William, Hope and Emily were born with heroin in their tiny bodies... but we still longed to adopt them
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They took turns to pace the length of their living room with the baby girl in their arms as she screamed and writhed in agony.
Clare and Jeremy Wilson felt so many emotions: pity for this helpless newborn, and anger at the heroin-addicted birth mother who had inflicted such torture on an innocent baby.
‘It’s hard to put into words how the desperation gnaws at your heart when you watch a tiny baby going through the pain and trauma of withdrawal,’ says Clare.
‘Round and round in our heads it would go. But our focus had to be on supporting her through it. She barely slept, jerking herself awake when she tried, so the only way we could handle it was taking shifts, passing her between us. We couldn’t bring ourselves to leave her alone, screaming.’
The year was 2017 and, by this point, the middle-class professional couple from Somerset were well-versed in this very particular parenting challenge.
Unable to have children of their own, this was the not the first but the third time they had fostered, in the hope of adopting, a baby who’d been born addicted to heroin.
In fact, they were the first couple in the UK to foster-to-adopt three newborns – each with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) having been exposed to drugs in the womb – with the full knowledge that the babies’ biological parents may win the right to claim them back.
Fortunately they went on to adopt all three, now aged 11, eight and seven. Yet their story doesn’t stop there – far from it.
‘The early months with each of them were the hardest but, of course, the after-effects don’t end following withdrawal,’ explains Clare. ‘Each of our three children has additional needs, which make their lives harder.’
William, 11, has been diagnosed with ADHD and Tourette’s, and has a reading age of seven, which makes school a struggle for him. Hope, eight, is partially sighted and awaiting squint surgery, while Emily, now seven, also shows signs of ADHD, is struggling to concentrate and is behind her peers academically.
That their children’s biological mothers knowingly took drugs which resulted in the babies’ agony – each spent their first few days in intensive care, where they were given morphine to ease withdrawal – is hard for the Wilsons to comprehend.
But despite the hard work, and teeth-gritting resilience required to look after children in this predicament, they have no regrets.
‘I can see why the thought of taking on three babies with such devastating histories might seem overwhelming, but forming those bonds and loving them from what was almost the get-go has been incredibly rewarding,’ says Clare. ‘I can’t see how the love could be greater, even if we were biologically linked as well.’
The Wilsons have co-written a book about their experience. Their aim is to encourage others to consider the foster-to-adopt scheme for newborns with addictions if they feel they have the resilience and empathy – both essential qualities.
Heartbreakingly, roughly 1,000 babies a year in the UK are diagnosed with NAS, although estimates suggest the actual number born addicted to drugs is closer to 6,000.
Until 2013 the Wilsons knew nothing of the dark and desperate world of babies born addicted to opiates.
Jeremy, 52, who runs an IT company and Clare, 47, who works as a charity social media manager, led a relatively sheltered existence in their picturesque 400-year-old house.
Both from stable, loving homes, they didn’t know anyone who took hardcore drugs.
They were introduced on a night out by Clare’s sister, who said Jeremy – who was in a band they’d gone to see – would be ‘perfect’ for Clare. She was right. They were married within a year and longed to start a family. However, after eight years, three rounds of IVF and 14 agonising miscarriages, their thoughts turned to adoption.
‘All that loss and heartache was difficult to bear,’ says Clare. ‘We so desperately wanted to be parents and didn’t know what to do with all that love we had to give.’
She ‘dragged’ a more hesitant Jeremy along to a talk where adoptive parents were speaking about the reality of raising children who had been removed from drug or alcohol dependent birth parents.
Although the tales were intense – of violence, meltdowns, but also love – the couple felt they were strong enough to handle it.
They arranged to speak to a social worker who explained the likelihood of a baby being placed with them permanently was very slim, as newborns initially go into foster care, giving biological parents a chance to turn their lives around.
However, she also mentioned a new ‘foster-to-adopt’ scheme where foster parents hope to eventually adopt the baby they are caring for.
