A telephone call I took at work has affected me.

[AnnListersBlister]

I won't say where I work for DPA/outing reasons(and uneccessary) but I had a call from a member of hospital staff detailing a situation where;

A female was in labour in hospital
She was being violent/verbally abusive and aggressive with the staff.
She wouldnt engage with labour advice and wouldn't talk to staff about how she was feeling/pain levels/contractions etc
She was likely to give birth in the next hour or so.
The baby was being removed to LA as soon as she did so.
Her partner was there trying to calm her down but not succeeding, and was a known local drug user/dealer.
She was also known for drugs.

It was a week or so ago and it keeps coming back into my mind.
What sort of life was that little baby being born into?
What sort of life had this woman had/did she have, to be labouring and rather than being in pain and frightened, was being aggressive and irate?
That baby is going to be taken from her and she's probably going to be discharged and go back to wherever and what? Forget about it? Be traumatised?
She was only young.
Just how wrong the whole thing was?

Don't get me wrong, I am pretty rational and it isn't keeping me awake at night. But it has bothered me more than a zillion other scenarios I've been privy to. I'm not 100% sure why.

This would have stuck with me to. Things like this do.

In fact I have spent all weekend very upset about a nasty situation.

This happens to me sometimes and I am working on letting it go, doing my job and accepting what I cannot do.

Ultimately I wouldn't be in the role I am if I didn't care a lot about people. This is the unwelcome flip-side.

Yes, I would find that upsetting too. You're only human OP.

Not all people are impacted by this type of thing. I think it shows sensitivity and empathy.

Someone linked to it upthread @81Byerley

There’s always one that gets to you OP. I usually find it’s an accumulation of the horrific and then the final straw is a case too many. It’s like you can’t input any more misery and trauma. Usually though, for me anyway, the balance gets restored after this and I carry on until next time.

It’s important to talk, so keep talking.

I understand why you cant quite get
why this call rather than anything else has played on your mind. I have seen some pretty dreadful things in my job Amd yet one of the things that struck me to my heart and I think of years and years later is a girl implying to me in a sideways way that she had possibly been raped. It was her act of disclosure and her quiet voice and the way she trusted to tell me. I had seen very very terrible things, and she was now ‘safe’, but this is still in my mind. I often wonder what it is that lodges and what does not. As a scene the one you describe is distressing - the baby in its innocence being born into all that floundering pain. It is terrible that this young mother will be flung back into the world - I hope she gets some kind of help. And I hope the LA are able to give the baby a new and loving home. There are a lot of terrible things in the world.

You are human and have empathy.

I worked in a job where we heard extremely traumatic content every day. The ones that really got to me weren’t necessarily the “worst” stories but sometimes it would be just one sentence that someone said that stuck with me and kept replaying. Or when the information really painted a picture of an incident so that for a second I could “see” it in my minds eye.

The only way to process it that would be to talk it out. Not necessarily in a formal way, just a cup of a tea with a colleague and a “that one really got to me for some reason” conversation. Talking it through just released it a little bit.

And as if happens, the story that affected me the most also involved a woman in labour. As a mother, there was something in those mental images that made it really hard to stay detached from.

Having a chat with your supervisor sounds a good idea, you don’t want it to be something that keeps replaying. (As you might be able to guess, I moved away from a frontline role as I was unable to detach and switch off enough!)

This is Emin's thread :-

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/mumsnet_classics/922821-drug-dependant-baby-advice-needed?msgid=56289343

OP not good for you to be up at 12.30 drinking! I understand how you feel, as I have also been affected by things in my professional life. There are various things you can do to process things quickly, such as ESP tapping and EMDR as others have said. This might be triggering something else in you, which you are not yet aware of.

In relation to the situation you describe, I am more angry than saddened, as I had personal experience as a child and so much could be done differently. On a positive note the cycle was definitely broken.

