"Natascha"
In my last post, about Babyfensters, I told you about the newborn girl found in a shopping center last week, and I wrote all about Babyfensters and anonymous birth as potentially newborn-saving options for desperate mothers.
How rational of me.
What I didn't do was tell you what I did when I read about "Natascha." (That's how the baby girl is referred to but it is not, we are told, the legal name she has been given. That will remain private.) I cried. I stroked her little picture in the newspaper and I told R we should take her home. For somebody who struggled as hard as we did to have a child, it's hard to see that beautiful baby and to think of her being left behind. I stand by what I said in my last post - I don't judge the mother, and I respect her for the ways in which she attempted to protect her baby even as she was leaving her. It would have been so easy to drop her off on the side of a road somewhere in the dark, or just on the ground in a park, or to do the horrible. But for somebody like me...well, it's a hard story to read. It's a hard story to fathom - somebody leaving behind something I fought so hard to have. I told R we should offer to take Natascha home and he said one of those things that are the things I married him for. He said it wouldn't be fair, that we have our Small Boy and there are probably families still waiting for their Small One and that we should let somebody else adopt her. He's right. It would be miserly, wouldn't it, to get in line, Small Boy in hand, ahead of a couple with empty hands and open arms. And let's face it, Small Boy has me running in circles already; who am I kidding about taking on a Wee Girl? Besides, Natascha should be a family's first child, so that she can be the center of the world for a while.
And there's always the hope that her mother will contact the authorities soon, that she has found the support she needs.
But I cry when I read updates about Natascha, and I always stroke her little picture in the paper and I whisper "I'd take you home, Sweetie."
Labels: Schweizermacher
4 Comments:
I'm sure a million families would love to have Natascha, and she'll be cherished by loving parents.
It was hard for me to have children, also, but easy to understand mothers like Natascha's, because I remember how fearful I was of an unwanted pregnancy for the many years before I discovered how hard it was for me to even get pregnant.
I think the baby's mother showed great concern for the child's safety, and at considerable peril to her own anonymity. She took a big risk by leaving the baby in a public place. I can't imagine her anguish right now.
These kind of stories always make me cry and there are many babies abandoned in Germany each year, some look to have been well cared for, others are simply left wherever to perish. It just breaks my heart, but I can't see into the minds of the mothers who do these things and therefore cannot condemn them. Luckily they have opened quite a few Babyfenster, or Babyklappen as they call them here, in various locations in Germany and are encouraging mothers who feel they cannot deal with a baby to either give them up there, or have an anoymous birth.
I hadn't heard about Natascha but alot of babies get abandoned here in Thailand as well. The discussion is if they want to have something like a babyfenster but the government thinks it will encouage people to give up their babies. As if.....
So sad, I just read about a college student in California who is being held in the death of her newborn who was found in a dumpster.
This stands in stark contrast to mothers who leave a baby in a safe place to be found.
To make matters worse, there is some question about whether this young mother may have done it before. It's being investigated. Unbelievable.
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