The story of ignorance

Today, I admitted a week-old baby whose mother didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth to him.

Let me repeat that.

Today, I admitted a week-old baby whose mother didn't know she was pregnant until she gave birth to him.

When her contractions started last Friday afternoon, the 13th of October, she ran a hot bath to soothe what she thought were cramps, but leapt out of the tub when she saw a head appearing between her legs. She cut the umbilical cord with a pair of kitchen scissors, but because she hadn't clamped it first, she bled extensively prior to delivering the placenta.

Sitting in front of us in a small clinic room, she looked starved, waxen, and stunned, her skin a pale yellow against a thicket of dyed black hair. Her boyfriend said, "I thought she was just getting fat." He and another man living in their house had debated calling an ambulance or taking the infant to the doctor, but she had begged them not to. The courts had already removed two children from her custody, she said, and she wanted to keep this one. Plus, she added, she hadn't wanted him to be hurt by what the doctors might do to him in the hospital.

They'd weighed him against a box of rice. "He's too small," her boyfriend had said. He'd bought a carseat and a diaper bag, and the next day, they brought him to the hospital.

We reassured them. They had done the right thing in bringing him in, we said. He was tiny-probably about 6 weeks premature, and small even for that. He also had a very low body temperature and mottled skin, suggesting that he might have a severe blood infection. The NICU fellow, a senior member of our team, said we'd need to keep the baby in the hospital at least overnight, and the mother began to cry. The fellow comforted her: "I haven't heard anything suggesting you won't be able to keep him."

Really? Nothing? Is it not possible to be too stupid to raise children? And if the story of ignorance is an invention, what are the odds that it is covering up something more benign? How much are we willing to bet?

I stood next to his isolette in the dark tonight after inflicting on him exactly what his mother had known we would-needles in his arteries, his muscles, and his spinal column-and wondered how much of his life he will spend with people who pretend that he doesn't exist.

This unlucky little form, spat into the world on an unlucky day. If he goes back home with his parents, I will not have done him any favors by keeping him alive.