'Baby Whisperer'
CHICAGO — She keeps the baby clothes arranged by size in the guest room. The hand-knit caps are stacked on a table near the door. And the white wicker bassinet is always within reach.
Becky O'Connell knows the call can come at any time. And so, when the phone rings shortly after 10 on a recent morning, she crosses her kitchen and picks up on the third ring.
“He was born what day? Mm-hum. Never left the hospital? Mm-hum,” she says, the phone receiver to her ear. “It would just be overnight? Well I can do that, no sweat. See you at 4 o'clock.”
Within a few hours, a social worker is coming through the door with a tiny baby, just 3 days old. The child has big, blue eyes, dark hair and a round, ruddy face. His name is Alex. “Oh,” gasps O'Connell. “Look at those cheeks.”
This is how it begins. At 65 years old, O'Connell is tall and willowy, with coiffed brown hair, gold-rimmed glasses and a no-nonsense personality. And at this moment, shortly after 4 p.m. on a bitterly cold Monday, she is falling hard for tiny Alex.
Officially, O'Connell is a temporary foster care worker.
But love, she says, is her real line of work.
“You know how quickly you attach?” she says. “It takes about 30 seconds. You get a baby in your arms and it's your baby.”
It is a sad reality the youngest children are the most vulnerable to abuse and neglect, said Dave Clarkin, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Of the 4,454 children taken into protective custody last year, “the vast majority were under the age of 5,” Clarkin said. “And many, many are under the age of 1.”
There is a huge shortage of people like O'Connell — the human safety nets of the child welfare system. Over the last decade, O'Connell has cared for 77 infants. That is at least seven babies a year. Babies who arrive on a moment's notice, and who can stay anywhere from one night to four months.Some have been abandoned. Others have been abused. Most are in the process of being adopted. All are in desperate need of someone like O'Connell, a volunteer who says simply: “My job is to fall in love with these babies.”On this day, when the newborn arrives, there's already a 3-week-old dozing in a bassinet set up in the sun-filled dining room.In the kitchen, O'Connell is waving goodbye to the social worker. “His name is Alex, right?” So many children pass through, it's easy to get confused. Then, O'Connell lifts her newest arrival — “You're a big boy!” — and lays him on a foam pad on the counter.Gently, she cleans his ears, files his nails and clips off the hospital ankle band. All the while, as he wriggles and cries, she talks to him in soft, reassuring tones. “I know it's cold, isn't it?” she coos as she begins to change his diaper. “Don't pee on me!”As afternoon turns to evening, O'Connell performs a delicate dance. When Alex is bathed and dressed in a blue fleece nightgown, his 3-week-old roommate begins to howl. All evening, O'Connell calmly pivots between the two — juggling pacifiers and bottles, patting backs and changing clothes.“I'm just an old girl who is doing what I love,” she says. “When you do what you love, you can do it in your sleep which I sometimes do.”“Give her an upset baby and it won't be upset for long,” says Jane Turner, associate director of Family Resource Center, the Edgewater-based adoption agency that O'Connell works with. “She has a gift for making a baby feel calm and soothed.“Some people,” Turner says, “call her the baby whisperer.”
