SPRINGFIELD, Ore. — After nine long months of anticipation, the newest member of the KEZI family is here.

Hudson Alfred James Elmer was born at 9:29 p.m. He was 8 lbs., 7 oz., and a tall guy at 21 inches long.

Mom, dad and baby are all doing well. Hudson is the first grandchild on both sides of the family. And since Holly has all sisters, Hudson is the first boy on the Menino side.

April 19, 2012

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — Every parent has their own tale to tell of how their family started.

Today’s families come in many different shapes and sizes. Over the past 11 weeks, we’ve showcased some of the many different families that make up our community.

Click on the video above for a look back at those families that so graciously opened their homes to us.

April 12, 2012

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — Being a parent is tough enough, but there are even more obstacles to overcome when you have a child with special needs.
One mother faced that challenge head on and turned it into an opportunity.

Sydney Schook calls herself a “Mama Warrior”. Her son Aidan was born with Down syndrome. Aidan is also autistic.

“The autism piece was a lot harder on me because I didn’t fit into just the Down syndrome community or the autism community. I felt like we were kind of out on our own,” Schook said.

Sydney and her family found themselves battling two different worlds and trying to figure out where they fit in.

“I just didn’t know what to do next,” Schook said.

Sydney was struggling and so was Aidan.

“He was struggling himself. One of the hardest things with kids who have low communication skills is that they really act out or have behavior issues just because they can’t get the words out the way we typically would expect it,” Schook said.

During this time in their life, the Arc Lane County started up a program to help families like the Schooks. Sydney signed herself up.

“It really showed me that I can be a good advocate, that I can be a positive person in Aidan’s life,” Schook said.

The more she attended, the more she learned.

“Trying to take the stressers out of my life so that I could understand him better, that’s a huge obstacle that I had to overcome,” Schook said.

And soon Sydney found herself wanting to help other families like hers. About a year ago the Arc Lane County hired Sydney as a program specialist. She along with others are about to launch a parent-to-parent mentoring program called Parent Navigator.

“We’re matching and pairing up parents so they have a mentor that’s gone through it. It’s not a professional or a doctor. It’s someone who’s lived the experience,” Schook said.

Sydney says through Aidan and the Arc she’s gained valuable “Mama Warrior” skills, the most important being an advocate for herself, her son and other families just like hers.

April 5, 2012

By Holly Menino

SPRINGFIELD, Ore. — For babies born prematurely or with special needs, Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is a lifesaver.

With the ability to care for more than 36 babies at a time and more than 500 babies every year, the NICU serves families throughout mid and western Oregon.

Like many families, the Brecko family never expected to need the NICU’s services, but when their child’s life depended on it they were grateful for it.

At 28 weeks pregnant, Rachel Brecko thought she was having a normal pregnancy.

“I was doing really good or thought I was doing really good,” Brecko said.

But when she didn’t feel any fetal movement, she and her husband Bryan went to the hospital.

“They just said we know from her heartbeat that something is wrong and so we have to get her out right now,” Brecko said.

Katelyn Jo Brecko was born on March 14, three months early, via an emergency C-section.

“When they brought her back in I was kind of preparing myself. I know she’s going to be small. When they brought her in, I wasn’t expecting how small she actually was,” Brecko said.

She weighed 1 pound 6.5 ounces and was 12 inches long, the length of a ruler.

“My placenta was actually dead and it wasn’t giving her any nutrition at all,” Brecko said. “They told us that if she would’ve been an hour or two longer from me actually getting to the hospital that she wouldn’t have made it at all.”

From that point on, the Breckos would take a wild roller coaster ride. After birth, their daughter was moved immediately to RiverBend’s neonatal intensive care unit. She was put on a ventilator and then taken off it.

“She was born on Monday and then Wednesday she had a pulmonary hemorrhage, that’s a bleeding in her lungs. She had to be put back on a ventilator; that’s kind of where it went downhill,” Brecko said.
Her brain was also bleeding and she was having problems with her heart. At two weeks old, she was transported to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland for surgery. However, it was a surgery she wouldn’t need, because she started healing all on her own.

“She came out of the NICU having no surgeries at all, which is amazing for the size that she was,” Brecko said.

Before long, her lungs, brain and heart healed. She did have complications with her eyes, but that too went away. Katelyn was taking major steps toward her recovery. She came off the ventilator and the feeding tube.

“Each stage is another stage to go home and so each time she does something successful, it’s like oh we get to go home soon,” Brecko said.

