Glenn Tucker | Don’t call me a ‘latrine baby’

There was a story in the news recently about a baby that was found in a pit latrine in the rural, rustic community of Cox Piece in St. Mary. The basic facts suggest that a woman ended the relationship with her partner months before. Unexpectedly, she visited him – heavily pregnant – and he expressed doubts about paternity. She is later seen crying and bleeding on the road, asking for help to get to a hospital to deliver her baby. A baby is later found in a pit latrine and the assumption is that it is hers.

Words are being used, like ‘Moses’ and ‘miracle’, to describe the recovery of this baby. It would be good if the resources were available to use this as a teachable moment to enlighten the country as to the possibilities.

The natural instinct of a mother is to protect her baby. On occasions, however, the mother goes through what is called post-partum depression (PPD). On rare occasions, this PPD can grow into post-partum psychosis. The risk of post-partum psychosis follows the sudden hormonal imbalance after giving birth. It strikes one in 1,000 women who have given birth.

The new mother would be experiencing one or more of the following:

1. Strange beliefs that could not be true (delusions).

2. Hearing, seeing, feeling or smelling things that are not there (hallucinations).

3. High mood with loss of touch with reality (mania).

4. Feeling paranoid or suspicious of people’s motives.

5. Feeling that the baby is connected to God or Satan in some way.

These are accompanied with severe confusion. The condition puts the lives of both mother and baby at severe risk.

This should be seen as a medical emergency requiring urgent attention. Ideally, they should be committed to a mother and baby unit of a mental hospital or a post-partum depression treatment centre. Do we have any of these?

ADOPTION IS BEST

We need to jettison all the romantic notions of ‘Moses’ and ‘miracle’. Moses was placed in a secure carrier in a much safer, less smellier place in the hope that he would be discovered and cared for.

The putative father, in this case, declared, “This is a community baby. It has to stay here. We want to tell him of the journey (yuk) he went through”.

It’s just that he is waiting on the results of a paternity test. What if it does not tell him what he wants to hear? What if it is this child’s classmates who tell him – their own unvarnished, unhygienic version – of this perilous ‘journey’ on a daily basis. Can the mother survive in that community?

Speaking for myself, it may be best if this child restarted its life in another place where neither he/she nor the adoptive parents are aware of this ‘journey’. And please, police, stay out of this one.

All this helps to underscore the need for close family ties. I will repeat this for as long as I live, ‘Marriage is not an uptown thing’. It does not require a wedding dress and bridesmaids. But there must be a total, binding ‘coming together’ of caring and commitment before children are considered.

These lessons cannot be understood in Google-less places like Cox Piece unless we start teaching it in schools.

Glenn Tucker is an educator and a sociologist. Email feedback to glenntucker2011@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.