Following on the heels of my warm and fuzzy tribute to my warm and fuzzy daughter, tonight I’m going to tell you a story guaranteed to make you sick. My hubby and I wrapped up a couple of hours of serious dialog about serious matters and managed to get the television on in time for the news. The feature story tonight was incomprehensible. Seems a 20-year-old “female” (my husband said I can’t call her a “woman”) gave birth to her baby boy in the toilet at a local McDonald’s where she worked, and she twice attempted to flush the living child down the toilet. First, she wrapped him in toilet paper and then she tried to flush him. Someone called paramedics and while they were restraining this “female”, she was still hell-bent on flushing this child. Amazingly enough, the child survived and is apparently doing well (physically, that is … ) My husband commented on what a horrible way that was to begin your life.


Before I began this adoption and attachment journey, I had no idea how critical that first nine months of life—prenatal life—is in the development of a healthy psyche in a child. Of course, we have all heard for years about the physical effects of drinking or drugging or doing a myriad of other types of damage to the child’s developing physical body. But much less was known about emotional abuse occurring prenatally.


I now know that many, many devaluing messages can be and are passed along to developing fetuses. I think it is safe to say this “female”, who never referred to this child by name or by gender, but only as “it”, sent a plethora of negative messages to this boy, capped off by her determination to end his life in a sewer. It goes without saying that she should never be allowed to see him again, but what damage has she done already? You, my friends, know the answer to that—far more clearly than the vast majority of Americans who believe this little baby can be placed in a loving home and suffer no ill effects from his horrible beginning. If only that were so.


This is a great book that describes the prenatal child ... The Secret Life of the Unborn Child.


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