Yet this came with the very real risk of forming a close bond with a baby only to have to hand it back to its birth parents.
‘If I’m honest, my stomach flipped with excitement at the thought of having a newborn,’ says Clare.
‘We spent a few days talking about it, before deciding we were willing to take the risk.’
They underwent extensive checks and attended specialist courses on caring for babies born to addicts.
In mid-December 2013, Clare and Jeremy received a call telling them about a two-week-old baby boy, William, who was in intensive care.
He had been born with heroin, amphetamine, benzodiazepine, cocaine, ecstasy and methadone in his tiny body and was so ‘drugged up’ – the most serious case ever seen in Somerset – doctors had feared that, despite his robust 7lb birth weight, he wouldn’t survive.
‘We met him for the first time on December 14 – my 36th birthday,’ recalls Clare. ‘All the other babies had parents at their cot side while William had a rubber hand placed on his back, to simulate human touch. I thought my heart might break when I saw him.
‘I held him, still attached to the drip feeding him liquid morphine.
‘I remember saying to Jeremy: “This is the best birthday present ever”. Still I felt like a “fake mum” until I recognised his cry as I was walking back from the loo. “He’s mine” I told myself.’
Just before Christmas they took him home. Although the worst of William’s withdrawal was over, paediatricians warned that at home it would be like ‘looking after a baby with a bad case of flu’.
‘But it was so much worse than that,’ recalls Clare. ‘He barely slept, and he just cried and cried, a high-pitched, shrill noise, like he was in constant pain. It was gut-wrenching.’ Loud noises, strong smells, such as Clare’s perfume, and bright lights all made William more distressed.
It was four months before he was able to settle without being held. As part of the process, they had to commit to taking William to contact sessions with his birth parents three times a week.
While it was understandably hard, Clare recalls feeling sorry for the birth mum who ‘looked a mess’ and struggled with William when briefly left alone. ‘The social workers had to come and find me, because he wouldn’t stop crying. She had no idea how to hold him, feed him or calm him down.
‘I was a bit annoyed thinking “Why should I help her?” but I also had empathy for her situation. No one would choose her life.’ Clare even gave William’s birth mother a Mother’s Day card and flowers. However, she stopped turning up for contact sessions. His birth father, who’d been around in the early days, was in prison and by January 2015 so too was his birth mother, both for crimes relating to drugs and theft.
The Wilsons were elated when the adoption went through and threw a party to celebrate with everyone who’d supported them.
‘Once he was through the withdrawal period, William brought us so much joy. He was a very amusing little boy.’ While the demands of supporting one baby through heroin withdrawal may have been enough for many parents, once William turned two, Clare and Jeremy decided they would like to expand their family.
Almost a year later in February 2017, the call came about Hope – a seven-day-old baby girl, again born addicted to heroin. ‘She was so tiny, only 5lb, and we were both smitten. Witnessing the same high-pitched screaming and jerking that William had suffered during withdrawal, it all came flooding back to us,’ says Clare.
‘We took turns walking up and down holding her.’
It was obvious early on that Hope had problems with her eyes and ophthalmology checks confirmed her vision is impaired – likely due to the drugs.
During access meetings with Hope’s birth parents, the Wilsons initially thought they were ‘decent people’ and feared they would ultimately lose custody. But they then learned how the birth parents had been prosecuted for neglecting their older sons.
A few months after Hope’s arrival, Clare was dropping William at nursery school when, to her horror, she saw his birth mother – who was banned from having contact with him – emerging from a nearby house. ‘A man was half carrying, half dragging her, and I could see she was pregnant,’ remembers Clare.
‘She said something, slurring her words, and seemed to recognise me as the man bundled her into a car and drove away.’
It turned out social services were unaware of the pregnancy. When they tracked her down, they discovered she was no longer with William’s birth father and had turned to sex work to fund her ongoing drug habit.
