This Mother's Day will have more meaning for Mannie Taimuty-Loomis, the Butler County mom accused of concocting elaborate symptoms to get unnecessary and dangerous medical treatments for her three young children.

After eight months of separation, she and her husband, Ron, will be allowed to spend most of this weekend -- through 6 p.m. on Sunday -- at their Adams home with Ezra, 7, Adia, 6, and Symia, 2.

"The greatest gift I could have for Mother's Day is being allowed to be a mother again,'' Mannie Taimuty-Loomis said yesterday.

The weekend visit, which will begin at noon Saturday, will serve as a prelude to full but monitored reunification beginning May 14. The family must be able to retain a primary care doctor for the children by then.

The terms of their pending reunification are contained in a six-page court order authored by juvenile court master Joseph Brydon and signed yesterday by Butler County President Judge Thomas J. Doerr.

Child welfare authorities had asserted that Mannie Taimuty-Loomis suffered from a disorder known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which caused her to seek unnecessary treatments for her children for concocted illnesses.

Brydon determined, following 15 full court days of testimony, that the family should be reunited but that the process should be court-supervised and the children should remain in county custody.

Based on his recommendations, Doerr issued an order April 25 that found the children dependent -- meaning they will remain under the legal control of county Children and Youth Services for at least nine months.

The dependency finding was made despite the concurrent finding that neither parent abused the children but that they were, instead, caught up in the medical community's confusion about whether and how to treat them.

Doctors testifying for CYS said the children were healthy. But a world-renowned expert in genetic disorders testifying for the parents said he is certain one of the children has mitochondrial disease, which often runs in families and was a suspected cause of death for the children's sibling, Jonah, in 2001 just shy of his third birthday.

Attorneys on both sides called Brydon's findings "unusual" and "a compromise."

Jennifer Gilliland-Vanasdale, attorney for Ron Taimuty-Loomis, said yesterday she and the mother's attorney, Mildred Sweeney, still object to the finding of dependency. They are considering an appeal of the dependency finding.