#mother and baby homes

[thoughtlessarse]

A 90-year-old woman, who as a pregnant teenager had a priest look up her skirt to check if she was wearing underwear before sending her to a mother and baby home, said it is "humiliating" that she is still waiting for redress. Helen Culpan from Co Carlow is one of 34,000 survivors who are entitled to a redress payment for the time they spent in one of the country's many mother and baby homes. The €800m scheme finally opened for applications on March 20 this year — three years after it was first promised by the State. Priority is to be given to elderly applicants, according to the Department of Children and Integration which is responsible for the scheme, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s. However, Helen Culpan is still awaiting her payment, and fears she may pass away before it is paid. Helen's story is typical of so many young girls who ended up in these religious-run institutions, and which were documented in harrowing detail by the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes. Helen became pregnant at the age of 17 after being raped by a neighbouring farmer. She was later banished from her home in Castledermot, Co Kildare, to Dublin by her local priest who sent her, on her own, to St Patrick’s Mother and Baby home. She gave birth to her only child, a son, who was later adopted.

continue reading

My mother will never get redress having died ten years ago.

[burnitalldownism]

Don’t forget about the forced labour of “sinful” women and the mass graves of babies.

🇮🇪

Really wish tumblr had a "people are appropriating and misusing elements of my faith and that is offensive" option for reporting posts...

CATHOLICISM 👏 IS 👏 NOT 👏 AN 👏 AESTHETIC 👏

[manwalksintobar]

Even Now This House is a Cold Consolation

The gates shudder. A crow picks in the wet dirt, as the lawn, slit thin by angry blades, sighs openly beneath the shushing firs and the lapsed wind falls dead still This is what hunger leaves behind; a bolted door, a penny candle wept to the wick, a wanting to cut loose the horses, a wanting to lock up the horses, a girl walking in the rain looking for her own face. History is a trick; the light can pass right through it. Hard to believe that anything happened here. The moon is almost in the trees, like falling ash.

[captainsavre]

Marina + Liam DeLuca Bishop || Station 19 - 7.02 'Good Grief'

[lucien-leigh]

[s0fter-sin]

ghost stares at the ceiling, chest heaving in a harsh pant; sweat ice on his clammy flesh and soaked into the sheet he restlessly kicks away.

ears still ringing, his fingertips blindly drift down to trail along his vivisection scar. he half-expects blood to smear in their wake. his own line of solomon, who ordered him split in twain; half of him given to a grieving mother and half left with the grieving to be.

just for both his broken halves to be rejected.

what did it make him that his mother grieved him more than she loved him? that she begged to be relieved of him more adamantly than she begged to receive him? why did his worth spill out with his drawn blood? why was his pain lesser than hers?

his hand flexes, digging into the raised scar like it’ll part beneath his fingertips to plunge into his mangled insides. no one knows the cruelty of reforming the halved; his name, his being, not nearly as important as his body when he was stripped from himself. no one knows the pain of healing and understanding losing pieces of yourself means losing your value along with them.

how many more pieces did he have to lose before he was halved once more? before his very presence incurred grief so strong it was better to be rid of him than cradle his bloodied remains?

did the infant fight himself? did he age always at odds with himself; his halves never truly whole? he hopes he wasn’t, that he was spared the loss of self; the fear that one may be welcomed over the other.

who will he lose when the inevitable comes? when he’s ripped apart again? simon? or ghost? is it better to be cursed with choice just like his mother or live with an aftermath chosen for him? does it matter if in the end, he convinces himself there was nothing of him left to lose?

his head lolls to the side and the wild buck of his chest slows. he watches johnny beside him, his face lax with the rare peace of sleep; his cheek squished against the pillow, his lips pursed as long breaths escape him.

johnny. soap. never torn asunder but two all the same.

he carefully reaches out and ghosts his fingers along the jagged scar on his chin. even in sleep, he presses into his bloodied touch. he’s never fled his half-flesh, never shies away from his gore as it spills unbidden from his cleaved torso. he holds on where his mother let him go; cups his stomach to hold his insides in place and never minds the blood that drips through his fingers.

simon will never let him become his own solomon and cannibalise himself. he will never let him question which half of him has more value; which pieces he can afford to lose before he’s cast aside.

ghost’s soap. simon’s johnny. his.

whole, in any incarnation.

[coochiequeens]

Doctors and nurses who are not willing to listen to their patients should be replaced

BY VICTORIA SMITH

The third time I went into labour, I was determined to avoid getting told off. With both of my previous births, I had somehow managed to get things wrong. My errors the first time: going to hospital too early, then, when I returned three hours later, “leaving it so late”. The second time: ignoring assurances that I didn’t need to come in yet, then giving birth in the car park — an event I later discovered was being used in antenatal classes as an example of women “not planning ahead”.

“My previous births have been fast,” I said, when I went into labour with my third, “so I’d like to come in now.” I was speaking to the woman at the midwife-led unit that is the only option where I live. (If you need a caesarean section, you have to be transferred to next town.) “Third babies are notoriously difficult,” was her response.

