." She was bleeding, and feared she was losing the child. "That's when I knew 'I want this baby.' " She called a detox line and got a hospital bed. "I just knew this was the end."

Why would she drink?

Stocky, six-month-old Jacob has a huge smile, curly black hair and sports an urban camouflage suit on his 8.5-kilogram frame.

"He's my everything," says his mother Jayzee, never taking her eyes off the cooing, gurgling baby seated at her feet. "I was happy I was pregnant. I like babies. I was even more happy when I found out I was having a boy."

For Jayzee, baby Jacob was the turning point, her fourth child who finally pulled her out of a life of drugs, booze, gangs and stints in jail.

"I had to change," said Jayzee, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity. "I was tired of the same old cycle and I didn't want my fourth kid going into care."

It starts with diagnosis

On first glance, he's a boy like any other. He's working on his Justin Bieber haircut. He could play Call of Duty: Black Ops all day without a break. He's not crazy about school.

But he's three or four years behind in class, can't focus for more than a few minutes at a time and has been on a cocktail of drugs such as Ritalin without success.

"If you give him two pencils, he'll go like this for hours," said granny, air-drumming with her fingers on the table.

The boy's mother consumed as many as a dozen drinks at a sitting when she was pregnant with him. Today, after years of forging ahead on their own, the boy and his grandmother are at the FASD Centre to finish up three days of tests and find out, finally, the 11-year-old has fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Bad boy became good man

Nearly 30 years ago, Jason Mclean was labelled a bad kid. Most adults didn't want to deal with him.

"In Grade 6, I was kicked out of school more than I was in school," said the man who grew up in Charleswood.

"From early childhood I was very different from most kids. I had a lot of behavioural issues. I was out of control and had a temper from a young age." He was showing symptoms of fetal alcohol effects that weren't diagnosed until he was a teen.