I have been friends with Marita Thou since early high school years and I am grateful she is still one of my dearest friends. She is one of the people in my life that has always and continues to impress me. Over the past years, it has been a huge pleasure to get to know Roy another wonderful person that I am grateful to have in my life. If you know these two, you know I could go on and on about how wonderful they are.

In short, Marita and Roy are dealing with a very unfortunate event that is draining their savings for their new baby Roman, future wedding along with other life changes. They have been faced with an unexpected $13,000 in lawyer fees to fight this battle for their family. These fees may continue racking up if the judge does not dismiss this case (this could be just the beginning). Please consider donating to support to this outstanding couple so they can focus on being first time parents without the financial stress!

Additional background info:

"It’s time to publicly share the dramatic experience our family has endured over the last 5 months of Roman’s life. The reason why I am sharing this news is because we need your support. We need our story shared and we need your love. As many of you know, I have been open about our struggles to get pregnant naturally. We started planning for baby Roman in 2021 and started trying for 6 months naturally with no success. It was in June 2022 when I was diagnosed with PCOS and referred to a Fertility Clinic. We went through 2 failed IUIs, 1 Cycle of IVF, and 1 successful Frozen Embryo Transfer to get pregnant with baby Roman in September 2023. IVF is not cheap and to help save money, for 9 months in 2023 I worked my full-time job along with a part time job to get IVF insurance. I sacrificed quality time with my friends and family in hopes to make my dreams come true and they did! I got pregnant. My pregnancy was complicated, and I knew at 20 weeks about my placenta previa. Soon after I went on pelvic rest at 25 weeks after being hospitalized for a bleed. I was hospitalized again at 33 weeks, got released then 2 days later went back in for my third hospitalization. The third hospitalization, I stayed on bedrest in the hospital until our planned C-section date. I spent 18 days prior to Roman being born “relaxing” in the hospital, in the end, my stay was 22 days total. Roman was born 4 weeks early. I thought that was rough, looking back on those times. It was easy. It is an understatement when I say we really wanted this baby boy.

When maternity leave was over. We found a stay-at-home mom in the White Bear Lake community through Facebook to watch our baby. We thought we vetted her out. From the start she kept sending us concerns such as his excessive gas, his frequent feeding schedule, if he had a lip tie, if he was allergic to my breast milk, and so on. I relayed these concerns to my mom group, my lactation consultant, and his pediatrician. On September 6th, we had his 4 month shots. As expected he was feeling icky. On September 11th, we had his 4 month wellness check where I expressed all our daycare providers concerns. In the end, it was determined Roman was a normal baby going through regular growing issues. Unfortunately, our daycare provider wasn’t satisfied by this answer and seemed to still be upset. I dropped him off and then went to the airport for my first 1-day overnight business trip to Chicago. She messaged us that afternoon and stated she saw a bruise while changing his diaper. How did it get there? We don’t know. He didn’t have a bruise that morning when the pediatrician examined him. As naïve new parents, we overlooked the significance of this finding. Roy picked up Roman and that evening he was the fussiest we’ve seen him. He woke up a ton throughout the night but took bottle feeding fine.

On September 12th, Roy dropped him off at his usual time after a normal bottle feeding. Later that afternoon she messaged us stating he has not taken a bottle from her all day. Roy and I spoke, called the nurses line and we were concerned he was dehydrated so we took him to Children’s Hospital Emergency Room. Upon pick up our daycare provider had just made him a bottle that he refused and gave the bottle to Roy to take with him. While in the parking lot, Roman took the bottle from him. He called me confused, why is he taking a bottle from Roy but not her? At the ER during Roman’s exam, the doctors found additional bruises and after an x-ray and head CT, they found a fractured rib and the possibility of more. We were shocked to say the least. I could not wait to come back home that evening to be with my baby. Initially we both questioned, did we accidently do this? Did our puppy do this? The Child Abuse Pediatrician did only the basic tests and ruled it as child abuse. He scared us saying “This was not an accident. If you have to try to come up with scenarios then you probably didn’t do it. It was an adult. If you witnessed it, you would have known it was child abuse.” We were told to immediately stop all communications with the daycare provider. Ramsey County CPS interviewed us and then told us we could not go home with Roman without supervision and this was going to be written up as a safety plan.

We were lucky to find 10 family/friends that traded off supervising us. They stayed in our home, or we stayed in their home for 2 months. The first 2 weeks while Roman was healing were so painful to witness. So many tears were cried. All 10 of our supervisors never had an issue with bottle feeding Roman. We hired a lawyer the week after the ER visit and our lawyer mentioned that this could be abuse by the daycare, but it could also be a medical condition with his bones or connective tissues. This medical theory made me request to be seen by specialists and continue to test his vitamin D levels. We tested him at 4, 5, and 6 months and his levels went from 27 to 17 ng/mL (minimum is 30 ng/ml). We were able to get seen at Gillette’s Endochrinology in October. We had to wait for insurance to approve the prior authorization before completing the skeletal panel testing.

On Nov 13th, CPS told us the investigation was over. They concluded that it was abuse by an unknown perpetrator and she was going to close the case. They could not prove with more than 51% confidence if it was me, Roy or the daycare provider. She lifted the supervision and a whole month went by, and we heard from no one at CPS. We thought we could finally start healing from this experience but then on Dec 13th, the case turned. The investigator was overruled by her superiors, and they wanted to take us to court. Our case was now moved to case management, and we now have to abide by the rules of our new CPS social worker. We met her the week of Christmas and came up with a case plan. This same week we finally were able to execute the skeletal test.

In January we found out that Roman has a genetic mutation called FZD2. The FZD2 protein is thought to be important for the normal development of the skeleton and potentially other parts of the body but per the lab, this gene has an “uncertain significance.” We were then referred to Genetics. Children’s Genetics’ decided to test him for a connective tissue panel. We found out in Early February that it came back negative. The genetics doctor also evaluated me for hypermobility Ehlers Danlos syndrome. There is no blood test to prove this only a physical or family history. I did score a 6/9 on the Beighton test thus making me hypermobile but I could not complete the physical exam without more data related to my heart and pelvic floor since I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. I will need to do more tests in the future. Roman can not get diagnosed until he is a teenager or older since babies are generally flexible. The medical theory is still a continued investigation even with this new information. Both the Endo and Genetics department really do question the daycare provider and ask if she is being investigated. The answer is we do not know.

Now in February, after 5+ months of the case being opened, Ramsey County filed the petition to take us to court stating Roman is in need of protection/services (CHIPS). We have our first hearing on Wednesday 2/26 at 10 am over Zoom. Our lawyer now recommends that we get separate representation, so I just hired a 2nd lawyer. We have now spent over $13,000 in lawyer fees and with trial it will just grow. Thank you for taking the time to read our story. If you have any questions, ask them. We have nothing to hide."

-Marita