1 Response to Releasing the Past: Mothers’ Stories  of their Stolen Babies

1. Rhonda Cherrie says:

   February 9, 2018 at 12:02 pm

   My mother was a married woman when she gave birth to a healthy baby boy in 1947. Because of regular hospitals being filled to capacity at the time, she was admitted to a home for unwed mothers to give birth. One of the unmarried lasses had her baby at the same time as my mum gave birth to my brother, but sadly, the young girl’s baby boy didn’t survive. Then, to her horror, my mother was told three days later that her baby had died too. She was told that his lung hadn’t opened properly but my sister and I have doubted this for years, as mum had always said he was a rosy-cheeked cherub who fed well and seemed to be thriving. Both my parents believed the authorities, as doctors and medical folk were almost demi-gods in those days and they even took their advice that there be no funeral, this would all be taken care of and mother would find it easier to recover without a grave to grieve over. We’ve heard the story many times and thought perhaps it was SIDS before it had a name, but only in the past few years, we’ve really started to believe that our brother was swapped for the little baby who had passed away. My father told my mum that as he hurried in to see her after hearing the tragic news, some hospital staff rushed past him carrying a swaddled bundle and drove off in a car. My parents were advised not to view the body, so their child was never seen after that. There is a death certificate, but there was a dead child. We wonder if we have a brother out there. My mother never really got over that loss. She said that one of the Matrons said that if she had been on duty, it would never have happened. A cryptic comment she wouldn’t enlarge upon. I just thought I’d tell my mother’s story and I guess we’ll never really know what happened. It all seems so horrendously sinister.

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