‘The nurse who called me sounded agitated, almost panic-stricken. She had just assisted with a delivery and the baby had Down’s syndrome. You have to come now, she said, the mother wants nothing to do with it, she’s rejecting the baby. The maternity ward was on the sixth floor of the hospital; I jumped in the lift and had only a few minutes to think. What should I do? I had no idea what to expect.
When I entered the room, the mother was lying with her back to her baby, refusing even to look at it. The father marched up to me, and before even introducing himself, he spat out a phrase that still gives me goosebumps twenty years later. “This bird has to leave the nest,” he said.
I turned to the baby; it was a little girl. The nurse was pacing restlessly back and forth. She had already tried to bring the mother around, explaining that babies with Down’s syndrome can be dear, sweet children, but none of it had helped.
I first had a calm talk with the mother. Though she was certainly sad, for the most part she was angry. Throughout her pregnancy she had felt something wasn’t right, that her child had some kind of abnormality, but the nurse had always dismissed her concerns. There was hardly any pre-natal screening in those days: she was young, her check-ups showed no sign of any problems, so there was no cause for any further investigation. And now it turned out that she had been right all that time. Why had the nurse refused to listen? We can’t deal with this as parents, she said.
The baby had to be medically examined in the paediatric ward, which was several floors below. Fine, the mother said, take it, the further away the better. Her attitude sent shockwaves through the hospital, doctors and nurses were outraged. How is it possible, they thought, for a mother to reject her own child this way? They said we should call the child protection services and have the baby taken into immediate custody. I initially got caught up in the stream of emotions, but very quickly had some doubts. If only we gave the parents some time, I thought, if we just took the pressure off … perhaps things might work out.
One day later I accompanied them to the paediatric ward, where the mother saw her daughter for the first time. Three minutes she managed, then had to leave. Little by little, I tried to help strengthen the bond between parents and child. I pointed out the little things, asked them which parent they thought she took after. At first the father was guided by his wife’s aversion, but gradually he started developing an attachment. After a few days he took his first photo, which proved to be a real milestone. After that, things steadily went uphill.
Don’t be too quick to judge, that’s what I learned from these parents. Bit by bit, I slowly found out what the matter was. Their rejection of the baby was motivated not only by anger, but also by fear: they were deeply misinformed regarding Down’s syndrome. They were afraid of what kind of life awaited their child and scared that they would be unable to care for her. So we watched some videos of older children with Down’s syndrome, and the nightmare they had envisaged slowly faded away.
Since then, I feel more confident trusting in my professional intuition: exactly what I had hoped would happen, eventually did. It took two months, but the parents ultimately picked up their daughter from the hospital and took her home. After a year, it was like nothing had happened: the little girl started laughing and babbling, and they formed a bond. Every child deserves loving parents, but I learned that sometimes it just can’t be forced. In her case, love just needed time – and time did its job, in the end.’