Preciousness

I suffered from an unusual, undiagnosed (in those days) depression three months before my son was born. Not only was I living in an old, cold, almost uninhabitable house, which we had just bought to renovate (how ridiculously naive was that on our income, with no savings!!!!!!) in an isolated on the outskirts of a Suffolk village house without friends, company or vehicle during the day, when I had never ever been in that type of environment before, BUT, leaving my career position affected me, as did the subsequent loss of income, when we were reduced to receiving social welfare.
The father's business partnership had collapsed.

My son and I had to be educated on how to breastfeed; we knew the process of what to do, but it's not quite as easy as sticking a nipple in the new born mouth.  It took us several days to master the process... maybe almost a week. The books don't tell you how much it hurts when the breasts engorge and one has to release the milk another way!  One looks at the newborn child, the brain imagining all sorts of things.  I can understand how negative mental thoughts can take over the joy of Life, without constant support by the newly maternal bedside.

I am dreadfully sad for the family of the young woman with babe-in-arms who has recently, it seems, taken the precious gift of life from herself and her child.  It seems there was some known history of her mental health.

How can anyone get through hospital doors into the outside world without staff witnessing the action and asking questions?  Understaffed? Insufficient funding for staffing? Inappropriate layout of rooms, etc... I am trying to be kind! Never when I was in the cottage hospital where I gave birth the second time... nor in the huge hospital the first time could I even get to the toilet room alone without a midwife railing down on me!  One would have had to trail along staircases and exit through the main foyer where visitors, coffee bars were... One would not have been able to push a door release lock and step out!  Did no one see this woman and child between the hospital and the river?
It beggars belief!!!  My heart that has supplied blood and life to bear children bleeds.   I am sad, sickened, upset and feel more than disturbed for the father of the baby, for the grandparents, for those who have searched and found, for all those who have to deal with the investigation.  Tragic is an understatement. 

I accept that patients have a right to discharge themselves under the name of freedom... My grandfather who survived after WW1 with part of a lung, often discharged himself from hospital, once his breathing was under control, to the exasperation of my grandmother and others! But even then I think he had to sign a document to be able to walk through the exit doors!  He was a cantankerous old sod!

Having a baby isn't like being a patient... It challenges the mother, the father and the child in ways that here cannot be described. A first born can turn the world.  I never had any verbal or practical support from my parents, the other grandmother was too far away, and I learned from Dr Spock and the several emerging books on 'having a baby'. Midwives in the 1970s were fierce!  One did just want to get home...but never to the river.
That poor woman must have been suffering such dreadful inner torture, if the verdict proclaims that she did take Life for Death.

Moved to write.