What should happen now - Eastenders baby swap story

[PotPourri]

MNHQ have done us proud and taken a stand on our behalf. So what do we want Justine to tell the producer should happen now?

My own view: The only way I would accept is to reverse: make it a dream. It could be a from the point where Ronnie finds her dead baby. Maybe a sleeping sedated Ronnie is trying desperately to 'fix' the situation in her dream, but realising that there is no way to fix it. Then it could flash back to what really happened - the sensitively handled real life traumatic event - an unearthly roar, dialling 999, collapsing with grief, being sedated (hence the crazy dream)

And a public apology from the bbc to viewers and licence payers. And an apology to FSID for abuse of their name.

Reversing and admitting they messed up big style is the only outcome that will show integrity

cupot, your not being silly at all for airing your views but the problem is its not the cot death aspect people here most seem to have a problem with - its the swapping part of it, which I think has went too far.

Understandably you will be sensitive to the cot death but you can choose not to watch, everyday on TV there will be something horrible that will remind someone somewhere of some personal tragedy in their lives. So you will not be forced to put up with it for the next few months. Please for your own health dont watch then.

However you seem to have an issue with the cot death story, and it all sounds so very raw for you, do you have anyone you can talk to about your feelings because I know nothing can change what happened to your baby, if you cant bare it and feel so down all the time, it sounds like you are deeply troubled emotionally and may need help coming to terms with your loss. ((thoughts))

amy .. can I ask have you lost a child?

I ask cos its not something that you ever forget and many years down the line the simplest thing can take you right back to that terrible day.

When something like this appears on telly (real or fictional)every bereaved parent has a tear in their eye.

And yes if its handled properly we can sit and have a weep and feel "better" for it.. but when its handlded like this its just horrid

So no cupot is not silly ... she is a bereaved mum who will never forget

Its really unacceptable for this story to continue until the spring. The BBC are just trying to make it easy for themselves. They should pull the story immediately and return the baby to Kat within days, preferably before the funeral, to avoid causing further offence. Otherwise they will be adding to Mums distress with the scenario of a baby having bonded with the wrong person being distressed when returned to it's real mother after weeks and weeks!!

Plus having Jack find out that his baby died weeks ago, and he never got to even say goodbye. The phrase "happy ending" cant be used in connection with this whole catastrophe of a storyline at all.

Ok. Have thought about this a bit more.

Can i ask those people that are so sure that this could haen, one thing?

Put yourself in the position of going to check on your precious baby. You find them lifeless and dead. What would your first reaction be? What would you do?

*Sorry, happen - my 'p' tab is playing up.

dee - I'd go one step further:

Can all those people saying "this has happened - however infrequently, a recently bereaved new mother has stolen a living baby" please give us a link to the story or tell us where to find it. Until you can show that this situation has occurred, its assumption and hearsay.

Newgolddream - how DARE you tell a bereaved mum how she should deal with her grief? Do you really think that it won't have occurred to her, to me, to any of us that therapy of some form might help? Do you really think that the pain caused by holding your dead child is something that you can "come to terms with" and then it will be all better?

The grief of losing a child is something you learn to live with, something that walks beside you every second of every day, something that haunts your dreams - something that you get used to with time but that can be brought back as sharp and cutting as the day the bereavement occurred by a chance phrase or a song on the radio...
...or by the careless comment of a casual acquaintance who sees a storyline on a soap and, after a few months, forgets the source.

Smileypeeple I agree great post. Another one for those attending the meeting to print and take with them.

Ronnie is now, ssadly, a criminal. I cannot see how they can resolve this realistically without police involvement. She will be demonised by the rest of the square, not lease Mo et al, and to portray it otherwise would mean Kat and everyone else behaving out of character. They say they don't want to demonise bereave mothers. How are they going to avoid this with Ronnie now? No-one (viewers nor characters) is going to have sympathy for the torture she's put Kat and Alfie through.

And what about Kat and Alfie? Babysnatching is a whole separate topic to cot death, but imagine the grief of having missed the first few weeks/months of your child's life. You wouldn't know them. You'd never get it back, etc etc. The joy of his being alive will be tinged with the sadness and anger of what should have been.

I simply cannot see how this is going to give anyone a 'happy ending', except for the fact that the set of 'bereaved parents' the BBC have been so at pains to tell us are being portrayed realistically, will then have the one thing that all bereaved parents long for but can never ever have, which is to have their own baby back.

Is it really so hard to see why all this is so fucking insensitive?

(and no, I have thankfully never endured the death of my child, but this still enrages me)

I think the 'it's just a soap' posters need to recognise how much hurt this storyline is causing to bereaved parents. It's almost become a 'them and us' situation... I say almost becauae there are those who have never lost a child but can empathise.

I wholeheartedly agree with frasersmummy. Since losing my son I have found certain storylines a little too close for comfort... For example baby Harry died in Casualty and then his parents split up due to the pressure grief brings to a relationship. Despite this I watched, I cried, I felt for baby Harry, I felt for his parents, I felt for my son and I felt for myself and my partner.

Casualty is also 'just a drama' and yet the writing was so powerful that it reduced many viewers to tears. I felt as sad as it was it was written with great sensitivity and compassion. I am not opposed to childloss being featured on tv as unfortunately it is part of life. And like frasersmummy said aftee shedding tears I felt a release and ultimately did feel a little better for that.

Its just a shame the EE crew couldnt do their story as sensitively as their colleagues

I have followed the EE threads carefully and can see the argument from both sides. But thats life - it takes allsorts.

What I do not understand is they are carrying out a PM, surely that would show something up? Do newborns not still have a heel prick test to check for blood group, infections and other things? I do not know I am not speaking from knowledge here just questionijng a possible hole in the process of this storyline?

