I cannot remember the date, the day or the time she was born, only the year, 1969.  Memory has blocked it out so that I have no painful memories to face.

The X-rays had shown some abnormality but I was not privy to that information. The doctors and nurses had surrounded themselves with a steel wall of tight-lipped silence. Every examination heightened my fear as I watched the knowing looks pass between them.  Students came to feel and prod my swollen belly, obviously briefed to say nothing. It was many years later that I learned the word anencephalic.

The decision was made that I would have a normal birth rather than a Caesarian section and the following two weeks passed in a blur of terror and anxiety.  I was admitted to the maternity hospital three days before the birth having been assured that there was a 50-50 chance that I would have a healthy baby.  Deep down I knew that they were lying but I suppose that they did not want a hysterical mother on their hands.

As the daily rounds of taking blood pressure and listening to foetal heartbeats continued, my bed was avoided, albeit the baby thrashed around full of life.  Only once did a pupil nurse stop to listen to the heartbeat to be told by the ward sister in a curt and officious manner that "it was pointless listening to that one".

The misery and fear became more acute because my twins had already died of cot death when they were only a few months old, another date totally wiped from my mind to this day.

The time of the birth came suddenly.  A nurse swished the curtains round the bed and announced that the doctors had decided to induce me and get it over with.  I was totally unprepared for what came next.  The trolley rattled down to the delivery room.  Instruments were inserted and the water gushed into some container between my legs, now hoisted up in stirrups.  No one spoke to me and I couldn't speak to them.  My mouth was glued with fear.  The baby still moved around and somewhere, deep inside me, a tiny flame of hope still flickered that I would have a live baby like everybody else. I was quite naive.

Within minutes I was left alone staring at the drip which was inserted to speed up the labour.  All I can remember of the next few hours was the cold yellow light penetrating the narrow slats of the venetian blinds to the left of the bed.  Periodically a nurse would come in and examine me.

When the delivery was imminent four people entered in green gowns and hats.  A strange tent-like structure was placed across my abdomen separating the top half of my body from the lower half.  Occasionally, a head appeared over the top of the tent and peered at me intently.  The medical staff muttered to each other and I could hear the sounds of instruments clattering against the steel kidney bowls.

I can remember a woman with a gash of bright red lipstick telling me to push.  I pushed until I was exhausted, not realizing that my baby had no skull to push with.  Eventually my daughter slithered through and I waited for her first cry.  The room was silent save for the murmuring voices and the noise of instruments on the other side of the tent.  I couldn't see what they were doing.

Suddenly a nurse rushed out of the door with what appeared to be a bundle of laundry in her arms.  It was my daughter.  They had totally encased her in a white cotton sheet.  Not even a hand or foot was visible.  I never saw her again.  At last I found the courage to speak.  The nurse with the red mouth came round to the top of the bed and told me that I could not see her because she was not "a taking home baby".  What was a taking home baby?  She was mine and I wanted her.  I just wanted to touch her.  She lived for 17 hours.  I was cleaned up and left on my own.  I think that my husband came in briefly but I cannot really remember.  All I could think of was her and that she must have been monstrous for them to fear that I even caught a glimpse of any part of her.

I was very good.  I did not cry much or make a fuss but inside I ached to get to her.  Somewhere in that hospital she would be lying in a cot being examined by students anxious to see this freak of nature.

Over the years I've thought about what they did to her.  She was going to die anyway so they would not have fed her or kept her warm.  Maybe she was thirsty and cold.  I'll never know.  All I do know is that there was a mother who desperately wanted to be with her defenceless baby and a little girl with only hours to live who needed the love and comfort of her mum.

I was taken to a ward and put in a bed with the screen drawn round next to other mothers waiting to deliver their babies.  It must have been visiting time because I could hear laughter and a baby crying nearby - the sounds of life and hope that I was no longer part of.  The ward eventually became silent save for the ticking of a clock and I lost track of time.