On June 12th, after spending 90 days in the NICU, the Breckos got to bring their little girl home.

“We actually got to take her home on the day that she was due, so she came home when she was meant to come home,” Brecko said.

The ambulance that took Katelyn to Doernbecher Children’s hospital is called Ruby. It’s designed specifically for babies in the NICU and can transport two babies at a time in NICU isolettes.

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — Parenthood is a job that’s both rewarding and — at times — challenging.

It’s also a job that’s hard to do on your own.

When there are two parents in the home that job can be divided up, but for single parents the responsibility falls solely on their shoulders.

“You have to be mom and dad and a guidance counselor and a referee. You do it all by yourself,” said Julie Bonneau.

Bonneau is raising her son Gabe on her own.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re sick. It doesn’t matter if your world is falling apart. It doesn’t matter if you can’t pay a bill or someone’s giving you a hard time. You don’t get a day off,” Bonneau said.

It’s a balancing act — raising her son, working and making sure he’s cared for while she’s at her job.

“You kind of have to reach out to get back up when you’re a single parent from your parents or from other single parents,” Bonneau said.

When it comes to money, she says if school clothes are needed, that’s more hours at work.

Even though Bonneau is the primary caregiver for Gabe, his father is still active in his life.

“We try to spend a fair amount of time talking to each other about Gabrielle and it’s hard. That’s one of the hardest things I think about being a single parent is to put your self-centeredness or your selfishness or what you want aside and try to make your choices based on what’s best for the child,” Bonneau said.

Justin Graham can relate.

“Even though we’re not together, it still takes both parents,” Graham said.

Graham is a single dad raising two teenage daughters and an 11-year-old son. They came to live with him two years ago.

“I’m always worrying about rent, food, just all that stuff,” Graham said.

Like Bonneau, Graham has help too.

“There’s absolutely no way I can do this on my own. I have a lot of help, friends, family,” Graham said.

He balances going to school, working and parenting.

A high school dropout, Graham is trying to teach his children the value of an education.

He also finds himself in a unique situation, parenting two teenage daughters.

“I try to talk to them and tell them that they can talk to me about anything. A lot of it, I don’t really understand what they’re going through,” Graham said.

While being a single parent is one of the most difficult things they’ve ever done, they both say it’s well worth it.

“It doesn’t matter how being a parent, if you’re a single parent or a married parent. It’s still one of the best jobs in the world,” Bonneau said

Both Bonneau and Graham say they’re grateful for the help they get from their family and friends. They say they couldn’t do it without them.

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — The picture of the modern family looks a lot different than it did 20 years ago. And for parents, there are several ways to form a family, including adoption.

Parents adopt children for many different reasons, and there are many different types of adoptions to choose from. Some choose domestic adoptions, while others, while Cerise and Jeff Roth-Vinson, choose international. Here’s one families adoption story.

The Roth-Vinsons love to travel.

“For us we had traveled a lot internationally; and, when we decided to have kids, the idea of adoption came up,” said

They had been married for about 12 years before they decided to become parents.

“Everybody chooses to have children in so many different ways,” Cerise Roth-Vinson said.

They adopted 5-year-old Oriana from Vietnam when she was six months old, and they adopted Tumiso from Ethiopia when he was nine months old. He’s now almost a year.

“You have to think what cultures are you going to incorporate into your family — that’s a really important aspect and where do we see ourselves going back to,” Cerise Roth-Vinson said.

Not to mention, not all countries allow international adoption.

They also had to consider the age of the child they’d be able to adopt and an adoption timeline – how long would it take to bring their child home. Once they started the process, they soon found themselves in heaps of paperwork.

“We called it being paper pregnant for a long time because your stacks of paper just seem to grow and grow sort of like each week of your pregnancy,” Cerise Roth-Vinson said.

There were also background checks, finger prints taken, Visa’s approved, home visits, meetings with social workers and even parenting classes.

After all that, the news came.

“You get an e-mail one day. It’s not a sonogram and here’s a picture, the first look at your child. That’s how it happens,” Jeff Roth-Vinson said.

Their daughter’s adoption took a year and their son’s a year and a half.

“We have post-adoption visits. I think we do two or three of those. They’re usually completed within a year and at that point you’re done,” Cerise Roth-Vinson said.

The real work starts once you bring your child home and it becomes time to parent.

As they get older, there will be questions.

“We’ve chosen to let them know from the beginning that they are adopted and support them in any way that we can,” Jeff Roth-Vinson said.

They want to make sure their children know about their culture and their story. Each child has a life book, which talks about where they came from. They’ve also incorporated cultural elements from their children’s heritage in their home.