Heel prick is done on day 6. The baby was too young for that at only 1 day old. Actually, statistically SIDS itself is extremely unlikely at 1 day old.

Mumbar -do you mean won't the post mortem find a cause? I don't know much about this, but this is what the FSID site says:

"Why did our baby die?
In a small number of cot deaths the post mortem examination reveals an unsuspected abnormality, rare disease, or rapid overwhelming infection which explains why the baby died. For other babies, the death is more difficult to explain. Evidence of a mild infection may be found in some babies which may be mentioned on the death certificate. It is puzzling that some babies die with a mild infection while others recover. Research has led to the view that cot death is seldom due to a single cause. "

I don't think the heel prick tests for infections either, they look for hereditary conditions. Details are available on the NHS Choices website here.

Newgolddream your post is too much. It is inappropriate to give so much detail of an individual case you have been involved in on an internet forum. As you are a Pychiatric Nurse I think you would see that if you review your post. Please do ask for your post to be deleted. It is not going to increase people's faith in confidentiality being upheld by your profession and the way you have described your experience of the case would be very distressing for any friends or family of the victim who come across it. Please do get that post deleted. Its too damaging to leave it to stand just to make a point.

This is taken from the Journal for General Practitioners. Link here

It is old (1985) and therefore likely to be outdated in the extreme, but perhaps shows that the BBC are lazy with research, rather than not bothered with researching a storyline.

The article is entitled "Cot Death: The Aftermath"

"A frightening feeling experienced by all the mothers interviewed by the author was the urge to 'baby snatch' other children from prams when they were out shopping or visiting friends. Mothers describe the intense urge to hold another living
child, yet fear the adverse publicity involved."

I might have posted that on the wrong thread - there are so many.

beachholiday - at no point have I breached confidentiality - no-one knows my name, where I work or indeed the patients name and details or even when this happened - now that would be breaching confidentiality, I am fully aware of the NMC code of conduct, thanks.

And Im not "proving" a point as you state, I have read plenty of experiences and opinions here, this was mine simply in response to someone attacking me for being concerned about the mental helath of a fellow poster.

It just illustrates the lengths people can go to when they dont process grief thats all.

Im not talking about the code of conduct - you havent breached the letter of any code Im sure. Im saying it gives a very poor impression to the public of how Psychiatric Nurses operate with confidentiality. And you will know how hard it can be for some people to overcome their reservations about confiding in any mental health professional, or to seek help.

The case you describe would (mercifully) be rare enough, that it would not be hard for anyone who knew the person involved, or their family, to guess you were talking about them.

Please, I am not having a go at you, but would you please please reconsider the last few sentences of that post and at least retract your post and repost your post without them.

beachholiday - with all due respect the "case" I mentioned is not rare at all,(the patient didnt die) its tragic but over my many many years of experience I would actually say its quite common - horrific for people who dont work in mental health to think that people can be driven to such extreme lengths, so there is no way anyone would recognise the person involved from my post, I would never do that.

Pick up your average psychiatric nursing book and there will be lots more stories like this Im afraid.

However Im not unreasonable and I will do as you ask - but Im not prepared to be attacked when Im genuinely concerned for someone, can you understand that?

Thank you for modifying/deleting it. I would not say its quite common- our ideas of quite common must differ. I just think that that post would be a strong deterrent to someone who was trying to bring themself to confide in any mental health professional. If a client knew that their case might be described on the internet by the professional they spoke to, even with all identifying details obviously removed, it would prevent many people from speaking as freely as they need to, IMO.

I understand your need to defend yourself if you feel attacked but I think there are other ways to defend yourself.

Thats ok, our ideas of common will differ because I work in the area I do - obviously its not going to be common for someone who doesnt. Self harm goes on day in day out - when people feel so low they cant handle the emotional pain - harming your physical body is 1 way of feeling physical pain to counteract the emotional pain - generally its not about suicide (as attempting suicide is completely different) but of course extreme self harm can inadvertantly lead to someone dying.

no I dont believe it would deter anyone - because I didnt describe the case as you put it - only stated a simple fact that someone had self harmed in response to unprocessed grief and their method - there is so much more written even in articles in womans magazines for example.

Describing the "case" would involve so much more detail, not only about the patient, but the background and such.

No, we dont work in dissimilar areas.

I think a client might feel their case had been described if they came across that, regardless of what else had been ommited. I do think other clients might wonder if their PN can post things about them on the internet if they saw that post, and then saw that no official guidelines had been breached by your posting that. (I know no guidelines have been breached - I was surprised a PN would post that).

I do think people would place more store by your post because it comes from someone who has stated they are a mental health professional, who spoke, as a mental health professional. I wouldnt have posted if you hadnt said you were a PN. But I also thought, that you might do something about the post, as a PN, if you saw that anyone, even if you think its just me, could see you post in that light.

Thanks for reconsidering it anyway.

We will just have to agree to disagree with how common it is, depending on our own experiences. I may be a Nurse and therefore cannot help bring my own experiences and personality to my posts - as is the case with most people I would think.

But Im certainly not claiming to be an expert here at all - just simply concerned for a fellow posters mental health - which is why I would encourage someone like the poster I was originally replying to to seek help if need be. The problem with mental health issues is sometimes the sufferer is the last person to recognise they need help - and I say this not as a RMN but as a Mum who has suffered from Post Natal Depression.

I did not expect to be criticised in the manner I was, but it takes all sorts.

I certainly didnt mean to upset or offend anyone - and whilst I still dont think what I said was wrong - I am willing to see it from your point of view, we just have a different one.