Editorial: Care of mothers

Sydney
1 June 2003

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Editorial: Care of mothers

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Editorial: Care of mothers

“What do you think she’s in for?” the prison officer asked. “I don’t know,” said the reporter. “She killed her baby,” said the beefy woman officer, fixing the young reporter with a shrewd eye. “How could she?” gulped the reporter.

“They get sick in the head, you know. Mentally unbalanced,” said the officer with a mature, not unsympathetic shrug.

This scene was played out in the surprisingly cosy domestic setting of the prisoners’ kitchen of Auckland’s women’s jail, where the inmates were cutting the eyes out of potatoes for the evening meal. This was 15 years ago when this editor was a young reporter who had not yet had children.

It is a scene that could be played out again sometime in the future with another young reporter and another such mother, Kathleen Folbigg.

The question is: Has anyone really asked whether Folbigg was similarly mentally ill? When you consider her own tragic history - her father killed her mother for fear she would kill the 18-month-old Kathleen - the question needs to be asked: Are we looking at two generations of mothers suffering from severe post-natal depression here, the clinical kind of post-natal depression caused by a badly out-of-kilter hormone system, which is not curable by more rest and long walks with baby in a stroller.

This kind of post-natal depression is rare, but it does exist. In New Zealand new mothers and babies are checked weekly for six weeks after birth; daily for 10 days if they leave hospital early. And midwives ask how mothers are coping.

The resentment and hatred of her babies Folbigg experienced at times is not all that unusual. Many tired mothers experience such feelings to a lesser degree, especially if they have not quite recovered from a tough birth.

Midwives advise a mother feeling this way to walk away from her baby - even if it is howling - and to go as far as the end of the garden, if necessary, until the feeling subsides. They also urge mothers who think they may be losing control to contact them - fast. In NZ it’s a free service.

Sadly, this kind of gentle, before-such-an-event care is not available as a free service to NSW mothers.

Yes, what Folbigg did was wicked, but maybe she was ill. And, maybe, if we took better care of mothers and young children, four of our children might still be alive today.

And we would not have had to witness a woman so abandoned that when she sat in the dock the only person she had to support her was a Salvation Army major, who held her hand and then found herself vilified for her Christian action.