
DATE: Tuesday, November 18, 1997            TAG: 9711180030

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Elizabeth Simpson

                                            LENGTH:  100 lines

MEDICALLY FRAGILE CHILD POSES CHILD-CARE DILEMMA FOR MOM

IF YOU'RE A working parent of an infant or toddler, you know how hard it is to find a day-care provider you can trust at a cost your pocketbook can handle.

You have to pound the pavement and be willing to fork over some big bucks, and even then, the worries don't go away.

If you think you have it bad, consider Rhonda Owens.

The Virginia Beach single mom took 6-month-old Christopher home from the hospital last week.

Her son was born prematurely in May, weighing only a pound. No ounces, no milligrams, just a pound.

Owens couldn't wait for Christopher to grow big enough to leave the hospital. But now that the tiny baby - who's finally up to 7 pounds - is home, she's facing a new dilemma. How to keep working to support her family of three - she also has a 2-year-old son and an 8-year-old son - and at the same time find someone to care for the delicate baby.

He requires intensive care: oxygen around the clock. Five different medicines, four times a day, some administered with syringes. Monitors that go off when something's amiss. A bottle of special formula every four hours that takes him 30 minutes to drink.

Because he's tethered to an oxygen tube, even a trip to the mailbox is a major endeavor.

Add to that equation the fact that he needs to see an array of different specialists and that every time he leaves the house, he goes with a canister of oxygen.

Plus, he shouldn't be in a group child-care setting because something as simple as a cold could cause him a major setback.

Talk about your child-care dilemma.

The day-care provider who had cared for Owen's 2-year-old son, Corey, didn't feel she could care for such a medically fragile baby, especially because she had other children to care for. ``What if one of the children knocked over the oxygen?'' she asked.

So Owens got a list of names from the hospital of people who care for kids with medical complications.

``One person I called charged $8.50 to $9 a hour,'' Owens says. ``I almost gagged.'' Owens works as an academic enrichment teacher at Cape Henry Collegiate School and needs child-care for at least eight hours a day, five days a week, so $9-an-hour doesn't fit in her budget.

Owens is about out of options. ``I've been praying a lot,'' she says.

She has six weeks' paid leave from her job at Cape Henry Collegiate, but she wants to save some of that time because she knows Christopher will have days when he's sick or when he needs to go to the doctor. She can take a six-month medical leave, but that means a cut in pay, which will make it nearly impossible for her and her three sons to survive.

Molly McClurg, a social worker at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, says Owen's predicament is not unusual for parents of premature babies.

``Unless there's a family member or a close neighbor who's willing to learn the routine, it's very hard,'' says McClurg, who works with parents of children in the neonatal unit. ``Some day-care centers will take an infant who's on oxygen, but when you add other complications like the ones Christopher has, that makes it much more difficult.''

In Rockville, Md., there's a special day-care center for children with disabilities and medical complications. The center is subsidized by the state and charges parents on a sliding scale. But Hampton Roads doesn't have anything like that.

And there are many parents of medically fragile children who need such care, says McClurg: Single parents. Two-income parents who can't afford for one parent to stay home. Parents who don't have relatives around to fill in the gap.

``We have a lot of parents who want to work so they don't have to go on welfare,'' McClurg says.

Some can get disability payments for their children, but if the parent makes too much, they don't qualify. Owens says she gets $30 a month for Christopher.

That's hardly enough to make a dent in day-care costs. Or even the cost of medicines, or the $450-a-month rental oxygen machine, which she's still waiting to see how much insurance will cover.

Meanwhile, she struggles to keep her family going. She feels bad for her 8-year-old son, Kyle. He can't be involved with sports or after-school activities because she needs to stay close to home with the baby. However, she says, he's been a trouper about that. ``He told me, `I'm not going to be jealous of the baby. I know you need to spend more time with him because he's so little.' ''

Despite her worries, Owens smiles when holding her baby, who she says is ``huge'' compared to what he was at birth.

``I know there was a reason for him to live,'' Owens says. MEMO: To pass along comments or ideas, please call INFOLINE at 640-5555,

and press 4332.

One more thing: Mothers Inc. needs 600 turkeys for their 11th annual

all-volunteer Thanksgiving campaign for 600 needy families. Drop off a

frozen turkey anytime until Thanksgiving morning at: Mothers, Inc., 417

16th St., Virginia Beach, 23451. Or send a tax-deductible check to

Mothers, Inc. Call Brenda McCormick at 491-2887 for more information. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

STEVE EARLEY

The Virginian-Pilot

Rhonda Owens holds son Christopher, who was born prematurely.