Should I See My Baby?

Quote from: The Unmarried Mother in our Society, Ch 23 “Shall I look at my baby?” by Sarah B. Edlin (1956):

“In a professional agency such as ours. . . We experimented with permitting the girl to make her own choice in the matter of seeing or not seeing her baby. We observed – and so did the adoption agency with whom we work very closely and with whom we share our thinking – that in the main, the girl who did not see her baby was much more disturbed after her return home, than the girl who had seen her child and had returned to Lakeview with it for a week or two.

Although much evidence was available to determine that preventing a mother from seeing her child was psychologically harmful to both mother and child, and although the mother was the sole legal guardian of her child until she signed a consent, it became routine practice to forbid eye contact between mother and child. … to prevent bonding.

Most mothers so psychologically brainwashed into believing their baby did not belong to them, did not know they had a right to ask, were too afraid to ask, or, did ask to see her child only to be ignored or berated for her audacity.

Each hospital complied with the arrangement decided upon by the maternity home to which they were affiliated.

The Anglican Adoption Agency who controlled the girls at Carramar Home for Unmarried mothers decided that the mother could see her child at least once, but was forbidden to hold it or feed it, and then only after she had signed the consent. By the early 1970′s the mother was permitted to hold her baby for a few minutes, but only whilst heavily guarded by a team of nursing staff or someone else in authority.

“When I gave birth in 1980, my son was taken away from me at birth and I was not allowed to see him. I was put into the gynocology ward, far down the hallway from the maternity ward where he was kept in a nursery. On about the 3rd or 4th day after he was born, I finally got up enough courage to ask if I could see him. I was also able to finally walk by that time. The nurse seemed surprised but told me that I could see him and told me where the ward was.

“I shuffled down the hallway, still in pain from a very large episiotomy that extended even part-way down my leg, and I found the nursery. I was able to see him lying there in his basinette, but nurses carefully stood watch on me to make certain that I did not touch him or pick him up. I loved and wanted to keep my baby, but no-one ever asked me if I wanted to keep him or offered to help me keep him — hospital staff had already decided that I would not be allowed to.