I was still being very good and not making a fuss, terrified that they might give me an injection to make me sleep thus stopping my plans to creep out of bed and go and search the long empty corridors for my baby.  I just ached so badly for her.  I didn't care what she was like as long as she was alive.

Sometime, in the blackness of the night, the curtains opened and a woman in a white coat leaned over the bed to tell me that my daughter had died a few minutes earlier.  She had a kind, gentle voice.  I wanted her to stay with me but she went as quickly and as quietly as she had come.  Perhaps she had been very busy that night.

Something inside me erupted like a volcano.  Torrents of water poured from my eyes but I did not seem to be crying.  I had lost control of my body.  Within minutes my hair, face, pillow and bedding was saturated with water and the dreaded red pain had returned.  It was like that when the twins had died and only those who have experienced it could know what I mean.  The whole inside of your body seems to be dripping with blood like a slaughterhouse - lungs, liver, heart, everything - but the worst is the blood red colour in your eyes.  Whether open or shut, all you can see is bright crimson.

I must have been wailing or making some other inappropriate noise that would have disturbed and worried the other mothers because I was given an injection and passed into oblivion.  When I woke the next morning it was obvious that the other mothers knew.  Some smiled briefly then averted their eyes.  Others kept their eyes lowered and walked past.  When I went to the bathroom or lounge conversations dried up.  I stayed in bed pretending to be asleep to save embarrassing other mothers ready to give birth. At visiting time I went to the lounge to avoid the furtive, pitying glances of visiting relatives.  Perhaps women like me become their worst nightmare - an obscene intrusion into what should be a wonderful and joyous occasion.

There is nowhere in my heart that I can feel any anger or resentment for the doctors and nurses.  They are trained to deal with live births as childbirth, mythically, is about delivering the perfect infant to the delight and joy of the parents and relatives and for the satisfaction of staff for a job well done.  There does not seem to be a place for those who produce dead, dying or imperfect offspring.

For those who cannot imagine this dilemma, think of a woman going to a party full of strangers.  She has decided to dress in glitzy clothes, silk stockings, glamourous hair and make up ready for a disco only to find everyone else in sweaters and jeans having meaningful conversations on politics and philosophy with Bach playing discreetly in the background.  Immediately, the mini skirt would be pulled down and diamante earrings stuffed in her handbag in an attempt to hide the image of being cheap or nasty.  Shame and embarrassment would ensue when she realized that her 'O' level in Art will not hold water in a sea of graduates who rightfully belong in the room.  The hosts and guests are embarrassed for her and the need to escape is overwhelming

That is how it is in a maternity ward if you are not having a live healthy baby.  You become that obscene intrusion into the hope and happiness of others - the dark shadow that reminds them that it could have been their fate.  Sometimes there is a side room or some other facility but it is still within the maternity unit.

I went home furtively by a side door hoping that no-one would realize that I had left empty-handed. Probably no-one would have noticed anyway.  It was just that I felt that the whole world would know.  The house was stripped bare of all the baby clothes, cot, pram etc - in fact, anything that indicated that a little girl had so recently been born.

The red pain had gone, so had the weeping.  What remained was like a heavy boulder lodged in my chest.  I could physically feel the weight of sadness which was heightened by the polite family disputes as to how this monstrosity had occurred.  Never known on our side of the family  -  never known on our side either!  All the children on our side have been fit and well  -  all the children on our side have been perfect too!  How I must have disappointed them all.

There was an even uglier side to this suffering which makes me feel quite ashamed even now.  It passed many years ago but I can still remember hoping that other people's babies would die too, God forgive me.  It lasted for about two years.  That passed to be replaced by the dark spectre of suicide. From time to time the nightmares would re-emerge, often when I least expected them, fuelled by guilt. Nobody ever knew.  It was my way out if the pain didn't stop. That really was the dark night of the soul and it took many, many years before the first glimmer of dawn appeared.

My great unspoken fear until recently was what they did with her body.  From conversations with friends in the medical profession, my worst fears were probably realized.  The probability was that she was incinerated with the amputated arms and legs. Although I will never be certain, the guilt haunted me over the years.  I never wrote to the original hospital because I did not want confirmation of that in black and white.  But questions still remain.

