PREGNANT AND IN PRISON IN ARKANSAS: Years lost; mom now 'other mother'

Jaydyn Cornelius, 8, snuggles with grandmother Cheryle Cornelius at their home near Blevins in Hempstead County. Cheryle Cornelius and her husband, Carl, adopted Jaydyn when he was 2.
Jaydyn Cornelius, 8, snuggles with grandmother Cheryle Cornelius at their home near Blevins in Hempstead County. Cheryle Cornelius and her husband, Carl, adopted Jaydyn when he was 2.

Lindsey Cornelius broke the news of her pregnancy to her new husband in the back seat of a police car.

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LINDSEY CORNELIUS, was an Arkansas inmate when she gave birth to Jaydyn.

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“A lot of people will tell you, ‘I know what you’re going through. I know how you feel.’ And they’ve never been through it. But I’ve been through it all,” Lindsey Cornelius said.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Carl and Cheryle Cornelius pose with their grandchild and adoptive son Jaydyn at their home near Blevins. “I am his pawpaw, but I’m also legally his father,” Carl Cornelius said. “I want him to know the difference, but it doesn’t change the love factor.”

Her thoughts were on the child she would bear behind bars, while her husband's were more immediate.

"His mind was on one thing, and it was on the fact that he was going to jail at that moment," Lindsey said.

This ride would be the last time these three lives -- mother, father and child -- would move in the same direction.

The couple had been married for three months.

The morning of their arrests, Lindsey had just awakened and was sitting on the couch in her nightgown, arguing with her husband about the phone bill when her friend opened the door to go outside to smoke. A parole officer was at the door, fist poised to knock.

Lindsey was on parole for previous charges, and her probation officer came to the apartment for a home visit.

When the officer found the drugs and drug paraphernalia, Lindsey was allowed to change clothes, and she and her husband were handcuffed and loaded into the patrol car.

They were charged with simultaneous possession of drugs and a firearm, and possession of drug paraphernalia [baggies and a scale].

At the jail in Washington County, Lindsey's first phone call was to her mother, Cheryle Cornelius, who was about four hours away in Hope.

"It just made me sick because she had just gotten married," Cheryle said.

LIFE IN PRISON

Lindsey had been incarcerated for just over two months and was three months along in her pregnancy before she took a pregnancy test.

"I, like, had to raise hell to get them to even give me a test," she said.

The test results helped her get transferred to a prison in Wrightsville with better prenatal care available through the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

UAMS nurses went to the prison once a week. Lindsey saw them often because doctors diagnosed her with preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication associated with high blood pressure.

"I was excited and anxious to see what my child would look like," Lindsey recalled, even now cradling her hands around her stomach. "I was excited for it to be here, where most of the time, you would think I would want to keep the child there with me so I wouldn't be alone."

In Arkansas, there is no opportunity for new babies to stay with their incarcerated mothers. They either go to family members or into foster care.

Lindsey's mother said that the question of whether she and her husband, Carl, would take their new grandson, Jaydyn, remained unanswered for several months because they didn't think they could handle the responsibility of a baby along with their jobs.

"It took me a while to make my decision. I almost let him go to the state," Cheryle said, voice cracking.

When Carl's mother offered to baby-sit as needed, they made their decision.

"I never looked back," Carl said softly, clasping his hands in front of his face, as if in prayer. "Never looked back."

Carl adopted Lindsey when she was 3 years old.

GIVING BIRTH

Because of prison regulations, neither Carl, Lindsey's adoptive father, nor Cheryle were allowed to be in the room when Lindsey gave birth.

A guard stood watch over her while nurses induced the 16-hour labor that ended in a Caesarean section.

Cheryle waited outside the room, but if they passed in the hallway, they were not allowed to speak to each other.

Lindsey's husband was not at the hospital for their son's birth, although Lindsey thought he would be.

She would begin blocking out the thoughts that associated her with motherhood when Jaydyn was born.

She didn't see her son until three days after he was born because they both had health complications.

Jaydyn was on a ventilator for several weeks following his birth, and Lindsey got a staph infection that kept her in the hospital for three days.

She didn't hold him for three weeks.

Lindsey couldn't hold her son when she first saw him because he was still on the ventilator, and she still had an infection.

"Seeing him, when I did get to hold him, I was numb to it at that point," she said. "I had already told myself that none of this was true, it was just a bad dream."

She did get to see her mother and husband for about two hours before heading back to the prison infirmary.

BACK IN PRISON

There were not often other prisoners in the infirmary, and Lindsey said she spent most days alone.

"I know that I was very lonely," she said. "At moments, my body would just long for my child without even trying to think about him, so I just pretended like it never happened."

