‘We were chosen’: 122 newborns, one couple’s epic foster care journey

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Don and Nancy Matthews, now in their 70s, fostered a small village of infants over the years. Only reluctantly has the Southwestern Ontario couple stopped. LFP’s Randy Richmond reports

STRATFORD — Nancy Matthews always wanted a lot of babies.

The love they need, the love they give — she can list any number of reasons why.

In quick succession, she and husband Don had daughters in the early 1970s. Then they learned she could have no more.

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Their response to that might seem to many a little extreme: 122 babies.

That’s not a misprint — one-hundred and twenty-two newborns fostered by the Matthews family.

Three official and three unofficial adoptions.

Thousands of diaper changes and bottle washes and interrupted sleeps, dozens and dozens of medical procedures, and, one heartbreaking death.

“People always ask how we did it. We didn’t know anything else,” Don says.

“We did it because we love children,” his wife adds. “We have a strong faith that we were chosen to do this.”

The last baby left seven months ago, and the Matthewses have since stopped fostering. Why? One reason is that in the midst of a shortage of foster families, provincial rules are requiring them to take training for something they’ve excelled at for 40 years.

They speak without bitterness, though, grateful for a journey that shaped and shifted them and their family. It was a journey that began with the alphabet.

Don Matthews, 75, grew up in Durham and Nancy Mitchell 73, in Waterloo. The two Ms were placed side-by-side at the Normal School — what teachers colleges used to be called in Ontario — in Stratford in 1970.

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The two caught each other’s eyes, so much so they pretended for the amusement of classmates on a field trip to get married in the chapel at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. They were officially married in 1971.

“As a little girl, I wanted lots of children,” Nancy says. “That was my dream.”

Her mother volunteered at a home for babies with special needs.

“As a 10-year-old, I would sort of beg her, ‘Please bring a baby home today. Babies shouldn’t be living there, bring the babies home.’ My mother would always come home empty-handed,” Nancy says.

“My mother didn’t share my love of children. My mother was very prim and proper and when the children were raised, she was done, back to work.”

Her grandmother lived four doors down and Nancy visited her every night to watch TV.

“She was a very nurturing Mennonite woman, loved to make pies — ate too many of them — and she loved children so much. So maybe it came from her or maybe it’s a genetic thing,” Nancy says.

Don grew up with an older sister with special needs and knew the challenges and rewards that come with that.

As he began a teaching career that took them across the London region, Nancy became a full-time mother and substitute teacher. “I always wanted to be a mother. So, you know, teaching took a back-burner.”

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The idea of fostering and adopting came to Nancy as she watched the yard of a neighbour that was alive with foster children.

The couple first took in a seven-year-old girl, when their own daughters were ages six and eight, and that turned out to be a misstep.

“She didn’t have a dad in her life. So she latched onto Don abnormally, and that bothered our girls. It wasn’t a very happy way to start,” Nancy recalls.

The couple decided to foster newborns only. They had no idea at the beginning how many. Many who came their way early on were from young mothers whom society pressured to give up their children. Those were arranged through lawyers and the Matthews family would look after the newborns for a short time.

Other young parents wanted to keep their children, but needed some time and education before child welfare agencies returned the babies. Nancy began teaching birth mothers to take care of their infants so they could return to healthy homes.

“We hoped that would happen. We were still new at this game and didn’t realize the majority of people who have the challenges that our birth families had don’t raise their children,” Nancy says.

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Most of the newborns they fostered were adopted quickly in an effort to avoid separation anxiety for the infants. That didn’t stop the separation anxiety for the Matthewses — especially involving the longer stays.

“It just about kills you. You had a baby for a year. And then you’re going to give it to someone,” Nancy says. “Our method of coping was to always put away all the stuff and get out of the house.”

One separation stands out. In 1981, the family took in a newborn named Jonathon. His mother was a university student struggling with mental health issues.

“He was this beautiful little Dutch boy with blond, curly hair and so sweet. The girls loved him,” Nancy says. “His mother was extremely bright and he was, and is still, a brilliant person.”

The couple applied to adopt him but because Jonathon’s family was Catholic and they aren’t, they were at first ruled out. A priest stepped in and supported the adoption. A few months after getting Jonathon, his biological mom asked to have him back.

“I remember sitting on the front porch steps when he left and everybody was crying, so I said, ‘Let’s go.’ And we drove to Ottawa. We just got up and left,” Don recalls.

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“I didn’t want to see anything inside the house,” Nancy says.

By the time they returned on the Sunday from Ottawa, Jonathan was on his way back home to them.

They later adopted two more children, Kaytlin, now 21, in third-year university, and Richard, 18. Both of their biological mothers were unable to care for them.

Adopting Kaytlin was a chance to keep the little girl connected to her grandmother — a woman the couple knew and loved from the foster care system — and her other family, rather than see her disappear somewhere else, Nancy says.

The area children’s aid society opposed them adopting Kaytlin, the couple says.