“For example we might try food. We regularly cook food from each of their countries. We have artwork throughout our house that we purchased while we were there and we talk about that,” Cerise Roth-Vinson said.

As for travel, instead of booking flights for two, it’s a trip for four. Oriana and Tumiso are already racking up those frequent flyer miles.

The average cost to adopt internationally is about $30,000, but there are scholarships, grants and a federal refund to help families with the expense.

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — U.S. Census Bureau numbers show that in 2009, there were 5.3 million stay-at-home parents. The majority were moms, but the number of moms staying home to care for their children is on the decline and the number of dads staying home is increasing.

In 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau found the estimated number of stay-at-home dads was 158,000.

Sean Hammond knew at an early age that he wanted to be a father.

“I knew that being a parent was the most important thing that I was going to do in my life,” Hammond said.

He took that responsibility so seriously that before he and his wife Vivian had their daughter, Sean decided to get some training.

“Even if you’re not there yet, you can start thinking ahead. You can start laying out a few stepping stones along that path, even before you walk it,” Hammond said.

Hammond started his preparation for parenthood with a few lessons in discipline.

“Knowing that one of my weaknesses was being a disciplinarian, ’cause that is not something that I’m naturally comfortable with, I spent a year working as an unarmed security guard dealing with adults acting like little kids,” Hammond said.

After about a year as a security guard, he took the next step and started working at a children’s center.

“(I was) working at the playgrounds, seeing how they interacted, learning to anticipate, learning routines, just learning to be sensitive to them,” Hammond said.

After three years of preparation, the Hammonds welcomed their daughter Hazel. From the very beginning, they knew what their roles in the home would be.

“Every family has to work out their own internal dynamics of who does what; who takes how much responsibility, whether you divide it down the middle or whether you have a primary,” Sean Hammond said.

He says he isn’t super social, but for Hazel he steps out of his comfort zone.

“In my case, I’m the only adult male in a group of six females and talking about diaper rash, where to go to get the best deals on formula or food, trading baby horror stories,” Hammond said.

Hammond admits it can be a little uncomfortable being the only guy in a group of women.

“It helps a little bit that I’m socially oblivious. I’m probably missing some queues that this is a little bit weird, and those go right over my head,” he said.

But fatherhood and being Mr. Mom is something Hammond embraces whole heartedly. After all, it’s something he trained three years for.

March 1, 2012

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — Becoming parents in the teenage years isn’t something many people plan on doing. But for thousands of American teens, parenthood is very much a reality.

Numbers from the CDC show about 400,000 American girls between the ages of 15 to 19 give birth each year. While the U.S. has seen a decline in teen births, we still have the highest teen pregnancy rate of any developed country.

At 18 years old, becoming parents was not what Yesika Navarro and Devante Smith had planned.

“I was scared at first because I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. They wanted me to wait until I was older,” Navarro said.

Just seniors in high school, they found themselves preparing for parenthood. On August 11, Navarro and Smith welcomed their son Jose into the world.

“When I first saw him, I just teared up and cried,” Navarro said.
“I liked the feeling of being able to see him for the first time. It was just amazing,” Smith said.

And with that first sight of their baby came a new world of responsibilities for these young parents.

“Once I saw him and I was like, okay he’s here, and then there’s just like a light bulb went off and I was trying to be the greatest father I could be,” Smith said.

Navarro and Smith started attending young parenting programs at Birth to Three. They learned about a baby’s development, methods of discipline and developed a support network.

“I think that we’ve matured faster than what people are age are, and I noticed that Devante grew up a lot,” Navarro said.

They don’t sugar coat it. What they’re doing isn’t easy.

“It’s exciting, but hard. It is really hard,” Navarro said.

Navarro and Smith live on their own. Navarro attends Lane Community College and is studying to become a nurse. Smith works at Subway while trying to figure out what career to pursue. They put Jose in daycare part of the time, but they rely on their family a lot for help.

“If I didn’t have them, I don’t think I would be in school right now or being the mother I am to Jose,” Navarro said.

The young parents talk about their future and how they plan to parent their son and what they want for him when he’s their age.

“I want to be somebody that he can look up to and can come to for any kind of problem,” Smith said.

They plan to start talking to Jose early about sex and the consequences that come with it. They do have some words of advice for other teen parents.

“Just work together. It’s going to be hard, but you gotta work and don’t give up. If something goes wrong, don’t give up, just keep going and it’ll get better,” Navarro said.