What an odd thing to say to a woman already in labour. The “notoriously” suggested it wasn’t based on any actual evidence, but rather a kind of folk wisdom. It felt as though I was being warned not to tempt fate, not to assume that this baby would just pop out. I saw myself being categorised as one of those arrogant women who presumes to know her own body, only to be taught a harsh yet much-deserved lesson. “Third babies are notoriously difficult” sounded not unlike “third-time mothers shouldn’t get above themselves”.

In fact, I have never been particularly cocky about childbirth. When I was pregnant with my first child, back in the days when the Right-wing press were still obsessed with famous women being “too posh to push”, I wondered if I might be able to get an elective caesarean myself. I did not particularly care about childbirth being a wonderful experience, or about “doing it well”. I didn’t care if the Daily Mail thought I was a joke.

What I cared about was not having a child who would face the same difficulties as my brother, who was starved of oxygen at birth. This has had serious consequences for him, and for the rest of my family. Just how serious is hard to gauge. He was born traumatised; there has never been a before to compare the after with. What there has been instead is the hazy outline of an alternative life, one that runs parallel to the one he has now. It’s a life that began with the problem being identified sooner, with him being delivered quickly, perhaps by emergency caesarean. The difference between this and his actual life comes down to something small: mere moments, mere breaths.

I was born three years after my brother, in a larger hospital, where my mother was induced and monitored carefully. There is something very strange about being the sibling who had the safe birth. It feels as though I stole it. There is a constant sense of guilt, as if my life — my independence, my choices — constitutes a form of gloating. “This is what you could have had.” Everything I do feels like something owed to my brother (do it, because he can’t) but also something taken from him (you shouldn’t have done that, because he should have done it first).

Still, my family were fortunate, insofar as my brother didn’t die. Current reports on the Nottingham maternity scandal reference 1,700 cases, with an estimated 201 mothers and babies who might have survived had they received better care. What strikes me, reading them, is the enormous gulf between the cost of a disastrous birth and the trivial, opportunistic way in which childbirth is so often politicised — with mothers themselves viewed as morally, if not practically, to blame if anything goes wrong.

As a feminist who concerns herself with how the female body is demonised, my interest in debates about birthing choices is more than personal. I have read books railing against the over-medicalisation of childbirth, aligning it with a patriarchal need to appropriate female reproductive power. I have also read books protesting the fetishisation of “natural” birth, suggesting that it infantilises women, that it implies women deserve pain. To be honest, I find both arguments persuasive and dismaying. Both are right about the way in which misogyny and professional arrogance can shift the focus away from meeting the needs of women and babies. I feel a kind of rage that we are told to pick a side.

Representations of the labouring woman are so often negative: the naïve idealist, the “birthzilla“, the birth-plan obsessive, the woman who is “too posh to push”. This latter stereotype has gone hand-in-hand with a veneration of vaginal births, and stigmatisation of caesareans, that has had sometimes disastrous consequences. Midwives at the centre of the Furness General Hospital scandal were reported to have “pursued natural birth ‘at any cost’”, referring to one another as “the musketeers”; at least 11 babies and one mother died. But their approach was sanctioned by their employer: the 2006 NHS document “Pathways to Success: a self-improvement toolkit” explicitly suggested that “maternity units applying best practice to the management of pregnancy, labour and birth will achieve a [caesarean section] rate consistently below 20% and will have aspirations to reduce that rate to 15%”. Proposed benefits to this included “a sense of pride in units”.

Responses to maternity scandals now express horror that such an anti-intervention culture ever arose — responses in the same press that denigrated women such as Victoria Beckham and Kate Winslet for not giving birth vaginally. Instead, newspapers now stoke outrage over “natural” treatments during NHS births, such as burning herbs. Women have been shamed for having caesareans, but they have also been shamed for wanting births with minimum intervention — as though they are selfish and spoilt for seeking control over such an extreme situation.

In his memoir This Is Going To Hurt, former doctor Adam Kay writes disparagingly of women who arrive at the delivery suite with birth plans:

“‘Having a birth plan’ always strikes me as akin to having a ‘what I want the weather to be’ plan or a ‘winning the lottery’ plan. Two centuries of obstetricians have found no way of predicting the course of a labour, but a certain denomination of floaty-dressed mother seems to think she can manage it easily.”

Wanting to have some control over your experience of labour — which will hurt you and could kill you or your baby — is not akin to some messianic aspiration to control the weather. And in his mockery of the woman who wants whale song and aromatherapy oils, ironically, Kay deploys the same silencing techniques that might intimidate a woman out of seeking the very interventions he so prizes. What he and others do not seem to grasp is that their arrogance is a problem, regardless of which course of action they champion. It makes women feel they can’t speak, for fear of inviting hostility at their most vulnerable moments. It’s true that none of us knows our body well enough to know how we will give birth. But, looking back, I find it utterly insane, not least given my own family history, that one of my biggest worries during labour was “please don’t let anyone get cross with me”. Then again, I don’t think that fear is unrelated to the desire to remain safe.

