An infant given up on a doorstep finds a loving home and becomes Bond 'Community Baby'

On a laid back afternoon this summer, diapers and baby clothes were stacked along the kitchen table at Talethia Edwards’ Saxon Street home in the heart of the Bond Community.

The 36-year-old is an advocate for the south-side neighborhood's working-class families, and her phone is always abuzz with texts and calls. People often knock on her front door, asking for help for their children or to make ends meet.

But the infant supplies weren't donations waiting to be given out. The recipient was cradled in the arms of Haleigh Edwards.

Baby Milo looked up at the 8-year-old with intent, new brown eyes. Haleigh's face — along with the other nine people in the Edwards family — is one the baby boy has gotten to know.

Three months ago, Milo, just days old, was brought to the doorstep of the Edwards’ home. A troubled mother entrusted the baby to Talethia, and she's been raising him with her own brood ever since.

Talethia calls him "Community Baby." People from all over have given clothes, supplies and money to help care for him.

She and her husband, Harold, already have seven children, from 4 to 14 years old. In the busy household, there's always basketball practice, a piano lesson or an orthodontist appointment.

Still, she always wanted another child, one last boy to round out the family. She'd tell Harold, “even if somebody has to drop him at my front door."

“Did I actually believe that that was going to happen? No,” Talethia chuckled. “Destiny, providence, us living here – I mean, it’s a whole divine story. It’s unlikely. it’s not pretty, but it’s our story.”

Talethia's Moses moment

It was Mother’s Day. Talethia was in Chicago at a collective impact conference when she received a phone call from someone in the neighborhood. There was a woman in her 40s who’d just given birth, he told her. She was living on the streets and battling addiction.

The woman was looking for Talethia.

Since she was out of town, Talethia asked a friend to stop by the hospital to check on the new mom. Her friend stopped in and asked the woman if she needed anything, but the new mother was silent.

When Talethia returned home Friday, she called the man who first reached out and told him to tell the woman she was back. Later that day, she showed up at Talethia’s front door.

Talethia had seen the woman before. She wore simple clothes and roamed the streets of Bond. Now she was standing in front of her, carrying a baby boy in a worn-down car seat, three diapers and a small formula bottle of milk from the hospital.

Immediately, Talethia snapped a photo of the baby in her arms and posted it to Facebook asking for donations.

More:In her own words: Talethia Edwards says community baby's story is one of 'hope and love'

A stream of texts followed from members of Talethia's well-connected community: offers of baby clothes, formula, boxes of diapers and wire money transfers. The same day, Talethia and the woman, Sierra – whose name, as well as her baby's, have been changed for their privacy — went to the store to shop for baby clothes.

Talethia thought the crisis was averted, until two days later, when Sierra showed up at her door again with the baby.

This time, Milo's car seat was broken. That late Sunday night there was an urgent, desperate air about Sierra, Talethia said. The new clothes they bought together for the baby were nowhere to be seen.

She handed Talethia a handwritten note that read, “I, Sierra, being in sound mind, give my son to the care of Mr. and Mrs. Edwards.”

Child welfare isn't just broken, it's a 'shattered system'

Over the next couple of days, Talethia watched Milo and searched for shelters and rehab centers that would take in both the baby and Sierra. One shelter refused because it only served pregnant women. Sierra was already five days post-partum.

Maintaining contact with Sierra was sketchy. She rarely showed up at the Edwards' or at social service appointments Talethia tried to set up. She didn't have her own phone so would contact Talethia from multiple numbers. When Talethia made shelter suggestions, she'd get no reply.

Soon enough it became clear to Talethia she had that last baby boy she always wanted.

When Talethia called the Children’s Home Society for help with the baby, a case manager stopped by her home. She was told the child welfare organization only provides referrals in situations where children are potentially unsafe.

But because the baby was safe – in Talethia’s house, and not on the street – a case couldn’t be opened, and no resources could be given to help the Edwards family care for the child.

