A mother serves 18 months for dumping her new born into a rubbish chute. The baby’s cries alerted a nearby cleaner and he was picked up from the chute. He suffered a fractured clavicle, “which doctor said could be traced to a birth injury.”
The papers did not reveal the father’s identity, but the mother was a part-time waitress and cleaner at the time she gave birth. The events leading to the offence were highly peculiar as reported.
The mother (27 yrs) ”felt pain in her abdomen and went to the toilet in the early hours of Jan 7.”
“Although she had not had her period for many months and wondered if she was pregnant, she chose not to “dwell on it further.””
“Her family was also unaware that she was pregnant.”
“After she threw out the baby, she cleaned up the blood in the house, took a shower and went back to sleep.”
When the baby was found, the police did a door to door inquiry. At first the mother denied knowing anything about it.
“On Feb 9, the police told her to report to the police station on Feb 14 for an interview and a DNA test.”
That was when she knew she had to own up and on the eve of Valentine’s Day, she surrendered herself.
You would think that she may have suffered from some mental condition, depression or something, but IMH “found that she was not suffering from a major mental illness at the time of the offence.”
The prosecution asked for two years for her actions. The judge, considering the “baby’s vulnerability” and “that he was thrown from a height into an unsanitary environment” gave her 18 months.
You must know that her defence lawyer argued for a “human touch” as it was an “unusual case”. Another factor was that the baby survived and curiously, her lawyer said that “the woman has tried unsuccessfully to see her child through the Ministry of Social and Family Development.”
Lesson? One, and I take my cue from this segment of the report: “The property officer from the town council later opened the bag tied in a dead knot and found the crying baby covered in blood.”
If you’d recall her defence in mitigation was that the baby survived and she tried to see him without success. Yet, what morbidly caught my attention was the part about the bag being tied in a “dead knot” with blood all over.
Even more confounding is the report that after “she threw out the baby, she cleaned up the blood in the house, took a shower and went back to sleep.” The mother actually bothered to clean up her baby’s blood in her house leaving no crimson trace, while she abandoned her flesh and blood covered in blood in the bag. That’s simply heartbreaking at so many levels.
It is really anyone’s guess what was in her mind when she cut the umbilical cord to separate herself from her child before she took a nondescript bag to throw her son inside.
At that time, whether she knew she was pregnant or not was not material, as it ought to have dawned on her by then that the abdomen pains she had been labouring under for months was in fact her womb incubating a new life. Mind you, it has always been, from the start of conception, a part of her, but alas, she wanted no part of him.
By writing this, I can expect to raise the ire (or indignation) of the general public against the actions of the mother. But after much thought, I really don’t see a point, not so much because she has been dealt with by the law, and I trust (or hope) that the gravity of the situation will soon hit her, eventually.
I don’t see a point because, while her actions are inexcusable, what she had done cannot be undone. Such past ought to be buried, for good, for his sake. While it was a past to be readily erased for him, it is one the mother would have to eventually confront and bear with for life.
It bears repeating that thankfully, the child survived. His cries were signs of life even in a bag that was tied in a dead knot, with intention otherwise. And yes, ironically, the hands that had tied the bag was the same hands that had facilitated the gift of life, yet, where he was never given a chance to live, he now has one and I pray that henceforth it would be a life that will receive love unconditionally, and to be nurtured in the fullness of it.
Alas, the world can be a cruel place for him, yet I believe with all my heart it is not devoid of selfless love waiting to embrace him. And what has kept the world from spinning out of its orbit is that this same love has given many lives a chance to live, to grow, and to live life to its fullest.
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