I am asked how I can bear dressing a stillborn baby or endure a grieving mother’s tears on my shoulder. It is by the grace of God only that I have grown strong. I take myself away from the grimness of the sluice room, the baby wrapped in plastic surrounded by dirty laundry and am thankful for the opportunity that this child will at least have a last gentle, loving touch. That he/she is leaving evidence of a LIFE. I take his/her footprint to be remembered by the mother, that she will have something to cling to, to cry over and to remember her baby by. This process is somehow liberating and comforting.
What does get me down is ignorance and prejudice and intolerance. People are often quick to judge and condemn, without sufficient information or a full, clear picture, without having walked in the other person’s shoes. Statements like “they should all be sterilised” or “why do they keep having babies when they can’t afford them?” or “if you can’t feed them, don’t breed them” are the worst forms of bigotry and narrow-mindedness I have come across. What about “it is probably better that the baby did not survive?"
Is my grief more severe, true or deeper than yours simply because I am white middle-class and have a university degree? Do ‘these people’ deserve their children less than you or I? Do ‘they’ deserve inferior medical care and scary, horrible birth experiences? Do ‘they’ need counselling after the loss of a child?
Strange that in all my time spent in townships, gang-filled and traditionally ‘unsafe’ areas, I have been welcomed courteously and it is only in the suburban malls and tea rooms that I come across this small-mindedness and bias. Strange and sad.
