Love Answers Crack Babies’ Needs, Foster Mom Believes

When Pat Smith’s foster daughter asks her how she knew to take her home from the hospital, her mother says it was all in the feet.

“I said, ‘When I took your blanket off, you had my grandmother’s feet. They were fat little feet you couldn’t put shoes on.’ My grandmother worked in the fields in Hawaii, and her feet were very hard and callused.”

She later learned that many babies exposed to crack are born with dry skin, but this one’s tough little feet made her seem the reincarnation of her grandmother--proof enough that she was meant to take her home.

Ten years later, that little girl is thriving. She’s a model, dancer and budding scientist. Her 3-year-old sister has also joined the family, proving to the doctors who had little hope for her survival that love is indeed the best therapy.

Prone to Hyperactivity, Depression

Nina and Bella were among at least 75 babies born every year at San Francisco General Hospital to mothers who test positive for cocaine. The babies face myriad health problems, from asthma to brain damage. And as they grow older they are prone to hyperactivity, depression, anxiety and impulsive behavior.

Smith, 48, was the single mother of two teenage daughters when a social worker called her to the hospital. She found a sign saying “Baby Girl Smith” hanging above Nina’s crib.

“Smith is a common name, but it meant a lot to me. I very much felt a connection,” she says. She later learned “Smith” was the name they gave all babies without fathers.

They warned her that the 9-day-old girl was sensitive to contact and refusing to eat. But Smith picked her up and turned her to the wall, and the baby ate--a trick she learned as a foster mother for three other crack-exposed infants.

“When a baby comes into this world, it should be trouble-free,” she says. “But these babies are overstimulated.”

Nina was cranky and sensitive, stiffening at the slightest touch or noise. She slept no more than 15 minutes at a time.

“I was a zombie,” Smith recalls.

At her most discouraged, Smith would remember how a young mother in the neighborhood once threw her baby in a fit of frustration.

“All I could do was think, ‘I’m glad it’s me and not someone who will throw you across the room,’ ” she says at their cramped apartment in the Western Addition, a working-class neighborhood.

Nina, bright and inquisitive, was a toddler when she started wondering where her birth mother was.

“I know why you couldn’t carry me and carry my seed--because you have a bad back,” she eventually told Smith. “So they used my biological as a vehicle.” (This 10-year-old has a precocious way with words.)

“I just try to turn my head and I cry, and I say, ‘That’s exactly right,’ ” Smith says.

When Nina was 3, a family friend came over with a Macy’s ad saying the model looked just like her.

“I kept looking at it and I said, ‘If someone who looks like me can do that, maybe I can do that,’ ” Nina recalls.

She soon appeared in her first runway show. At 4, she starred in a music video for Aaron Neville. “She calls me her godfather,” Neville says. He calls Nina “a talented girl who needs to be seen and needs to be heard. She’s a professional.”

Nina still models. But her goal is to become a singer.

“It’s not the money--it’s just knowing I accomplished something,” she says. “It can be grueling. The auditions are the most grueling.”

Despite earlier problems with hand-eye coordination, she is a gifted athlete--aggressive, confident, a leader. She seems like a typical overachiever, but she still suffers from asthma and attention deficit disorder, and she shies away from physical affection. When her medication wears off, she gets impatient and easily frustrated.

“You don’t see it. If they had a limb missing you’d see it,” Smith says.

When Smith brought 1-year-old Bella home, Nina learned they were half-sisters. Nina said: “You mean the person who gave birth to me and left me in the hospital is having more children?” Smith recalls.

“I said, ‘God had a plan, and God sent you to me and sent your sister to me.’ ”

Exposed to both HIV and crack, Bella suffered two strokes soon after birth that left her with cerebral palsy. The doctors considered her so brain-damaged that they wrote “Do Not Resuscitate” on her charts.

Today, Bella is a giggly, talkative toddler who will chortle a Spice Girls song from start to finish and race gleefully up and down the hallway. She regularly rides horses as therapy.

Her body fought off HIV at 15 months.

“I think love is the major key for transforming these children. They responded to the love pretty quickly,” says family friend Cindy Herron of the singing trio En Vogue.

Daunting Task for Foster Parents

Caring for a drug-exposed infant can be daunting for foster parents, says Dr. Sylvia Villarreal, a physician at San Francisco General who has watched dozens of drug-exposed infants grow to adolescence since 1986.

“In-utero exposure to alcohol, cigarettes, cocaine and heroin causes a lot of neurological damage. These kids have trouble sensing their environment,” she said.

They tend to be slower cognitively than other children and need constant medical attention and therapy--physical and psychological. And a steady, loving home has no doubt played a big part in helping Nina and Bella overcome their early setbacks, she says.

“There’s always the question of nature and nurture with all these kids,” she says. “I think what Pat embodies is the whole package deal: the soul and the tangible environment. She feeds them right and makes sure they’re in an environment that makes them feel safe and protected.”

Over the years, Smith has been a devoted, affectionate foster mother to other crack-exposed children, including a 10-year-old with more profound learning disabilities than Nina and Bella who now lives with the family. The girl came to her at age 2, too late for the early nurturing that Smith believes helped Nina and Bella thrive.

Smith, who is adopting Nina and already is Bella’s legal mother, says the decision to care for these children was simple: “I’ve always been the block mom.”

She grew up around the corner, the eldest of three and the neighborhood’s big sister. Articulate, dedicated, persistent and tough, Smith is firm about misbehavior but generous with her affection. She expects her children to excel, and they do.

“She’s incredible,” says Herron, who as a girl spent many an afternoon in Smith’s care. “She’s just pouring so much love out. She’s such an inspiration to me. I look at her and think, ‘Do I have what it takes to do that?’ ”

The costs for Smith, who quit her job as a theater manager because of a back injury, add up. She says the help she gets from the city is barely enough to get by. Most of the activities she considers necessary--the dance and art classes, swimming lessons and after-school programs--are not covered by social services.

But Smith says the girls’ giggles and wisecracks are enough to dismiss the sleepless nights and the hours spent shuttling them around.

“It’s like being a carpenter who works and works and works, and somewhere down the line you have this beautiful piece of art if it’s handled properly.”