Foster Parents Reap a Special Reward While Nurturing a Special Child

As morning sunlight streaked into the comfortable living room, the little boy clutched his books and shuffled over to Eva Marmont and pleaded, “Read! Read!”

It was a request not to be refused the wide-eyed boy, who is not quite 3 years old. He jumped gleefully onto Marmont’s lap and pointed to the caricatures of other little boys, teddy bears and yellow ducks.

For the youngster, such simple pleasures are almost a miracle, considering that he was given little chance of survival when he was born 10 weeks prematurely, weighing less than 2 pounds. But since the age of 2 months, when he was barely big enough to fill a pair of loving hands, the little boy has been provided with special care in the Brea home of Eva and Cregan Marmont.

Because of their unselfish care of this boy and about 150 other foster children in the last 20 years, the Marmonts and six other Orange County couples were presented Foster Child Advocacy Awards on Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

Although they have long since demonstrated their dedication as foster parents, the Marmonts say they have almost totally forsaken their personal lives for the past 2 1/2 years to care for this medically challenging child, whom they are close to legally adopting.

Because he remains under the county’s protective custody, the boy cannot be identified or other details of his background revealed. But he has never lived with his natural mother, and Eva or Cregan, or both, have always been beside him since the day he arrived in their home at 2 months of age.

Born with fragile lungs, the boy has spent all his life hooked to an oxygen tank, the Marmonts say. Even now that he has matured physically, he cannot go more than two hours without being reattached to the oxygen supply.

“We went to a restaurant recently for the first time without the oxygen. It really was a big occasion,” said Cregan Marmont, a credit services manager in Arco’s Los Angeles office.

For the Marmonts, who have three natural children and a grandchild, the youngster’s improvement is proof that extremely ill premature babies can survive if provided with proper care and individual nurturing.

“This has been very rewarding, especially because I am convinced that he would never have made it in a hospital,” Cregan Marmont said. “He would not have survived without a home setting.”

The first year he lived with the Marmonts, a special monitor would shriek three or four times a night, signaling that he had stopped breathing. And by the end of that first year, they had helped him overcome so many crises that they felt “he was ours,” the couple said.

“The bonding that goes on between such a baby and a parent is very intense. You feel that without you, they have nothing,” Eva Marmont said.

Barbara Labitzke, the county’s foster parent recruiter, said the relationship between the Marmonts and their child has been the key to his survival and to his extraordinary development. Doctors believe that the child will be normal in another year.

“Eva, particularly, understands what this child needs. He requires a lot of attention,” Labitzke said.

Through her work with the boy and constant consultation with therapists and doctors, Eva Marmont learned much about the special problems of apnea babies (children who temporarily stop breathing while sleeping.) Using that knowledge, she and two other parents who care for such children two years ago organized a High-Risk Infant Team that provides training and seminars for other foster parents on the proper care of medically challenging infants.

Her commitment to the little boy and to the countless other children she and Cregan have cared for since 1968, Eva said, totally changed their lives.

“Foster care has been . . . my life,” she said. “If I had not done this, I would have been a totally different person. Even all my friends are foster parents.”

Now that their foster son is living a more normal existence, welcome changes have taken place at the Marmont household.

“Now we go out all the time. He likes to go to the park and seek out the biggest things,” Eva Marmont said. “He does normal 2-year-old things.”

The Marmonts say the adoption of the little boy may mean they no longer will be able to offer their home to other troubled children. But Eva Marmont said she plans to continue to help the county recruit other foster parents to care for other apnea babies.

“In a way, it is very sad to know we won’t be able to care for any other child,” she said.

But Cregan Marmont, whom Eva credits for helping to nurture the boy to health, said that would be a small sacrifice if the child becomes permanently theirs.

“I guess he was always ours anyway. With this kind of kid, you really get locked in. He’s quite a little guy,” Cregan said.

Herbert J. Vida is on vacation.