"Here, take it, it's yours!".
Thrust into my arms was a baby; neat, clean, young.
The mother wasn't all that young. She looked middle class to me.
" Please, hold the baby".
"We don't take babies. We don't have a baby unit. Come let's talk. Let's see if we can find some help for you.
In my office.
"I don't want it. I never wanted it. From the beginning, when they told me I was pregnant, I hated this thing inside me ".
"There's a place of safety in the next town down the coast. They take babies. How do you feel if the baby is adopted?".
"I don't care what happens to it!"
Unwanted in-utero!
"I just don't want it. When it shits it's nappy; when it cries, I just want to beat the hell out of it".
Unwanted in-utero; emotionally abandoned, SAVED praises be, from physical abuse as an add- on to the damage and hurt already traumatising this little one.
"I didn't want this thing inside me".
Did this thing inside her sense rejection?
Apparently there's been a lot of research done on whether the growing child in-utero senses the mother's feelings and emotions. Some commentators say the evidence is not conclusive either way.
My experience of working with children rejected in the womb is; "Yes" ; the child's psychological well-being is shaped by the trauma of in-utero rejection; of in the womb emotional abandonment.
My experience that fetuses are aware of rejection is supported by the Evergreen Psychotherapy Center (https://evergreenpsychotherapycenter 04 May 2915)
I quote:
"An unborn child can senses and react to emotions such as love and rejection... The mother's thoughts about the child and/or pregnancy -_love or rejection or disinterest - directly affect the child's sense of self, security and esteem".
In my working experience with these children, it went further than that. I believe that their world- view is shaped to be a view that the world is pervasively rejecting . The inner rage at a rejecting society lived deep in the being of these children. 'As a rejected, I reject you and all living beings. If I am not cared for, I do not care."
Society has constructed a view that mothers ALWAYS love and keep the fruit of their loins - no matter what but it is not always so.
Children have an uncanny ability to see through pretence and the absence of genuine affection and acceptance. I always said, if I ever write a book about child and youth care, it would be called "Mr Lodge. Buy me an adult".
In my experience, in everyday life, the unwanted, unloved child in-utero, can have a disregard for the feelings of others. I want to say, a remoteness from guilt, an absence of shame. They can hurt others or any other living thing and they don't seem to register the pain they have caused. Be it physical or emotional.
We had a fenced rabbit run. She was only six years old. She would entice a rabbit to the fence with salad from the table. When it came up to the fence, through the fence, she kicked it. If she was taken to her mother for a weekend, her return to the home reinforced the already well embedded maternal rejection she knew. Screaming loudly and crying, she scratched the walls with her fingernails.
"Mr Lodge. Buy me an adult!"
He smeared his feces on the mirror. 'I see myself as shit.' He kicked the dog, beat up the young ones; 'ankle biters' called them.
"The just piss me off!"
She struck him full force over the head with a broom. Knocked him out cold.
"He just pissed me off."
In comes child and youth care professionally.
There's good news. Child and youth care workers know. Empathy can be learnt. hope can be seeded, esteem can be built, blame throwing can be shifted to the taking of responsibility for one's own actions, moral development can be normalised, justice can be restorative. You are loved, cared for, unconditionally, non- judgementally. Our practice at a professional level works holistically.
The trauma of rejection in- utero can be healed.
And So:
The circle of courage is restored. Societal intolerance and rejection is avoided.
It's what we DO.
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