I think that now is the time to get very, very angry because there are a lot of families in this sort of situation and most are being totally failed. Yes there are charities which help mothers like this but they help a tiny fraction of the mothers that need help. Money gets ploughed into the private sector who deal with fostering and care but most of the services which were there to change birth family lives directly to prevent children having to be removed have disappeared. There is no proper research supporting how children removed from birth parents need to be parented and many people caring for the children are completely out of their depth.

Even those who have said they don't care about the birth mothers here should realise that the whole of our society is negatively affected by not providing effective care for these families.

I hope that you are feeling better today , and for the mother and child affected too

My friends adopted a baby born into similar situation. Was with a lovely foster mum for 6 months and then adopted into a wonderful family.
The outcome may not be bad for the baby.

OP, I sometimes have to hear about tough situations too, and I have a supervisor, which in counselling speak is someone where you go to process some of this stuff. It is very helpful.
It is about how it has effected you, so the questions are about your own emotional response and how to handle it.

x

Just so that you know that it can work out sometimes if not always, both of my children were born and immediately taken into care under similar circumstances, then adopted by us. One of them has problems but we keep trying and have a good relationship with so we are hopeful that he will find his path as an adult. The other child is doing great, happy and hardworking if a little stroppy as adolescence takes hold.

My DC are not genetically related so there are two separate birth families. Both birth mothers have since sorted their lives out and both of them have children that they are raising themselves. Both of them also had older children that were taken into care and those children are now adults and have been in contact with their birth mothers (not with us directly as our DC are still minors).

I have a similar memory from years ago doing work experience in a magistrate's court, an old lady had some kind of dementia/mental health condition but not bad enough to be sectioned. She regularly vandalised her neighbour's cars and was generally hard to live with.

She was in court being prosecuted for a minor offence so they could sentence her to prison then decide a hospital would be better for her, but she had to be convicted first as she wasn't bad enough to go straight into hospital.

She was crouching in the defendant's box, unkempt and matted hair, obviously had only a rough idea what was going on. I kept thinking how she was a tiny newborn baby once and she'd ended up like that.

On the positive side, aren't they making family courts now where social services, local authority, police and courts system all work together for people like the woman you mentioned? So often people have babies to replace the ones who are taken away, intervention could help to stabilise things and break the cycle.

I understand that this would have been difficult for you to hear but, if the baby is being removed immediately, they will be going to a better life, to someone that really wants them. Focus on this.

@AnnListersBlister

Sorry custardy I meant local authority care.

No, I know none of my business. I just wondered if other people would have been touched by it in this way, or not.

It would have affected me the same way. It's heartbreaking what sad lives many people have - even when it's their "own fault" (inverted commas, because some people have early experiences which make them unable to cope with things).

It particularly haunts me when children and/or animals - which are total innocents - get dragged into the drama of violence, drugs or misery.

It's difficult if you have a soft heart and an imagination - very hard to put it aside.

I used to work for an MP so dealt with some awful situations. We Caseworkers were the front line so took the phone calls from near suicidal people, had desperate people turn up on the doorstep, coped with their anger and frustration. I am still haunted by a couple of cases almost twenty years on.

I think it’s pretty normal to feel the way you do, we are only human after all. I have had similar situations in my job too and have lost sleep over situations that have upset me. It’s hard when you can not really talk to people about what you have experienced because it’s “private”, I do find it hard at times because there’s little support for people that are involved in these things through their work.

Hopefully the baby will be adopted and will lead a good life, chances are the baby will have been born a addict and the next few month will be really tough. I met a lady once who fosters babies that have been taken from drug users, babies that have been born with a drug addiction but there’s usually a happy ending when the baby goes on to be adopted.

