"Six months when I admitted myself to treatment. That's when I totally quit drinking," Heather said.
Though Jayden seems like a happy baby, odds are that the alcohol her mom drank during pregnancy will cause problems.
It may take a number of years to see the extent of the damage.
"Oh, yes. I have regrets, especially the worry and the guilt," Heather says.
Heather hopes to raise this child, her fourth.
Two others were adopted out.
Another daughter is with her father. Heather suspects at least one those three children may also have FASD.
"And things just didn't fit. It was like her brain was Swiss Cheese," Sherri Wes of Juneau said before the legislature. Wes is the adopted parent of a child with FASD.
Every year they come to Juneau: Foster parents or those who have adopted children brought into the world by women who drank during pregnancy.
"She is illogical in a logical world," Wes said.
Wes' daughter Brooke is now 18. She looks normal, but she has poor judgment that can easily get her in trouble.
"I'm her support system. I'm what they call her external brain," Wes said.
An external brain: That's how caregivers often describe themselves.
They want policymakers to understand just what it means to be someone in need of an external brain.
"Thinking about how we can bring this group of injured people into the fold and embrace them appropriately for a lifetime of need is really your next mission," said Dr. Sterling Clarren, the scientific director of Canada Northwest FASD Research Network, to the legislature.
Clarren was one of the first researchers to study the damage caused by prenatal drinking.
"My personal, ‘Ah- hah' moment came in 1975," Clarren said.
That's when he examined the brain of a child who died; a child who had been diagnosed with FAS.
Compared to a normal brain, it was much smaller.
"I held the brain of a fetal alcohol child in my hand. It was unbelievably malformed. That was really the beginning for me," Clarren said.
It was the beginning of a body of research.
The passage of time has brought new understandings about a huge spectrum of disorders.
You may have heard that ancient story about Pandora, the woman who opened a box and unleashed untold illnesses upon mankind.
Well, the same can be said for a pregnant woman who opens a bottle of alcohol.
Just down the street from the state Capitol, you can learn a lot about the devastation caused by alcohol at a shelter for the homeless.
Staffers at The Glory Hole Shelter suspect that about one-third of the homeless people they serve in Juneau suffer from alcohol-related birth defects.
Maria Lovischuk, the shelter's director, says she's no expert on FASD, but she's seen enough to know that it keeps many people in poverty.
"I never had any training on FASD, which I think is terrible," she said.
Parents and children who come here for help have trouble retaining information and learning new tasks, despite repeated efforts to teach them.
Yet they seem to repeat the same mistakes.
"In and out of jail for the same crimes, over and over again," Lovischuk said.
"I am an alcoholic and I've known it for many years," said Rosemary Kahklen.
Unlike others at The Glory Hole, Kahklen has a diagnosis for FASD.
Her mother was also believed to have been affected by prenatal drinking.
"My natural mother was a full-blown alcoholic. She liked to drink her hard liquor," Kahklen said.
Like many of Juneau's homeless, she lives on the outskirts of downtown in a camp.
Waves of tragedy have washed over her life; tragedy that flows from the bottle.
"Her mother tried. I know she tried. And her father, he died of alcohol as well. He fell off the dock and drowned. In fact, her mother drowned as well," said Tricia Makaily, who was at one point Kahklen's foster mother.
"What is the damage to society? We publish paper after paper that these kids are suffering, that their families are suffering," Dr. Clarren said.