“‘I understand this is a broken system.’ That’s what she said," Talethia recalled. "I said, ‘Broken? This is a shattered system.’”

Sierra battles addiction and homelessness, and told Talethia she didn’t know who Milo’s father is. In one frank conversation, she tried to explain the chasm between their lives.

"She said to me, 'When we walk out of your gate, it’s a whole ‘nother world. You live in one world, I live in another.'"

Healed by love

Meghan McCloskey, a mental health counselor, supervises the family intensive treatment program at DISC Village, a substance abuse therapy center she's worked at for eight years. For a lot of struggling parents, she explained, drugs aren't their core problem.

"Drugs are the solution to their problems. So, using substances is a coping skill. It’s not the healthiest coping skill, but it’s a coping skill," McCloskey said. "And for a lot of them that’s the only one that they’ve ever had that has worked well for them and so it’s very easy to go back to that."

Many are in a generational cycle of addiction, child welfare and poverty and have their own untreated childhood trauma, she said.  Affordable childcare and low-income housing are hard to come by, adding to the list of stressors addicted parents face.

“We also need to separate them from the disease at times, you know. They’re not bad people,” McCloskey added. “They’re sick.”

Women from the streets would stop by the Edwards' to check on Milo. He showed symptoms of addiction, they told Talethia. When Talethia first took him to a pediatrician, he tested positive for drugs, she said, and cried more than the average baby.

"It seemed like something’s hurting," Talethia said. He seldom ate and had trouble sleeping.

She wore him across her chest and wrapped him tight with skin-to-skin contact to help him relax. The crying and irritability gave way to cooing. At his two-month pediatric checkup he showed no concerning symptoms.

“Now, with the love," Talethia's husband, Harold Edwards, said, "a lot of things have subsided, with the help from my children, us, and … the people of the village.”

Back story:Saving Bond - Residents and advocates try to revive 'heart & soul' of the South side

'We keep going'

Talethia Edwards has always had a voice.

"My mother encouraged us to speak our mind and say what we want to say in a very respectful way," she said.

And she feels an obligation to use that voice for "those who have not yet recognized their own."

She's president of the Bond Neighborhood Association and the school district's Title I advisory council. She mentors students at Bond and Pineview Elementary Schools. At City Hall and School Board meetings, she takes to the podium, Milo harnessed to her chest. At home, bins of books crowd by the wall for her Title I book drive.

"This is my life," she said. "If I’m advocating for families and children and communities, babies live in families and communities ... I rock that baby on, and we keep going."

Harold, 37, teaches environmental science at Cairo High in Georgia. He’s working toward a doctorate in educational leadership at FAMU and this summer spent hours tucked into the corner of their home office, typing his dissertation on black boys' achievement in Title I schools.

Why you need to know Talethia:She blossoms as Bond community advocate

The night Sierra dropped the baby off, he wondered, where will the child go?

"As an educator for over a decade, I realize that the child is like a seed: It’s what’s around him or her that makes them grow the way they should,” Harold said. “And if you don’t have the right situation for the child, it could cause a lot of problems later. I did not want him just floating through the system … It’s a reason why he’s here. I don’t want him to be in the wrong environment."

Harold, Talethia and their kids have lived in their modest, four-bedroom, two-bathroom Saxon Street house for 12 years.

It's a full house. But with the community’s help, “We make it work,” Talethia said.

That summer day, rain pattered outside. Pinto, the family chihuahua, nuzzled up to Milo’s new sisters, who were bundled under a striped blanket watching television. Harper, 9, read, "Please, Baby, Please" to a snoozing Milo, his tiny right hand on one propped knee. Talethia stroked his head, chatting on her phone about cleanup efforts at Bond Elementary.

Milo usually wakes at 4 a.m. In those wee dim hours, Talethia and Harold hold and talk to the baby. They sing the gospel standard, "We love you Lord today," and read from a the picture book, "Brave Lion."

It's a quality she wants to instill in Milo.

"I want him to know a story of strength," Talethia said. "He’s a brave lion."

Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.