NEW YORK, N.Y. -- As Congress was finishing up voting on the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package on March 14, Rep. Max Rose’s wife Leigh Rose was urgently trying to call the congressman from Staten Island to let him know their adopted son was about to be born in New England.
It was 1:30 a.m., and Mrs. Rose, unaware Congress was still finishing up voting on the CARES Act, initially thought Rep. Rose was sleeping, so she called his roommate Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), who told her they were still on the House floor and would quickly try to find him.
“Max called me and I said ‘babe, it’s happening,’” Mrs. Rose said. “And he’s like ‘what do we do?’” “And I said, ‘you’ve got to get up to New England and I’m going to jump in the car and drive all night and I’ll see you at the hospital.”
Mrs. Rose said she packed up, got in her car and drove six hours straight to the New England area to try to make it for the birth of their son.
Their son Miles Benjamin Rose was born at 2 a.m.
As Mrs. Rose arrived to meet her son, after finishing up their vote on the CARES Act, Rep. Rose booked the first flight he could find out of Washington, D.C, to New England to meet his son.
“To become a parent during any time is a startling experience, to become parents during the time of [coronavirus] where … your family can’t really come over, and so you’re just doing it together and you’re uncertain, as we all are, about where the world is heading and you’re feeling fear, it adds so many challenges to it,” Rep. Rose said.
“Of course, we’re all experiencing challenges right now, and nothing compared to the challenges that our frontline medical professionals and our essential workers are facing, but if anything could have brought us closer if bringing us closer was even possible, this has, and we would do anything for Miles and anything for our family.”
The couple said they had always wanted to start a family, but after getting married, they discovered Mrs. Rose was infertile and was not a candidate to conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF).
So together, they decided they would adopt a child.
Mrs. Rose said the process was not simple. They started the adoption process in February 2019, hired an attorney, filed paperwork, and then more paperwork, and waited for a birth mother to reach out to choose them as parents.
Nine months later in November 2019, they were matched with their child’s birth mother, whose identity and hometown they did not disclose to protect her privacy.
“We were authorized to begin the adoption process, we waited, and that was the uncertainty, we were waiting for a birth mother to find us, to want to give us her child and that happened in November of 2019,” Mrs. Rose said. “We were matched, she chose us,” Mrs. Rose said.
After their son was born the couple spent four days together in New England where Rep. Rose continued to work remotely, even making arrangements to send the USNS Comfort Naval hospital ship to New York Harbor from the hospital to help New York City care for patients in its hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mrs. Rose said having a child in the middle of a pandemic presented a number of new challenges.
“When you feed a baby formula, you need nursery water and I didn’t know if I could get enough nursery water, I didn’t know if I would have enough groceries,” she said.
The couple drove back to Staten Island on March 18, and two weeks later, Rep. Rose deployed to the National Guard on April 1 to work at the Island’s coronavirus hospital at the South Beach Psychiatric Center.
Rep. Rose said he and Mrs. Rose made the decision for him to deploy together so that he could help Staten Islanders during the coronavirus pandemic.
While he was deployed, Mrs. Rose and their son would drive down to Ft. Wadsworth where he was stationed so that he could see his family from 10 feet away.
After he finished up his deployment on April 15, Rep. Rose had to spend another two weeks away from Mrs. Rose and Miles in self-quarantine at their home on Staten Island while Mrs. Rose went to Brooklyn to stay with her family.
Rep. Rose said he will be reunited with his family for the first time in a month on Friday evening.
He said politics is on hold for now as he figures out fatherhood and how to help Staten Islanders and South Brooklynites during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Politics right now doesn’t matter, not as we’re facing this significant cataclysmic health crisis and economic crisis … but with that being said, I've also been very clear, very consistent that I want to do this for a long time and I love public service and we have some really significant and incredible problems to try to solve,” he said.
“I’m not perfect and I don’t know everything, and we don’t know everything and there’s going to be a lot to learn about how to balance this profession and raising a child just as so many families have to figure out how to make everything work.”
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Max and Leigh Rose welcome their adopted son Miles home during coronavirus pandemic - SILive.com
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