“They had no intention of doing this to me.”
On New Year’s Day, an Alaskan mother discovered a tragic present left outside her mailbox: an abandoned newborn.
On the chilly morning of January 1, Roxy Lane emerged from her Fairbanks house to find a box containing some blankets; underneath, she was astounded to discover a baby boy who had only been born a few hours before.
“Please help me!!!” read a letter on the top.
“I was born today on December 31, 2021, 6 am. I was born 12 weeks premature. My mom was 28 weeks when she had me.”
“My parents and grandparents don’t have food or money to raise me. They NEVER wanted to do this to me. My parents lived on Cormorant St. My mom is so sad to do this.
“Please take me and find me a LOVING FAMILY. My parents are begging whoever finds me. My name is Teshawn.”
Temperatures had plummeted to as low as 1 degree in the area.
According to KTOO, Alaska State Troopers confirmed that the kid had been abandoned.
The infant was transferred to a local hospital and was found to be healthy.
Roxy implored people not to pass judgment on the parents in a Facebook post that has been viewed 34k times.
“Today I found an abandoned newborn in a cardboard row of mailboxes by my house,” she wrote. “I’ve been processing my feelings all day and running through all the different scenarios and reasons, with my bf and family, as to why something like this could have happened. I wanted to share some thoughts.”
She noted that Alaska, like all US states, has Safe Haven statutes that allow parents to surrender babies without scrutiny at hospitals, fire stations, and police stations; she speculated that because the law is “quite new (introduced in 2008),” young people may be unaware of it.
“I hope the mother gets the help she might need. I doubt they could have afforded to take her to the hospital, and she may be in need of medical attention,” Roxy wrote. “Please, someone knows this new mom, check on her! She might be in a desperate situation, feeling abandoned herself. We don’t know, there could be a whole backstory here behind closed doors.”
Despite working herself as a volunteer to help those in need, Roxy said she’d “been thanked and called an angel more times this week than ever before at my job.”
“Clearly, someone in our community felt so lost and hopeless that they made probably the hardest choice of their lives to leave that innocent life on the side of the road with nothing but some blankets and a name. But she named him! There’s some love there, even if she made a terrible decision,” she said.
“I know we’re all struggling; I see it. I see you. I love you all and I’m here,” she added.
“Today I saved a baby and I’ll probably think about Teshawn for the rest of my life.”