“They told us, ‘You’re too old. We selected another family,’” Nancy remembers. The couple filed an Ontario Human Rights complaint, she says. Before that went too far, the director of the children’s aid society ruled they could have Kaytlin.

As for adopting Richard, “he was just a sweet child,” Nancy says.

‘A sweet child’ is something she says often in a conversation to explain her decisions — especially the ones that brought three more children into the home. Those three newborns they raised, but didn’t officially adopt. It’s easier in Ontario for foster children with challenges to get access to services than children in a family, the couple says.

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“We just know these kids are going to need long-term care,” Nancy says. “We knew we would need agency help raising them.”

Don laughs as he recalls the early years with Robert, who came into their home in 1987.

“We went through a lot. He was the kid who was blowing snow in the winter with the electrical lawnmower. He was the kid with one of those pedal machines who would run it onto Waterloo Street in London when the cars were coming, just to see if the brakes on the cars worked,” Don says.

Why wouldn’t you give up on that kid at that point?

“We were his family. We were his mum and dad. That’s all he knew. I needed to protect him,” Nancy says. “As a newborn, he just cried and cried and I was often holding him all night. I think spending all those nights, we just really bonded.”

It was going to be difficult finding him an adoptive family. “So we just said, we’re going to keep him.”

Robert’s grown up and married now and they remain close, Nancy says.

“He’s a very caring man. Even now, after a phone conversation, he always says, ‘Love you, mom and dad,’” Don says.

They’d been fostering a lot of baby boys for a spell when a month-old girl came into their lives in 1989. “I was so excited to get a baby girl for a change. And I didn’t think much of it,” Nancy remembers.

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Their family doctor examined the girl and told the Matthews to get the baby to London right away, there was something wrong. “She had a skull fracture and blood on her brain. The priest came in and gave her last rites,” Nancy says.

The girl, Katie, survived the abuse and lived with the Matthews family for 18 years. “We raised her as ours, but didn’t adopt her because we knew she would need to access a lot of services,” Nancy says.

She’s in her thirties now, living in a long-term care home but calling her family four or five times a week.

Their third and last unofficial adoptee arrived in 2009, just around Christmas. “Our little Nathan was in the natal intensive care unit. I saw him and I came home and said to Don, ‘I don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into.’ ” Nancy remembers.

The Down Syndrome phased the couple not at all, but the medical complications were a concern. “He was blue, grey all the time, having trouble breathing in (the) ICU. He never walked, never talked and had to eat through a tube,” Nancy says.

Doctors said Nathan wouldn’t live long, maybe a year. So why take him? “Because he needed a home,” Don says.

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Nathan needed so much medical attention, “the doctors used to tell me I’ll have my medical degree by the time Nathan turns 18,” Nancy says. “I liked the medical part of it. My mother wanted me to be a nurse and I became a teacher, because my mom wasn’t going to tell me what I’m going to do with my life. I should have probably gone into nursing.”

As many challenges as he brought to the family, Nathan also brought joy.

“He could be a little mischievous devil,” Don says. “We did everything with him. I took him everywhere. Richard and I played floor hockey in the basement with him. When Richard and I would play basketball in the driveway, we put the ball on his tray and say, ‘Okay, Nathan pass the ball’ and he’d roll it off the tray to us. We just had fun.”

“He was just a sweet, sweet baby,” Nancy says. “He didn’t even have the energy to cry as a baby. He was very, very loving. Children thrive on love.”

In the last months of 2020, they could see Nathan’s health declining. His sister, Kristin, arranged to have the firefighters Nathan loved to see drive by her house, sirens sounding for his birthday in September. Just before Christmas, Nathan lost consciousness and had trouble breathing. Kristin, a nurse, held him close and gave him chest compressions and told him not to die on Christmas Day.

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“He was a stubborn boy. He snorted and laughed. I knew right then and there, he was dying on Christmas Day,” Kristin says.

His death shook his parents, their children and their children’s children. “People would say it won’t be long now for Nathan. But as the parent, you don’t believe that,” Nancy says.

Nathan’s obituary reflects how the couple sees their biological, adopted and cared-for children — all, family. “Son of Nancy and Don,” the obituary reads. “Beloved little brother to Jennifer, Kristin, Jon, Katie, Rob, Kaytlin, and Richard.”

“It was a bit of a, uh, an adventure as kids, because you could be getting off the school bus and you would recognize that there was a social worker’s car in the driveway, and you knew a new baby was coming into the house for some amount of time,” says Jennifer, the eldest, and chief executive of the Better Business Bureau for Western Ontario.

“It really shaped who I am. The patience I have for people, and the empathy I have for mothers that don’t have the support I had when I was becoming a mother,” she says. “We had a perspective on family commitments and responsibilities in high school that made us put other people first . . . and that’s an OK lesson to learn.”

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Of course, she knew their house was different from others and fostering came with sacrifices for everyone.

“I knew that my family didn’t look like most other families, with babies cycling in all the time, or my parents bringing babies to my, like, high school volleyball games and things like that,” Jennifer says, laughing.

Sometimes, she couldn’t go see friends or attend an event because there was a baby at home that needed medical care, she says.