Why did I not go and find her?  Why did I not insist that they let me keep her warm and safe till she died?  Why did I not run away with her from the hospital and bury her with her brother and sister?  Why?  Because the medical staff had all the power  -  the power of silence so that I never knew what was happening and the power of medication to keep me drugged till I went home. And the misguided decisions of a family who did not think that I could face another funeral.  That is why.

I got on with my life, had other 'perfect' children, acquired two degrees, became a professional woman working to support parents and children with social, emotional and educational needs but could not heal myself or comfort other women.  To my shame I went in and out of maternity wards still unable to reach women who had been in my position.  At that point my experience had rendered little.  I could not go and talk to a bereaved mother in a maternity ward when I had just delivered my own live baby yet I ached for them with the same unspoken pity that others had felt for me.  It was the same in gynaecological wards.

Why is it that women are thrown into such emotional slaughterhouses?  Surely there must be another way.  Those having abortions are put in the next bed to those having treatment for infertility.  Both are suffering and that is intensified by their close proximity to each other.  It is cruel.

One woman's face will be etched on my memory forever.  In her late thirties, she had bright blue eyes and a well rounded body just perfect for childbearing, one would have thought.  She was a florist and the only plants that she never stocked were spider plants.  I will never forget her words.  "You see," she said, "even spider plants can have babies and I can't, so I can't bear to look at them." After ten years of treatment she was still infertile and I was being sterilized, having completed my family. Three other women on the other side of her were having abortions.

The florist was also being very good.  She didn't make a fuss or rail against us for discarding what she so desperately wanted but I heard her sobbing in the night.  I still think of her after 15 years.  The Gestapo could not have refined such perfect torture as is to be found in some of our maternity and gynaecology wards.

I have been very lucky in my life.  Many good things have come my way and I thought that I could control the spectre that always lurked somewhere in the background.  When my daughter became pregnant the fear returned with a vengeance and I was unable to share it with anyone.  I checked and rechecked the scan pictures for abnormalities even though I did not know what I was looking for.

When my 'perfect' grandchildren were born I dreaded every phone call in case it was about cot death.  It was only after their first birthdays that I could relax.  I knew then that the nightmares had not gone away and, if anything had gone wrong, I could not have helped because nothing had been resolved.  I was trapped in what seemed to be a dense, icy fog of underlying sadness and I was scared because it blighted the happiness and laughter that was an integral part of my life.

By great good luck I had a car accident and developed a driving phobia.  It had to be sorted because my job entailed driving and I could no longer do home visits and therapy when I was afraid of motorways and roundabouts.  My GP referred me to two therapists.  There was a real sense of shame in this.  I was supposed to help others with their problems yet could not help myself.  In the course of the initial interview the deaths of my children came up.  I calmly explained that the time would soon come when the pain would end.  It was no longer a problem.  My children were all adults and could fend for themselves.

I knew that suicide could blight a family with guilt so it would be done without anyone knowing.  I live near the hills and winter would provide the ideal opportunity.  I had planned  to go out with the dog.  Hypothermia would have done the job and it would have looked like an accident.  It would also have protected my insurance policies as I wanted my children to have enough money after I died.  I will never forget the look of horror on the two therapists' faces.  They said that I was far too high a risk for them to deal with and that a driving phobia was the least of my problems.  They wanted to refer me for psychiatry.  I was furious.  It was not a cry for help.  I just wanted the pain and the nightmares to end.  As I saw it, it was about self love and self respect.  I loved myself too much to continue to suffer and, as I could not get the pain to go away permanently, then I would end it.  The thought was actually very comforting.

The shame deepened when I was sent to see a psychiatrist.  He was a lovely young man and, after I had talked to him, he just looked at me and said: "Where would you start with this one?"  That was it for me.  He was starting nowhere. I had suffered enough pain in my lifetime and he was not going to start exploring it without knowing where he was going.  He suggested that I go to see his boss.  That caused more problems with shame and guilt.  Some of my own clients attended that psychotherapy centre.  My job entailed child abuse and I was quite well known and respected in that field but how could I sit in the same waiting room as my own clients?  A wounded healer who could not heal herself.

