Off The Record

Foster Parents Adopt Shaken Baby Survivor After Heartbreaking Neglect

Published on September 9, 2025

My one concern when I became a mom for the first time was how I could ensure that my darling child was safe and had all she needed.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that when I witness or hear of parents abusing and neglecting their defenseless children, I am surprised, sad, and enraged.

Although some parents’ actions may be explained by underlying issues, neither parent should be allowed to endanger the lives of their newborn kid out of pure negligence.

Thankfully, when biological parents give up on their children, there are amazing foster parents who take action and make a difference.

I was moved by LeAnne and Eric’s story, and I doubt anyone could read about their family’s struggles without feeling something.

LeAnne and Eric made the decision to care for Easton Matthew, a young child with shaken baby syndrome. Because they had more important things to do, like sleep or work, his original parents decided not to feed him.

Fortunately, Eric and LeAnne learned about the case and began the difficult, heartbreaking path that would culminate in a stunning display of unconditional love.

Permission has been granted for us to share their incredible, tragic story. It’s worth it, so I hope you read it all the way through!

“The doctor handed over a frail, blue, tiny 2-month-old baby boy weighing just over 7 pounds, and he said, ‘Take him home, love him, and feed him because, in a few days, this could be a different story!’ For the first time in my entire life, I was afraid to take home a baby!”

On a fall day in 1996, Eric and I were eager to begin our forever together when we said, “I do.” We moved into our freshly remodeled house and started making plans to have children—two, to be specific. We always intended to have just two children, and that is exactly what happened—a gorgeous baby boy was born first, followed by a gorgeous baby girl. By the year 2000, we were a whole, ideal little family living the suburban lifestyle of a fairy tale.

However, a few years later, while listening to the radio program “Focus on the Family,” which talked about raising kids with special needs, Eric had the gut feeling that we ought to have another child. So, we had another gorgeous baby boy in 2005, and a little more than a year later, we got another gorgeous baby girl! We were a whole family now!

Then, one day, we left the suburbs and relocated to the center of the nation. a smaller house with plenty of space for the children to run about and play. Despite the fact that our lives were hectic and our home was crowded, we felt compelled to address a significant need in our neighborhood. Foster care! providing care for kids who were taken away from everything and everyone they had ever known—without their fault.

However, I hesitated. I was aware of the toll foster parenting took on biological children because my parents had been foster parents for a long time. I could only imagine the impact on our children, the very children God had given us, since I knew how much time and care the foster children required, which in turn took time away from my siblings and me.

We therefore spoke, prayed, and studied foster care for two years. We discovered that there were far more children in the system than foster parents available to care for them, and that the number of children entering foster care was increasing as a result of the drug pandemic. We started the sessions after discussing the urgent necessity with our kids. Our first placement of two children occurred on the same day that we received our Foster to Adopt license in 2014.

We were foster parents, ready or not.

It was February of 2017, we had had many foster placements by then, and we were considered seasoned foster parents. We had a decent relationship with the caseworkers and supervisors at Children Services, and they knew which kiddos our family fit best with. Not every child and foster family fit well, and for a child to thrive in care, they need to be matched with the right foster family. We were finishing up dinner one night after having just recently surrendered an amazing baby girl who we had loved and cared for over the past year for reunification when a call came in. “LeAnne, we have a 2-month-old baby boy, failure to thrive. He is at the hospital, and we want to know if you guys could take him?” “YES! Of course,” was our quick reply. “Thanks, the caseworker will call when he is ready to leave the hospital.”

Unbeknownst to us, that call would permanently alter our lives!

Eric and I went to the hospital because we couldn’t wait for the caseworker to call. We were shown to the room where the caseworker was sitting with a baby when we got there. He was unlike anything I had ever seen. He was in the shade! Not pink like other infants, but blue. All of the tiny veins that ran through his body were visible through his skin. His little bones were fat-free. His head was enormous, and the “soft spots” were glaringly noticeable. The sutures where his skull joined were also fully visible. He was really pathetic. He was small, weak, still, and he really did look like an extraterrestrial. I realize it sounds terrible, but there was no other way to put it. I was anxious to even hug him when the caseworker handed him over, but as soon as I did, I knew Eric and I would do all in our power to protect him.

