At the end of the first episode in my YouTube series, I stated that I didn't know for sure what could have resulted in being born with so many physiological and neurological issues, as there were a lot of possibilities, and room for speculation. For the longest of time, I had been curious about what circumstances could have arisen during my birth to bring me into this world with such issues, and began doing a little research as to what could cause these issues to develop in the developing human baby.
The first question I had was simple: what could have happened to result in my being born with so many issues? I had heard rumors that substance abuse had taken place, and used that as a springboard for my research. This research first lead me to learning about fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. These are, essentially, a range of conditions that can occur due to the mother consuming alcohol during pregnancy, and can cause problems even at the earliest stage in a child's development.¹ Some of the issues that become apparent in the baby include hyperactive behavior, difficulty with attention, speech and language delays, learning disabilities, issues related to communicating and socializing, and various difficulties with daily activities that required physical dexterity, and even things like vision problems.¹
There are a wide range of areas that can be affected, and many degrees of being impacted; just because you don't see the most severe of birth defects, or complications, doesn't necessarily mean that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are absent, nor does it downplay the impact on development that these disorders have. In fact, there is a variant, if you will, known as Partial Fetal Alcohol Syndrome which, from my understanding, is a form where often you won't necessarily see the physical abnormalities associated with FAS, but will still be impacted by other symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.²
Now I had an idea about what exactly it was that most likely brought upon my physiological, and neurological issues - a combination of factors that were likely to have arisen, but a piece of the puzzle was still missing, which brought me to my second question: What was going on in the relationship between my birth parents that could have lead to substance abuse, and subsequent developmental issues?
Finding this out was initially hampered by the fact that I had not been in contact with any of my biological family until the summer of 2013, when my youngest sister - who had been searching for her siblings, and had found 4 others - had finally found me, and brought me into contact with my other siblings, as well as my biological mother.
I was born on October 8th, 1989, in Little Rock, Arkansas. I was adopted some 36-someodd hours later, brought to New York, where I grew up. During the summer of 2013, I was contacted by my youngest biological sister, and it was from her work in finding our birth mother, and most of our siblings, that I was able to learn more about my biological family. I was actually one of 7 siblings born over a course of 13 years to the couple who had me, a literal "middle sibling;" with a sister and two brothers who were born before me, as well as two sisters and a brother, who were born after me. The circumstances behind our births, however, were far from what you'd find in a happy relationship.
As I sought more information about my biological family, as well as the circumstances behind our births, I quickly learned that even though there were positive attributes - resourcefulness, as well as a knack for mathematics and technology, there was a very dark side that overshadowed all of that. During the time that he was with my birth mother, there was abuse - most definitely psychological and emotional, I do not know if any physical abuse occurred, or (if there was) how bad it was, but I can't rule it out either. I can, however, take a guess that as a result of this abuse, alcohol was utilized as an escape. Finding statistics to support the assertion that turning to alcohol as an escape from abuse is not all that uncommon had been, well, rather difficult, as every time I tried to find information regarding the abused/victim, results would pop up that talked about the abuser, leaving out the information that I desired to find. I did find out about a study published in 2004, which revealed that approximately 97% of domestic abuse survivors - irrespective of if the abuse were physical, emotionally, or both - will turn to alcohol as a means to escape the physical and psychological aspects of their abuse.⁴ Unfortunately, as stated near the beginning of this blog post, the consequences of abusing alcohol while pregnant for the developing child can be severe.
Do not misunderstand me, I do not wish to lay blame on
my birth mother, or make her feel a certain way about it at all. I have
seen the effect of abuse with friends, albeit nowhere to the extent my biological
parents went through, on someone psychologically,
and the outright difficulty that comes with trying to just get out. The
depression can alter the way you feel, think, and act, making you,
essentially, a different person, and one might be aware of it, but have
trouble being truly aware, able to do something about it for a multitude
of reasons. I recall reading stories from my birth mother about moments where the cycle of torment would be broken, albeit temporary - for example, I recall stories of how my eldest sister's ferret would hide in the father's favorite chair, and bite him when he sat down, resulting in a rather amusing cat and mouse game that ended with him getting bitten up even more, angrily cursing the animal off. Amusing as that story was, it did leave me feeling more in tune with how tormented both my biological mother, and eldest sister, must have been.
I truly, and deeply just wanted to
understand how I could have ended up coming into this world with so many
issues that needed to be overcome if I wanted to have a nearly normal
life. I feel as if I am at a point where I finally have more answers than questions, and fully understand how complicated something that seemed so simple could be. Some questions linger - like whether substance (ab)use during pregnancy can be
linked to Autism Spectrum Disorders, a question that has been met with
lots of disagreement in the scientific community.⁵ ⁶ ⁷ Those questions, however, must wait until the right people are able to carry out the right kind of research.
If, by some stroke of luck, my YouTube channel and blog become far more noticed by the public at large, corny as it may sound, I'd actually like to help raise awareness about these issues - fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, alcohol abuse and how they affect the unborn child, domestic abuse and how it connects to substance abuse, and so on. There are probably a good number of people who were born into circumstances similar to mine, whose birth parents were in a similar situation to those mine were, whose stories remain untold. By giving them an avenue to be heard, perhaps we can help reduce the likelihood of a child being born with these sorts of physiological and neurological issues, help give victims of domestic abuse better tools to escape before it gets so severe that their judgement is impaired enough to abuse substances, and give tools to those whose children - adopted or not - have been afflicted with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders so they can help their child overcome the worst of their afflictions, and live a life not weighed down by those disabilities.
Links & References
1. Characteristics and Symptoms of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome by Teresa Kellerman [npaihb.org]
2. Recognizing FASD - The National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
3. Fetal Alcohol Exposure - National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse
4. Galvani, S., (2004) Responsible Disinhibition: Alcohol, Men and Violence To Women, Addiction, Research and Theory, 12(4), 357-371
5. Eliasen, M., J. S. Tolstrup, A. M. Nybo, M. Grønbaek, J. Olsen, and K.
Strandberg-Larsen. "Prenatal alcohol exposure and autistic spectrum
disorders--a population-based prospective study of 80,552 children and
their mothers." International journal of epidemiology. U.S. National Library of Medicine, Aug. 2010. Web. 07 June 2017.
6. Aronson, Marita, Bibbi Hagberg, and Christopher Gillberg. "Attention
deficits and autistic spectrum problems in children exposed to alcohol
during gestation: a follow‐up study." Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 29 Sept. 2008. Web. 07 June 2017.
7. "Are there any links between maternal drug use and autism?" Autism Reading Room. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2017.
