I never cease to be amazed at the words I hear in the examining room. As I recall, I walked into the room and the baby, wrapped in her blanket, was by herself up on the exam table, while her mother was sitting quietly in a chair. I thought maybe she was tired and asked her if that was the case, but she said no. She didn’t strike me as not wanting the baby, as I sometimes feel, and she didn’t seem depressed. Rather, she gave the impression of someone who didn’t expect much from life. I don’t remember exactly what led to what, but after a while she said to me, “I don’t hold my babies after they are four months old.” A very stark and unsettling thing to hear.
It wasn’t hard to figure that she had suffered a difficult childhood, like many of the parents I see from Mexico. She was a child that her parents could not afford to feed and clothe, and so she had been shipped off to some relative, then another, and another. Eventually she came as a teen to the US to seek a better life. I empathized with her, talked to her some about the connection between her own life and how she felt about babies, and that more holding was good for them. Whether I was able to connect her to therapy or even talk to a social worker I don’t know, but I won’t ever forget her words. I hope that that moment of someone listening to her pain made a little difference.
