Karli Schrider may be 43 years-old, but she still plays with dolls and has her mother tuck her in at night. Karli has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and her mother Kathy Mitchell has opened up in an incredibly brave, incredibly heartbreaking article about the reality of her grown daughter's life.
Back in 1973 when Mitchell was a partying teenager, FASD wasn't on her radar. And it wasn't on that of doctors either, because at least for the first several years no one connected Kathy's delays to her mother's drinking during pregnancy.
“I adore my very sweet daughter,” says Mitchell. “She’s a forever innocent child. But not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself, ‘What if? What if alcohol hadn’t been a part of my life?’”
Initially, Karli seemed healthy enough. Pediatricians attributed to her failure to hit milestones on time to chronic ear infections and later, cerebral palsy. They were wrong.
It wasn't until 1989 that Karli was officially diagnosed as having FASD.
“I thought I would die from the grief and guilt,” recalls Mitchell. “It was one of the worst days of my life, and at that moment I knew that I had to do what I could to prevent this from happening to another child.”
At 61, Mitchell is now the vice president of the nonprofit, National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Though most of us are cognizant of the dangers of drinking during pregnancy, I was surprised to hear that as many as two to five percent of babies born in the U.S. and Europe are born with some degree of FASD. I was even more dismayed to learn that despite awareness, one in 10 women admits to drinking at some point in her pregnancy.
It's risk that Kenneth L. Jones, a professor of pediatrics at the University of California at San Diego, can't wrap his head around. Due to individual genetic factors, Jones claims it's impossible to categorically say how much alcohol is too much. “But why bother putting an amount on it? Why risk your baby’s future?”
It's tempting to look at a woman like Mitchell and think, "Well, I'm not like her; I only have the occasional drink."
What people tend to forget is that, much like autism, FASD is a spectrum disorder - symptoms can be mild or more pronounced. And even a so-called mild case of FASD can ultimately affect a child's development, causing "impaired growth, intellectual disabilities and such neurological, emotional and behavioral issues as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, vision problems and speech and language delays."
Also like autism, there is no 'cure' for FASD, though early intervention can improve a child's development.
Unlike autism, though, Mitchell lives with the lingering regret that comes from knowing her actions directly impacted her daughter's life.
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