OUTLOOK IMPROVES FOR COCAINE BABIES

AKRON, Ohio -- Eight-month-old Solomon gurgled and crawled, supremely
unaware that luck may be with him.

The infant was exposed to cocaine in the womb, but his future may be much
brighter than was once feared for cocaine babies.

Gone are the dire predictions of just 10 years ago that such children would
be doomed to lives of mental disabilities and developmental delays,
burdening schools, the health-care system and society.

While drug exposure is hardly a prescription for a healthy baby, many
children seem to be emerging from maternal cocaine exposure with few or no
problems. Many of the early studies extrapolated from small numbers of very
sick babies, experts say, and gave misleading information.

"There was a lot of hysteria, but it's not been documented that there's
significant effects to cocaine," said Dr. Ellen Hutchins, chief of the
perinatal and women's health branch of the U.S. Maternal and Child Care
Center.

When cocaine and its smoked derivative, crack, peaked in popularity in the
late 1980s, drug-abusing women nationwide were having 375,000 babies a year.

"It's a muddy picture," said Dr. Jane Holan, medical director of Akron's
Blick Clinic. "You have the immediate effect" -- trembling, nervousness,
hard to pacify -- when the baby is born, she said. "But down the road, they
do well in a good, stable environment."

Of the six cocaine babies that Renee Jones of Akron has foster parented,
most are doing well.

"I didn't have any bad cases," she said. "They had the shakes when I first
got them, but after that you would just really never know they had it."

The 3-year-old girl she cares for now was premature, weighing only 4 pounds,
5 ounces at birth. But she's doing well. She is potty-trained, speaks
clearly and is teaching her 3-year-old foster brother to dress himself, she
said.

A 1998 University of Florida study found that three in four children exposed
to cocaine suffer no more ill effects than children who weren't exposed to
the drug. But there haven't been a lot of long-term studies about what
happens to the children.

Vicki Fisher, a nursing administrator at the women's halfway house at Edwin
Shaw Hospital in Lakemore, Ohio, said it's important to get newborns out of
drug-infested environments.

Fisher said that drug-abusing mothers have many problems -- such as housing,
parenting and employment -- in addition to kicking the habit, so a foster
home can be crucial.

That's what's happened with little Solomon, who is now in permanent custody
of the Summit County Children Services Board until a suitable permanent home
can be found.

In the meantime, foster mother Kelly Harrison lavishes attention on him, and
the results seem positive.

"He's just a normal, healthy little boy," said Harrison, who doesn't see the
problems -- crossed eyes, mobility problems, developmental delays, crying
and tremors -- in Solomon that she has seen in two other drug-exposed babies
she has fostered. "Its the way God wants it."