Her baby was due in just two months’ time – in December 2017 – and the Wilsons were asked if they would consider the foster-to-adopt scheme again.
Clare wasn’t sure; Hope was only ten months old and William was struggling having just started school. ‘I didn’t know if I could manage,’ she says.
This time it was Jeremy who did the persuading, adamant that the siblings should stay together.
‘Then I remember sitting on the kitchen floor one night crying with exhaustion and, cheesy though this sounds, an inspirational pop song came on the radio and I thought: “OK, we can do this, one more time”,’ recalls Clare.
Emily was born in early December, weighing just 4lb, with heroin, benzodiazepine and methadone in her system.
Just three weeks later, on Christmas Eve in 2017, the Wilsons took her home. ‘She was a very sickly looking baby, still well under 5lb when we left hospital. Tiny, fragile and so sweet,’ says Clare.
‘She seemed to be in so much pain she cried non-stop. We felt like old hands and, gradually, over the weeks, she calmed down, as long as she was close to one of us.’
Emily spent much of the day with Jeremy in a sling in his home office, quietly nestling against his chest during Zoom calls as colleagues offered their congratulations. Hope’s adoption went through in February 2018 and Emily’s a year later.
‘Of course it was hard work and as with any siblings there were lots of squabbles,’ says Clare. ‘But some of my happiest memories are of our holidays in Wales where they would play together on the beach and run into the sea holding hands.
‘As they’ve got older, William and Emily tend to be closer and play together more. I don’t think that’s because they’re biologically related but they’re both highly energetic while Hope is happier reading quietly on her own.’
Last summer Hope, then seven and aware that William and Emily share the same birth mother, began asking about her own. Clare told her what she knew but, curious, she looked her up online.
To her horror she discovered a memorial page. Hope’s birth mother had died the previous year after years of drug and alcohol abuse and social services hadn’t told them. ‘It was a horrible shock – and I knew I’d have to break the news to her.’ And so over tea and cake, Clare tried to explain.
‘I said, “I’m going to talk to you about something really important” and she asked, “Has my birth mum died?”,’ says Clare.
‘I have no idea how she guessed but I said, “Well, actually, yes, and I’m really sorry, but we didn’t know about it, and she’s already been buried, so we can’t go to the funeral”. She paused for a minute and said, “Well that’s all right” and went on to talk about her cake.’
The last they heard of William and Emily’s birth mother, she was serving a prison sentence for theft. While the Wilsons have explained to their children that their biological parents were addicted to drugs, they have not gone into detail beyond that.
Clare believes one of the other benefits of the foster-to-adopt system is that she and Jeremy got to meet the birth parents and are therefore in a better position to answer some of the questions their children may have.
They also each have ‘later life letters’, written by their social workers to be read when they’re in their teens which go into the specifics of their cases.
‘We’ve seen the letters and they make for hard reading,’ says Clare. ‘So we’ve been left to decide when each of them is of an age to handle their contents.’
Throughout the many challenges, the couple agree that humour has been essential medicine. One stand-out moment was when Clare was shopping with all three of them, Hope and Emily still babies, and the checkout worker asked if she’d ‘ever heard of contraception?’
Clare could barely stifle her laughter when William turned to the cashier and said: ‘No, we have a social worker.’
Seven years since their family became complete, the Wilsons have settled into a well-oiled routine. Both parents are self-employed, working from home, Clare part-time so she can be around before and after school and during the holidays.
Their biggest worry now is steering their children through secondary school, where their additional needs may present challenges, and ensuring they avoid falling into drug addiction.
‘Addiction cycles are often inter-generational,’ says Clare. ‘We really hope that our kids, despite their most difficult of early starts, will break that cycle.’ One thing’s for sure; this remarkable couple have done everything in their power to make that possible.
How Hard Can It Be? A story of one couple’s journey from heartache to hope by Clare and Jeremy Wilson (£8.99 amazon.co.uk). howhardcanitbebook.com