Navarro and Smith aren’t giving up. They’re determined to be good parents to Jose and determined to go down this road together. Navarro and Smith are engaged. They plan to get married on June 30.

By Holly Meninio

SPRINGFIELD, Ore. — Nearly one million children across the country are being raised solely by their grandparents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

It’s a living situation that can pose a challenge for both the grandparents and the grandchildren.

Bruce and Pat Cummings of Springfield are enjoying their retirement but not in the way they thought they’d be.

“Life throws you a curve ball and every once in awhile you got to pick it up and go with it,” Bruce Cummings said.

The Cummings are raising their 8-year-old granddaughter Sophia.

“We had a family situation where her parents were unable to take care of her anymore,” Bruce said.

When Sophia was two, she came to live with her paternal grandparents and the Cummings became parents again.

“It’s difficult to try and wear both hats because I want to be fun and wild and crazy with my other granddaughters and then I still have to discipline,” Pat Cummings said.

There’s no question Bruce and Pat love their granddaughter. But there are many challenges that grandparents face when tasked with raising children later in life.

“Just getting up the energy to keep up with her. Sophia’s pretty active,” Bruce said.

The Cummings find they have a little less freedom.

“We can’t just pick up and go. We have to plan a little bit more ahead,” Bruce said.

The world is also a little different from when they raised their kids.

“I think because the world isn’t as safe a place as it used to be, she doesn’t get as much freedom as my grown children had,” Pat said.

They’re also trying to figure out where they fit in.

“They’re still struggling to find baby-sitters and a lot of them just don’t go out and do the things they thought they would when they stopped working,” said marriage and family therapist Mary Schrey, who runs a support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren.

Pat, along with many other grandmothers in her same situation, attend weekly meetings.

“It’s hard to talk about the fact that as much as you love your grandchildren you wish you didn’t have to do this every day,” Schrey said.

Schrey says nationally about one in ten grandparents are actively involved in raising their grandchildren.

While Sophia keeps Bruce and Pat constantly running, she’s also teaching them new things about life.

“Probably never would’ve known how many different kinds of bugs we have in our yard or how to train a cat. Sophia is just very interested in lots of different things,” Bruce said.

Instead of travel, it’s school projects. And instead of sleeping in, it’s walks to school. For Bruce and Pat, it’s still retirement, just in a different way.

A support group for grandparents raising their grandchildren meets every Tuesday morning at the Center for Community Counseling.

By Holly Menino

EUGENE, Ore. — In a household where both parents work, it can be tough to find the time to eat healthy.

One Eugene couple has their own recipe for balancing their careers and feeding their kids a well-balanced diet. Making nutritious food choices is something they started teaching their children right from the start.

The Kyle household is a busy one. Brooke and Chris have three healthy, happy and energetic kids: 5-year-old Piper, 2-year-old Preston and 8-month-old Pace. Brooke is an OBGYN and Chris is a urologist; their lives are hectic. Even in the hustle and bustle of the day, Brooke and Chris have made feeding their kids a nutritious and well-balanced diet a priority.

“Kids who have a healthier diet when they’re younger have a decreased risk of diabetes and high blood pressure later in life, and they also learn to eat well and hopefully those habits can last them a lifetime,” Brooke said.

These are habits that Brooke started instilling in her children when she was pregnant.

“Mom is also going to be feeding her kids and feeding her kids healthy, nutritious food and incorporating the diet she might begin in pregnancy throughout their lives,” Brooke said.

Even with three kids and two busy careers, Brooke finds the time to make her own baby food.

“During the week, I might be on-call or on the weekends I might be on-call, and then I’m coming home at night or on the weekends and starting with my home made baby food. Making that is super easy, super nutritious. It’s delicious for the kids. (I) prepare that and then freeze it and then we’re able to pull that out every day,” Brooke said.

As baby gets older, the size of the purees increases and new foods are added.

“When the toddler starts to eat, we focus on the vegetables and then give fruits and whole grains, and then as they get older they kind of know exactly what to expect and what’s healthy and what’s good,” Brooke said.

Feeding time in the Kyle household is very much a family event. Brooke prepares the food, Chris does the feeding and little Piper helps out too.

“If I can make something that’s nutritious and delicious and is easy and a lot cheaper than baby food, why wouldn’t I do it?” said Brooke said.

It’s an easy solution for what Brooke and Chris hope will be a lifetime of good eating habits. Brooke loves to cook so much that she made her own cookbook. It’s called Cook Brooke and is a collection of her favorite recipes.