Photo courtesy of family.
UPDATE  – 12/3/2014
Peter Wagner of KGMI News and Talk Radio in Bellingham, Washington has also reported on the story, interviewing the family’s attorney, Stephen Pidgeon.
Attorney to court: Charge parents or give babies back
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Couple fights for custody of children after home birth
Excerpts:
Erica May Carey and Cleave Rengo haven’t applied for a Washington state marriage license, but they said their vows before God.
“We just prayed and invited God to bless our relationship so we’d have a family built on a firm foundation,” Rengo said.
They’d only known each other a matter of hours before they decided to spend their lives together. Soon after, they conceived their first son.
Almost immediately after his birth, Carey was pregnant again. This time, the couple’s Christian beliefs influenced their decision to have an unassisted home birth.
“I’ve done a lot of research about other women who have done it and they said the spiritual experience was so much more wholesome,” Carey said. “It was just us. We wanted to preserve that sanctity and sacredness in our birth.”
To preserve the sacred space of her womb, Carey never even had an ultrasound. It wasn’t until immediately after the birth of their second son that the couple realized a twin daughter was on the way.
“I said, ‘Erica look!” and she looked at her belly,” Cleave remembered. “There was an outline of a small baby in her belly. That’s when I discovered we were having twins.”
The young couple now had three children, all under the age of 1 year. Erica breastfed all three. Soon after, however, paramedics showed up when someone reported the birth.
According to Carey and Rengo, the paramedics suggested taking the newborns to the hospital for a check up, but they refused, worrying about the twins’ health with fragile immune systems among patients fighting disease.
The next day, CPS showed up for the first of several visits.
Officers noticed the 10-month-old’s eczema, the couple says, which they treated with natural remedies like probiotics and coconut oil.
They say CPS pushed them to switch to steroid creams, which the couple refused as well.
“It’s a very harsh treatment and can have very negative side effects. It can cause damage to bones, the muscular system and liver,” Carey said.
“They wanted the authority in my household. I told them, ‘I’m a Christian and God gave me the authority in my household,” Rengo said.
Soon after, CPS took all 3 children.
Read the full story here.
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