As the caseworker started to tell us about his case, my big, powerful husband was crying. He was going hungry. Because they had more important things to do, like sleep or work, the individuals who brought him into the world decided not to feed him. You see, he had just been diagnosed with Non-Organic Failure to Thrive after spending ten days at a prestigious children’s hospital. NOFTT indicated that he had no health issues that would prevent him from gaining weight. He gained an incredible 11 ounces during that stay, proving that he was capable of gaining weight, but his condition worsened after he was discharged from the hospital.

The hospital sent a visiting nurse to check on him every other day during his prolonged hospitalization, and on her first visit, she discovered him dozing off in a bouncy seat. He had a dirty diaper and was covered in dog and cat hair. He failed to correctly fill out the chart that was meant to document his feedings. The nurse refused to go until he had been fed, so she requested for a bottle. After getting a cold bottle out of the refrigerator, the biological mother gave it to the nurse so she could give him some food. The nurse urged her to warm the bottle because it was very cold for him. “If he is hungry, he will eat it,” she responded sourly. The nurse then started to feed him a cold bottle in an attempt to provide him with sustenance, which he did. After her visit was over, she stepped outside to her car and dialed 911. She had no idea that the same day, the baby’s nurse practitioner had called Children Services.

That call was answered by a female detective. Being a mother herself, she quickly took him out of that house because she realized what she was witnessing was a life-or-death situation. That day, Detective M saved his life! She started a neglect case after gathering evidence. She was aware that what she witnessed was unquestionably abuse, but she was unaware of what we were all going to discover.

We were afraid the night we brought that adorable baby home. We had just been informed that he might not receive the care he needed and would die in a few days! On the growth chart, his weight placed him in the.001 percentile. We started providing love and attention around-the-clock that night. He could barely take half an ounce of formula per feed due to his small stomach. As a result, we had to program alarms to feed him every two hours all day long. The tough issue is that he was only permitted to eat for 30 minutes since he worked so hard and used so much energy that he would start to burn more calories than he could consume if he fed for longer. Therefore, despite our first desire to simply let him eat till he was satisfied, we were unable to do so and he refused.

He barely finished his half-ounce meals on the first night. He was worn out. We had to wake him up for each feeding because he was sleeping. He never shed a tear. He never got up to eat by himself. He was unable to. That is not thriving. A youngster will stop crying if their pleas for attention are not heard. They no longer feel hungry when their ravenous bellies are not satisfied. They lose body fat and muscular mass when their diet is inadequate. Their little bodies cannot control their own body temperature without body fat. They give up their will to live and their will to fight. We weren’t giving up on that adorable infant guy, even if he had given up. His half-ounce gradually increased to 3/4 of an ounce, then to an ounce, and so forth.

We took him to his pediatrician once a week to be weighed and examined, and he had a visiting nurse come once a week. We also had to weigh him every day on a baby scale. Even though he was eating and gaining weight, something wasn’t right. He was a rag doll with no true muscle tone. He was unable to control his own head, and it continued to expand while his arms and legs hung at his sides. His eyes appeared empty, as though he were blind, when he would actually muster the strength to remain conscious. He was still not sobbing or making any sounds. We discussed our concerns with the nurse during her second visit, and we informed her that we would be talking to his pediatricians about them. After we were done, she inquired if we had ever heard of Shaken Baby Syndrome after listening intently.

As you may know, you should never shake a baby. After a brief internet search, we gave his nurse practitioner a call. Since she was on vacation, we told the nurse everything and waited for a callback with instructions. The phone called again that night. His NP, Emily, was there. She claimed to have had the same idea while praying and thinking about this adorable baby boy while she was sitting on the beach. Syndrome of the Shaken Baby. She requested an ultrasound and an MRI. Everything would be arranged by phone with the same hospital where he had previously stayed.

He was put under anesthesia and had a comprehensive MRI of his large head performed a month after we had first handled that fragile infant. He had to spend the night because he posed a significant risk. We prayed for solutions, stayed overnight, and waited for the outcome. The room was crowded with white jackets the following morning. I had never seen so many medical professionals in one space. They started to tell us that the MRI revealed blood behind his eyes and in both of his brain’s ventricles, which are located in the middle of the brain. The bleeding was consistent with head trauma that was not accidental. Both older and newer blood were present.