Cheryle stayed with Jaydyn while he was in the hospital and said that, from the moment he was born, she felt like he was her child.

"I didn't know how I was going to feel, but the first minute I saw him, I just fell in love with him," she said. "You know, he was so beautiful to me, and I felt like he was mine because I had so much love in my heart for him."

Jaydyn went to live with his grandmother and grandfather because his father went to prison shortly after his mother did.

"I didn't want them [his parents] to be in jail, but it's their own fault," Jaydyn, 8, said. "They were doing drugs."

The first time Lindsey held Jaydyn, it was during a visit with her mother that would become regular but would not be enough to foster a traditional mother-son relationship. Cheryle took him to visit every other weekend.

"I would look at Jaydyn, and it wouldn't even dawn on me that that was my child because we didn't have that bond," Lindsey said.

During their biweekly visits, Lindsey and Jaydyn played in a toy area in the prison and took walks. Sometimes, Jaydyn fell asleep in his mother's arms.

Lindsey would tuck Jaydyn's blanket underneath her shirt during visits to get her smell on it and facilitate bonding.

"He wasn't old enough at that point to differentiate who I was," Lindsey said. "He just knew that he knew me."

JAYDYN'S ADOPTION

Lindsey was released when Jaydyn was 2 years old. Cheryle took him to pick his mother up from prison, and she lived with them for a few months before moving in with a new boyfriend.

Cheryle and Carl adopted Jaydyn when Lindsey got out of jail.

"I am his pawpaw, but I'm also legally his father," Carl said." I want him to know the difference, but it doesn't change the love factor."

Lindsey and Cheryle said they never tried to conceal the details of Jaydyn's birth and adoption from him.

"They told me when I was able to understand what people were saying and I could talk back," Jaydyn said.

The next few years solidified Jaydyn and Cheryle's mother-son relationship.

Lindsey spent the years after her release alternating between living with boyfriends and living in her childhood home. Her contact with Jaydyn was sparse during this time, either because she had a boyfriend or because she was still doing drugs -- mostly methamphetamine and some cocaine.

Lindsey also went to drug rehabilitation camps twice.

Every time she went back to Hope, she would start doing drugs again with her friends and boyfriends.

One of those boyfriends would become the father of her second child, Addison, 5. Addison is the only one of Lindsey's three children who still lives with her. A couple in Delaware adopted Ainsley, 2, in an open adoption that allows Lindsey to stay in contact with and visit her youngest daughter.

LEAVING HOME

On June 14, 2015, Lindsey decided to leave Blevins, a town near Hope, because she read online about Our House, a homeless shelter in Little Rock.

She has since completed one year of study at Pulaski Technical College. She wants to become a drug and alcohol counselor so she can help people who have the same problems she had.

"A lot of people will tell you, 'I know what you're going through. I know how you feel.' And they've never been through it. But I've been through it all," she said.

After losing her job at Subway, she is looking for work so she can pay for an apartment for herself and Addison by next summer.

She said that since she has gotten clean, her relationship with Jaydyn has improved. But it is still distinctly different from her relationship with Addison.

"I don't really know what my relationship should feel like with him," she said.

Jaydyn loves cars and going to church. He still lives with his grandmother and grandfather, in the same house, down the same dirt road where Lindsey grew up.

He first spent time with his father June 10 over McDonald's chicken nuggets at a restaurant in Little Rock.

Lindsey calls him the "spitting image" of his father.

Jaydyn's first time to stay with Lindsey, and his first time to be away from Carl and Cheryle, was for a week during spring break.

Lindsey paused for almost half a minute, biting her bottom lip, trying to think of a way to describe their relationship, finally setting on "mother-son-aunt type."

"Inside the prison walls, you have to forget that you even have a family, if you have any time, or you'll just be sick," she said.

She said their relationship is still recovering from her time in prison, when she tried to forget she had a son.

JAYDYN'S LIFE

Now, Jaydyn said he gets excited at the prospect of seeing Lindsey, his "other mother." He grinned, and proudly displayed his red baseball T-shirt. He is No. 21, just like his "Mama Lindsey" when she played basketball.

However, Cheryle and Carl manage the day-to-day parts of his life -- what he eats, where he goes to school and where he sleeps.

His pillow, with the cursive letter "J," lies between two others, each printed with a letter "C" for Carl and Cheryle -- his pawpaw and mama.

"I've lived with her my whole life," Jaydyn said, pointing down the hallway to the room where Cheryle was resting.

"I've only ever visited her," he said, this time swinging his arm around to point to the road.

Metro on 07/24/2016

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