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I can remember the day quite clearly. I was sitting on the couch, my husband was packing our things for the move to our new home in Washington state. Our barely two week old son, Michael was sitting in my arms. The two of us were alone with our child and it was early on a Saturday morning. The doorbell rang.

I looked up the stairs, where my husband was busily packing things into boxes. I walked to the door and opened it, and there stood a worker from child services.

"Hi. I'm with child services and we've gotten a report that your infant son is too thin and isn't being fed or well cared for. Can I come in?" I stood there, glued to the spot, my mouth wide open, the baby sitting in the portable crib I had laid him into before I opened the door. My husband came down the stairs, looked at me and at this woman who stood in front of me.

"What is it? What's going on?" he asked, catching sight of my face which I am sure was ghost white and my hand at my mouth.

The woman repeated her request.

My husband told her to come in and do whatever she wanted. I am so glad he was there, as she looked through the home on a search for diapers, baby wipes, clothing, baby soap, a baby car seat, a baby bath seat, and other things she deemed neccessities, (all of which we had), I sat on the couch clutching my baby. If she had tried to steal him from me, I would have run from the house with him still in my arms. I was terrified, imagining her stealing my baby away from me, calling the police if I tried to intervene. There is nothing more scary than that feeling.

After assuring herself that we had all the neccessities the baby needed and more she demanded that I undress my newborn, so she could see his weight. I did so while informing her that he had been born four weeks premature, and that he saw his doctor regularly. The most humiliating moment for my husband was when the woman demanded to know why the baby had been born so early, looked at the stairs, back at my husband, and than asked me if I wanted to explain it in private without my husband present.

I, (now quite angry), told her I had hyperemesis throughout the entire pregnancy, and the doctors had told me I was lucky that I was only four weeks early. She asked if there was another baby, this baby was not failure to thrive as she had been told. I told her there were no other babies, that Michael was my baby. The most humiliating thing to me was right before she left. She told me I would have to have the baby's doctor fill out a report

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