A complete bone scan was then required to look for any fractures or breaks in his small body. We awaited those results once more and were relieved to learn that his skeletal structure was unharmed. We talked to a number of experts that day as they started to provide us with additional information about what was ahead. More appointments, therapists, CT scans, EEGs, EKGs, MRIs, and more. We had to concentrate on finding out more answers, what had truly happened to this adorable baby boy, and who had done it, so there wasn’t much time to process everything. And since reunification was still the aim of his lawsuit, we had to act fast. Twice a week, that adorable baby had to go through visitations with individuals who were probably his abusers.

We could go into great detail, but in the end, every detail helped Detective M obtain a confession. The infant boy was sobbing because he was hungry, as you can tell. When he refused to stop sobbing, his biological father took up the adorable infant boy by the rib cage, gave him a few shakes, and then dumped him onto the couch. He needed to be fed. Then he landed on the floor after bouncing off the couch. “Well, he stopped crying,” the man said in response to the detective’s question about what transpired next.

He then described how he experienced a seizure when his eyes rolled to the back of his head. He didn’t want to get into trouble, so he didn’t contact 911. When informed all the information, his wife’s reaction was, “Well, he gets frustrated sometimes.” Oh, and she realized something was wrong with that adorable baby boy, but she chose to let him be and give him a bottle anyhow. And the mother who gave birth to him supported the abuser throughout the criminal prosecution, which resulted in his abuser receiving a four-year prison sentence a year and a half after we first held that adorable baby boy. That infant kid received a life sentence of disability.

The joyous part of the story is about to begin. That adorable infant boy was cherished and well-cared for. That adorable infant guy put up a fierce fight. In addition to feeding him, we also held him when we brought him home. He was held all day and all night. He was wrapped to me during the day so he could feel my skin against his face and hear my heartbeat. He started therapy when he was 4 months old. Speech, physical, and occupational for feed. For several months, he was unable to support his head; at one year, he was hardly able to sit up, much less walk.

We were fortunate to come across experts who put up a strong fight alongside us. They said they would let him tell us what he can and cannot accomplish, rather than telling us. According to them, neuro-plasticity is a remarkable science that enables the brain to heal, and the brain itself is a marvelous creation. Furthermore, the brain can essentially reformat, even if he had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that caused him to sustain brain damage.

He was diagnosed with hypotonic cerebral palsy at the age of two, a condition he will endure for the rest of his life. He is still administered formula to meet his nutritional needs because he also has dysphagia, a condition that impairs his ability to swallow and eat. His speech is off course since he also has dyspraxia. Though his limbs can’t always figure out how to say it, his head knows what it wants to convey. At two and a half, he eventually started to walk with the aid of special bracing. He fights, works hard, and expends absurd amounts of energy every day to get through his day. On certain days, he spends most of his time lounging on the couch since his body is simply exhausted. Despite his inability to keep up with children his own age, he is content! He is blind to his differences and does not allow them to deter him.

In his brief life, he has spent a lot of time in the hospital. Due to his unique powers, he is susceptible to illness and finds it difficult to stave it off. As a result, when he does get sick, he often ends himself in the hospital. The hospital staff constantly adores him because he smiles through everything, and he always seems to take things in stride. All of his physicians and therapists have fallen in love with him. Many people have recently told us that they never thought he would reach his current status. They have all stated that they did not anticipate him doing anything, despite the fact that they did not place any restrictions on what he could accomplish. Their expectations have been much exceeded by him. Nutrition and love have the power to transform lives.

Courtesy of Eric and LeAnne Stadler

“Now, for the best part of the story. After lots of testimony, lots of tears, lots of prayers, and lots of hard work by passionate, caring caseworkers, the courts ruled and gave the county permanent custody of that sweet baby boy, and just before Thanksgiving and his 3rd birthday last year, that sweet baby boy forever became our child. He became Easton Matthew Stadler, our 5th child. A child who God knew we needed! Many people say he is blessed to have us, but we disagree. We are so blessed to have him. We never imagined, 15 years ago, after listening to a radio show about raising children with special needs, we would be sharing our hearts and home with an amazing little boy who we get to call our son!”

Okay, so normally I simply read these stories and forget about them, but this one made me cry. One of the saddest things I have ever read is this.

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