Sometimes, they were babies born to addicted parents.

“I remember that sound of the babies that were in withdrawal. They have a sound, a cry that’s kind of inconsolable. It’s sad, and as a teenager you’re in a house where someone is crying 10 hours a day,” Jennifer says.

“I can remember thinking at the time, ‘I shouldn’t know how to hook up a baby to an apnea monitor at 18.’”

Her sister, Kristin, the second-oldest, has a slightly different perspective.

“I was 15 and sharing a room with a baby who was on a sleep apnea and heart monitor that would go off day and night, hearing that beeping all night long.”

She and her sister didn’t have friends over, because there was always a baby sleeping, Kristin says. But the biggest challenge at times was seeing your parents put the babies first, she adds.

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“Growing up, that was the hard thing, selfishly. But, obviously, we didn’t need to be put first. As a child growing up, it may have been a downside but as an adult I can look back and see how fortunate we were.”

The empathy and caring in her house likely guided her into nursing, Kristin says. But the challenges also influenced her decision to have only one child, she says.

“I have one child and am quite happy with that. Maybe, I just need him to be the sole focus of my attention and that may be a reflection of how I grew up.”

His sisters — seven and nine years older — bore the brunt of looking after the babies “and helped raise me, too,”  Jonathon, now an orthotic specialist,  acknowledges.

Even so, he remembers of the house — “never a dull moment, and busy.”

Everyone in “the roster,” as he calls his family, was treated the same. “I wouldn’t say my parents ran a super-tight ship, but they expected the same from everybody. Everybody pitches in, everybody treats each other with respect. I never felt different.”

They’ve always been open about the past and encouraged their adopted children to connect with their biological families. “That is what many adoptive children want, the answers to the questions: Where did I come from, who am I?” Nancy says.

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Jonathon found his birth mother when he was 19. “We’re friends. My mothers ask about each other and keep up on the family. It’s not like my mother was glad she had to give me up for adoption, but she’s glad I was adopted by my parents and that it worked out so well,” he says.

“When I look back at all the kids I saw come through and think about how the system is, I am immensely grateful, too.”

None of the three older siblings foster children. Jonathon has none of his own.

“It just wasn’t sort of the life experience that I wanted,” Jennifer says. “I was fortunate. My own children were well and healthy and I could also take a career outside the home.”

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” Jonathon says.

Over the past decades, the Matthews have seen a change in the babies they fostered.

“We saw a lot of fetal alcohol children back in the early ’80s. Now we’re seeing the drug children and that’s all you see,” Nancy says.

“Those children need to be on morphine for withdrawal. They are really, really, really needy. They scream and scream and they need to be in a dark room. They need to have quiet, they just can’t take stimulation.”

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Nancy and Don are resolutely non-judgmental of the parents of such children, most of them having their own difficult lives growing up. “I don’t think we’ve come across any who had a wonderful childhood,” Nancy says.

Only reluctantly, have she and Don given up fostering.

The province in 2007 created a mandatory training course for would-be foster parents, which Don took and taught to others. But both parents are supposed to take the 27-hour course — much of it “Mickey Mouse,” he says.

“It’s insulting my intelligence,” Don says. Aside from helping foster 122 babies, Don spent 35 years in the education system, ending as principal of the Madeline Hardy school at the Child and Parent Resource Institute in London. After that, he spent four years as executive director of Kids Country Club, a respite service for medically fragile children and their parents.

“They told us we need a car seat course — ‘You’ve had 122 babies, you don’ t know how to do this.’ There’s no common sense in place,” Nancy says.

Don tried to appeal to the province to have he and Nancy grandfathered in, but says he got nowhere. Their departure comes even as the need for foster families is growing.

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The number of available foster homes in Ontario has dropped by one-third since 2020, according to the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies. The association launched a campaign in June, seeking more foster families to address “the critical shortage” and saying the need is greater than ever.

“The safety and well-being of children, youth and families is at risk. The demand for these compassionate individuals and families has never been higher,” the association said.

The Matthewses don’t deny there are some advantages to retiring from fostering. “I do like that sometimes we can get in the car and just go places, with no babies and no bottles,” Nancy says.

“And we can take the two-seater,” Don adds.

Still, they mourn the ending of a life’s mission.

“I think it was a calling in life and we did a good job of it,” Nancy says.

Fostering 122 babies changed who she and Don were, for the better, she says. “Don always had a great sense of humour. I think I’ve developed that but still, if we have a crisis, I tend to panic and Don remains very calm. It’s a good relationship.”

Nancy’s love continues to astonish Don. Sometimes, they’ll be driving and, out of the blue, Nancy will mention a long-ago baby’s name that he’d forgotten, Don says.

I wonder what happened to them? Nancy will say.

“I love holding and talking to babies. And they never get mad at me, not like my children,” she laughs.

“There are children in poverty, children who are mistreated, children in need of protection. Some are slipping through the cracks,” Nancy says. “If they called me this afternoon with a baby, I would take it.”

rrichmond@postmedia.com

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