'THEY WANT MY BABY'

Mom Faces A Sophie's Choice Over Custody Of Her Three Kids

A mother in hiding with her four-month-old baby faces a Sophie's Choice today.

She has to decide whether to turn up in a Kelowna court to try to get her
two older children back from the ministry for children and families,thereby
risking the possibility that her nursing baby will be apprehended.

Or she could decide to stay in hiding with the baby, forfeiting an
opportunity to show the judge she is capable of caring for all her youngsters.

Jennifer Bertrand, 28, who is Jewish, sees her dilemma as reminiscent of
the movie Sophie's Choice, in which a woman from a Nazi concentration camp
was forced to choose which of her two children should die or be saved.
After making the choice, she was haunted by her decision and eventually
committed suicide.

Every day, Bertrand says, she looks at photos of her son Aaron, 5, and
daughter Avery, 18 months, who are in a Kelowna foster home.

A judge is expected to decide next week whether the ministry is to get
permanent custody of them or if they should be returned to their parents.

"I hope and pray I could see them," said Bertrand in a telephone call from
a secret location somewhere in B.C.

Then she looks at baby Aidan, who is "20 pounds, happy, still
breast-feeding and so unaware of the situation he's in."

Bertrand went into hiding on June 29, days after Aidan's birth. The baby's
grandmother smuggled the newborn out of hospital in a duffel bag.

The family feared that the ministry was going to apprehend Aidan as it had
the older children.

Bertrand says the ministry is seeking permanent custody of the older
children because of her brief history of drug abuse and one incident of
domestic violence with her husband, Mark Steiner, 36.

Bertrand says she no longer uses drugs, has taken all the counselling and
alcohol and drug programs required by the ministry and has offered herself
for drug testing and all other ministry requirements.

She says the whole mess started when an in-law reported that she and Mark
had had a fight and Bertrand was smoking pot. She says the case is one of a
vindictive and squabbling family.

Last month, Bertrand's lawyer submitted a list of three families to the
ministry who are willing to provide a home and 24-hour supervision for
Bertrand and the baby.

But Bertrand says the ministry has not bothered to investigate the homes as
a possibility.

"The ministry is stalling on those names. They want me to come forward so
they can take the baby. And if I show up without him, I'll be thrown in
jail," she said.

"What am I supposed to do?"

A spokesman for the ministry said it prefers not to comment since the case
is going to court tomorrow.