The consultant psychotherapist who saw me was wonderful.  How he ever got through the defences I'll never know.  Within a few weeks he cut the barbed wire that had wound its way through my soul and spirit for most of my life.  I began to understand what T.S. Eliot's poem  Burial Of The Dead was about:
 

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire......
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth with forgetful snow...

What would have happened if that wonderful man with his skill and empathy had not crossed my path?  I do not underestimate his courage.  I saw the pain cross his face when he had to listen to all the details.  The sessions ran with blood as I cried and screamed my way through them.  I think that we had seven in all.  I now know that I could have done absolutely nothing to prevent the cot death of my twins  -  no more guilt!  I did not give birth to a monster.  I had a little girl with an imperfect skull.  She was probably quite beautiful but I will never know because I never saw her  -  no more shame!  I have called her Alice.  The family put another name on her death certificate, not one that I would have chosen.  She waited a long time for that.

This is not a problem of yesteryear.  It is still a problem today.  I speak to many people about the death of their child and nothing much has changed even with special rooms within maternity hospitals.  I do not know the answer but, perhaps, by telling about my own recovery process, others might be helped.

For me, one of the final hurdles in understanding the shame and guilt associated with producing 'imperfect' or dead children came with a bag of mushrooms and some Cyprus grapefruit.

I had gone to the market and, to my surprise and delight, saw fresh mushrooms at 10p per quarter.  Along side them were Cyprus grapefruit at less than half price but marked with a big, ugly black cross in felt tip pen.  Both the mushrooms and the grapefruit were fresh, firm and clean and I could not understand why they were so cheap.  Back home, I emptied the mushrooms into a bowl and saw that each one had either two or three heads on a single stalk just like Siamese twins.  As I cut them up I noticed how intricate and beautiful their unusual structure was and, having never seen a mushroom with three heads before, felt quite excited rather like finding an egg with two yolks.  A closer examination of the grapefruit revealed that they were not quite spherical but rather like a cushion with too much stuffing making it lumpy in appearance yet they were sweet and delicious.

Then the reality struck home and I wept into the bowl of mushrooms which, on reflection, must sound rather silly  but again it was evidence of the obscene obsession with perfection which I had encountered time and time again in maternity and gynaecology wards.  The mushrooms and grapefruit were classified as second grade, not fit for Sainsbury's or Marks and Spencer, not fit to be displayed alongside the perfectly formed globes associated with top grade fruit and vegetables.

As I looked at the mushrooms and grapefruit again, tears still running down my face, sanity came to the situation.

The mother mushroom, if such a thing exists, would not commit suicide or feel ashamed at producing an offspring with two or three heads nor would the grapefruit tree shrivel with shame at producing less than perfectly spherical fruit.  That thought started to set me free.  If a simple mother mushroom could not get it right every time then nobody would ever point a finger at me again.  I understood at that point that nature neither requires perfection  nor is affronted by what it produces or reproduces.  That is how it is and we are part of that great diverse force of nature.  Only the flawed perception of some human beings puts the black cross on what it perceives to be its blemished members.

Another part of my healing came through, would you believe, the comedian Billy Connolly, a fellow Glaswegian.

I had been lucky enough to get to see him live in concert three times.  Because my job was about child abuse I knew what he was saying about his childhood.  It was brutal yet there he was using it to make his audience crack with laughter.  My face was sore with laughing.  He had the courage and ability to transmute his own pain into joy, not only for himself, but for the whole world.  What a lesson and what a therapist.  He also mentioned a book that had changed his life - The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield.  Thanks for that, Billy Connolly.  It changed my life too.  In it there is a quote:
 

Always know and remember that you are more than your physical body... This will provide instant perspective on any earth activity.  The agony becomes tolerable, the ecstasy more profound.  Locally induced fears evaporate.  Accidents may happen but you cannot lose;  you have had the experience of being human.