Birth is not a joke. It is not a place for professional dick-swinging or political one-upmanship. I cannot describe — and, as I am not my mother, cannot fully understand — the shame of feeling that you “let down” your child before they drew their first breath, that they will forever suffer because of it. You watch an entire life unfolding and that feeling is there, every single day. This is the fear of the women in labour who are characterised as either idiots mesmerised by fantasy homebirths or cold-hearted posh ladies who can’t take the pain. If things go wrong, they are the ones who will bear the consequences, reflecting every day on what might have been, if they’d only done more.

When people discuss their siblings, my mind does wander to the one I don’t have, the one who was born safely. Perhaps he would have a job he loved, or one he hated, but in any case a job. Perhaps he would have a partner. Perhaps he would have children, and I would be their aunt. Perhaps we wouldn’t get on, wouldn’t even speak, but he’d have a life of his own. I know he thinks about this too. I wonder if the professionals who presided over his birth have thought about him since.

My third labour was not, by the way, “notoriously difficult”. My third son arrived into the world safe and well. No one can say why him or me, and not my brother. Mothers may long for control over birth, for which we are mocked; but we do not have it, for which we are blamed. Politics still takes precedence over our needs, and the needs of our babies.

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

and if i said suguru’s relationship with weakness (’the preciousness of the weak, the ugliness of the weak’) was born out of his feelings towards his mother …

[caitlynmeow]

Honestly the way I look at it all three daughters think they are Alcina’s favorite.

Bela: She’s the eldest and her mom’s helper. Alcina trusts her with big tasks and praises her a lot for it. She’s the only one who can do these things and the fact her mom trusts her and only her solidifies this believe.

Cassandra: Alcina spends A LOT of time with her. She knows all what’s happening with her, knows about her hobbies and interests and indulges her. Her mom trusts her abilities to the point where she lets her do things she normally doesn’t allow. But she only allows her to do it because she trusts her like that.

Daniela: To Alcina, Daniela never does anything wrong. Ever. She is her little angel who minds her own business, often staying in the library reading her books and not bothering anyone. She is harmless, and Alcina always tells her that she is special and to continue being herself. That one day she will grow as strong and capable as her sisters but for now she can continue doing what she loves.

It’s because of this that each one thinks she’s Alcina’s favorite. While in reality, Alcina loves them all the same. Each daughter has her merits and she focuses on that.

Oh, and one way to get Alcina livid is to mention ‘middle child syndrome’ and watch her explode in anger because her middle daughter is not neglected or overlooked. On the contrary, she pays more attention to her so that she doesn’t feel left out and it might have resulted in said daughter getting used to the excess attention thus feeding her dramatic streak.

[michyeosseo]

I am determined to take Shen Li home.

[froody]

I’m thinking about Ruairí Ó Máille (evilly anglicized to Roy O’Malley upon immigration) for my OC born in County Galway in 1842 but idk about that one yet. I was going to name him Seán/John but I dont want him to have to share a first name with two Red Dead Redemption characters. I am scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for Gaeilge male names of the 1840s that had anglicizations that wouldn’t be too unique but weren’t overly common either. I say this lovingly and as the descendent of Irish immigrants, like 50% of the male population of Ireland was named a variation of John at that point in history.

[spaceratprodigy]

✨🖤 Family Portrait 🖤 @grimreapersbutt 🖤✨

And it was hard, but you were brave, you are splendid And we will never be alone in this world No matter what they say We're going to be okay We were safe inside And our new son cried

Commission Info | Ko-Fi | My Links

[official-lucifers-child]

just experienced true homesickness for the first time. what the actual fuck was that.

[vaguely-concerned]

the parallels between morrigan and the mage warden (especially one who snitched on jowan and so isn't automatically doomed if they stay in the circle) both being unceremoniously kicked out by their parental figures from the isolated nests they've been cooped up in all their lives and sent flailing out into the real world to test their wings. the love that you can read in between the lines there from irving, and even flemeth -- in both cases this is a cause of action taken partly to save their children (from the circle, from the blight, from the isolation and constriction they would be doomed to otherwise), and in both cases it also opens them up to a world of new dangers. (I wonder if irving knows how many grey warden recruits die right off the bat. from his general character I think he might take that chance even if he knew because otherwise the circle is all but inescapable, but from what he says to amell/surana at the time and how set duncan is to keep that particular detail on the down low I feel more on the side of him not being aware.)

irving at least is encouraging and explains the outlines of what he's thinking even in his hurry to get you out the door, flemeth takes the opportunity to get in a few more stabs of emotional abuse haha. but I think my amell looks at morrigan's shock and partial dismay to be sent away with them so abruptly (and despite everything, the sting of it being so easy to do on her mother's part, emotionally) and feels a sympathetic sinking in her stomach. because yeah she knows that feeling too

[tricoufamily]

visiting the hometown

(want everyone to know this edit came to me in a dream and i changed the lore just to do it)

[releasing-my-insanity]

Looks like James and Tristan are having fun. Photos by Ros Clarke (Closed Facebook group.)