Well where to start. I was a 16 year old, who “disgraced her family” “ruined my life” and was generally the scum of the earth.
I was shipped off to Bethany Home for Unwed Mothers here in Ottawa, Canada. My mother would pick me up from the home on Tuesday nights and drive me to our (or her) home where my father would be in the living room playing with my sisters (which now that I say it, I realize that it was staged because he never played with us) and tell me that if I kept the baby she would leave them to take care of me and they would have no mother.
I was not allowed out of the home ever. I was allowed to use the pay phone. There were daily chores, many of them but I suppose that was the only way they could make the home work.
There was a daily barrage reminding us that we were there to give up our babies, we were bad people who disgraced our families. I will stop short of being told that we were sluts, but that was always there but unspoken.
No one ever offered any hope that we could keep our babies. I was told that it would be best if I didn’t see my baby. In the end it did not matter if I wanted to see my daughter, my parents saw to it that I did not see her. Something that breaks my heart every day.
When I went into labor my mother decided that I couldn’t go to the Grace hospital because there was someone that she knew working there. After a battle with the Major I was finally allowed to go.
A few weeks after the baby was born I was marched back to the Children’s Aid office to sign the waver saying that I relinquish all my parental rights including the standard waiting period allowed by law.
It wasn’t a surrender, it was more like having my baby torn from me. It has left a hole that has gotten deeper rather than has healing.
There is a profound emptiness which is almost undiscribable. It is as though my baby was lost and after the baby was born the ache in my body was so horrible. I wanted to hold my child, my milk was there to feed her and I was supposed to “act like none of this happened” and go back to my “normal life”.
I left home soon after that and I never really forgave my parents for what they did. When I had my next child in 1973, I could not look at her without thinking of the baby I lost. Losing my first was like a death.
All in all a nightmare which no one should have to go through. I don’t know where my daughter is. I wonder if I ever will.
Sue Foster