By very unusual circumstances another book came to me.  It was Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr Brian Weiss.  What a gift that was.  In it he shared his feelings on the death of his son.  It was something that I had never really considered.  I never knew what my husband had felt.  I never asked him.  My own river of blood had been too deep, too painful.  We divorced many years ago without ever discussing it, each shut off in our own misery.  Now here was a man telling me of his pain.  Within weeks of reading his book two male friends brought me their pain.

R asked if he could come up and see me.  His baby daughter had just been born dead.  She had a heart defect.  Her ears and feet had not formed properly either.  All I can remember him whispering was: "I know now what you mean about the river of blood."  We had a beautiful night.  The healing was so gentle and peaceful.  Thanks to Brian Weiss I could tell him about why these things happen.  It also gave me an insight into the feelings of men.  The labour had been protracted and difficult - 22 hours - and R spoke of his helplessness and desolation watching K suffer, another dark night of the soul.

Although there was a special Rainbow room at the hospital for such cases nobody had asked him about his feelings of rage, despair and shame.  He felt that he had no right to make his feelings known because the help needed to go to K as she had carried the baby and had to go through the birth.  I don't think that most men feel that they can burden their partners with their grief and, sadly, in our culture men are expected to be strong and not cry.

H had a similar experience.  The scans had shown up an abnormality which was difficult to detect at an early stage.  H and his partner had to make the decision whether to abort or not.  A was too distraught to make the decision and asked H to do it for her.  H was overwhelmed by guilt and fear.  Because A had to be induced and the doctors did not want to do a Caesarian section, the labour lasted a distressing 3 days.  H was exhausted physically and emotionally.

The baby was born dead on New Year's Eve.  A was discharged on a freezing, damp New Year's morning.  They stood on the pavement cold and empty hugging each other.  H could not share his feelings with A as he wanted to give her all the help and support that he could muster.  Again the words of Dr Brian Weiss helped him heal but he carried that pain for three years before we talked about it.  I couldn't have helped him three years ago anyway.  I had to heal myself first.

Another book that dropped into my lap recently was Why Me, Why This, Why Now?, by Robin Norwood, a therapist that I respect highly.  In it I learned to look for the gift in adversity, something that I had never thought of.  It is always there.  My gift in all this pain has been spiritual growth, a deepening of empathy, compassion and a joy and ecstasy that I would never have found otherwise nor ever have believed was possible.  I am not a religious person at all but I know beyond doubt that there is such a great force of Universal Love in this world available to all of us.  We just have to know it is there and find it.  For myself, I would like to add another little bit to Robin Norwood's title and that would be -'Why Not Me?'

My real understanding of the nature of pain came recently through the words of a Medicine Woman, Jamie Sams, in The Sacred Path.  I had asked the Great Spirit to help me understand what it was all about and I was shown the message from the Standing People.  I wasn't impressed until I read the words and had to whisper 'sorry' for doubting the universal wisdom.  Suddenly it all made sense. The Standing People teach us about roots and giving.  How lucky we are that the North American Indians have been so generous and compassionate to share their wisdom with us.  Would that we could be so generous to them.
 

Mimosa is the tree that teaches us the lessons of our female side and the loving heart... She told me the secret of the Fireflies and how they had unborn stars in their tails.  Mimosa told me that these stars would grow inside each person with an open heart.  Then they would take their place among the Great Star Nation when they had loved and been loved on this Earth.  Mimosa told me that the pain and betrayals each heart would endure were like water tossed on the fire of these tiny stars to see if they could continue to grow in spite of the hurt.  Those that continued to love would one day become big stars and would send the love that they had gathered to everyone in the Universe as a reminder of the Great Mystery. Mimosa reminded me to open my heart and to love no matter how deep my pain.

For me, I would not change a thing about my life.  The gift in my pain is that I have learned how to touch the pain and vulnerability in others with gentle hands and to treat myself more kindly.  What more could I ask for?  I feel very privileged and lucky.
 
 

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