@Bagamoyo1

As a GP of 20+ years I’m glad when I hear of babies being taken into care at birth. To me this means that social services have done their job well. Far too often, parents are allowed to take babies home and have a few years to destroy their kids, so that by the time they’re taken into care it’s too late. Being adopted at birth is the best chance of breaking a negative cycle. Of course it’s tragic for the parents, and it’s sad to think what that woman must have been through to get to this point, but at least her baby will have a better chance in life. These decisions aren’t taken lightly. She’s probably had other kids taken into care further down the line, after years of failed parenting classes and support. That’s my experience of these situations anyway. So try and see this as a positive thing - that’s one child saved.

Agreed

Hi Op
I totally get how you feel about this labouring young woman.
Its obviously a difficult very emotive situation.

I had a very Jeremy mkayl TV show childhood experiences, I was brought up in children's homes when very young, I am the eldest of 8 sisters /bro's, all of us brought up mostly in care, chirdren's homes /foster care.

My birth mother was in and out of pschritric hospitals.

I was adopted when I was 10yrs age, thankfully by a good welsh family it was a trans racial adoption.
I am from Afro-caribbean heritage,British descent.

My birth gran tried to keep us all together, but Birmingham split us up, there was defiantly plenty of Aunties/uncles to help her bring us up tho.

Although I had a good childhood once I was adopted I do feel I wish I knew more about my cultural heritage I feel I missed out on that, and I do feel that it was unfair of social services in midlands splitting us,up when I,we could have been brought up with my birth gran.

But I have made lots of friends here, and Wales is a beautiful country really love the coast line, (I think deep down it reminds me of Caribbean heritage...

Unfortunately these situations arent all that rare.

She may well have had a child removed before and unless she changes her lifestyle she's likely to have more babies removed in the future too. It's a cycle. She needs to want to change her life.

Thank god the baby is being removed as chances are he/she will find a loving home very quickly as a newborn. It's when the poor children only get taken as older kids having had a poor start that they find it harder to find long term homes for them.

Sounds like she was aggressive because of the trauma of it all. I feel for the mother but unless she changes her life dramatically, she's in no position to be raising a child.

if the baby is being removed immediately, they will be going to a better life, to someone that really wants them i think to hope for the best is good, but it is unlikely to be quite as positive for these children.

I wouldn’t worry about the woman, she’ll just pop out another one,which will also be removed. She will have had countless opportunities to get her act together but obviously chose not to. Children’s social care don’t remove babies at birth on a whim. The child will already have been subject of a child protection plan.

As for the baby, hopefully it will have the chance of a normal life now.
There’s always the one job that gets to you, give yourself time.

It is devastating to hear but sadly also common. I can understand how that would be upsetting to hear.

I would find that situation upsetting too. Although I would find the baby being born in to those circumstance very upsetting, the baby will probably go on to be adopted in to a loving home and given opportunities in life, there are many adopters who desperately want a newborn/under one year old baby. I think the sheer sadness of the mother’s situation would impact me most. I would wonder how many times she’s been through this before and how many more times will she? What is her story?

Perhaps you should talk it through with support at work.

One of my old colleague worked in A&E for years and said she could never quite come to terms with the violence inflicted by one person on to another, she found victims of extreme unprovoked violence really hard to reconcile with and it would play on her mind.

If you felt nothing, then I would find that more concerning because it would mean you’ve become desensitised.

Haven't read full thread, but having a baby removed does not mean the baby will not be reunited with the mother, and the mother (and father) won't get support.

It's a horrible shitty thing to go through but better than getting a call to a baby who has been (un)intentionally overdosed by drug abusing parents because it wouldn't stop crying...

Hopefully the parents can turn themselves around.

@AnnListersBlister

Sorry custardy I meant local authority care.

No, I know none of my business. I just wondered if other people would have been touched by it in this way, or not.

Absolutely, I have been involved in very similar situations quite a few times. I could tell you the stories in great detail because it sticks with me as its so upsetting.

Most of the maternal suicides that we have are women who had their baby's removed. The ongoing support and care for them seems to be non existent, my heart literally breaks for them all.

Lets face it none/very few will have had a good upbringing themselves. I always say any of us could have been born into that life.