A Song for Bridget by Phyllis Whitsell & Cathryn Kemp

Author:Phyllis Whitsell & Cathryn Kemp [Whitsell, Phyllis & Kemp, Cathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: VFVK. VFVX | Memoirs, BIC codes BM, Intergenerational relationships, Adoption
ISBN: 9781907324840
Publisher: Mirror Books
Published: 2018-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

A Labour of Love

January 1951

“Push, Biddy, PUSH!” The nun shook her head, her lips pursed with distaste.

“Oh Holy Mother of God!” I shouted, in pain and fear as a contraction ripped through me. Another surge engulfed my trembling body, then another. I was lying on a bed in a separate room, away from the dormitories we girls shared, surrounded by three of the nuns from the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary, which ran the Sean Ross Abbey Home in Roscrea, County Tipperary. The home was part of the Sacred Heart Adoption Society’s network, which took the babies of unmarried girls and, for large donation fees, gave them up for adoption to rich American families.

“You’re going to have to work harder than that, Bridget Larkin. There’s a reason this is called labour, now push again.”

I stared wildly up at Sister Immaculata, wearing her long, black habit and veil over her starched white coif. Her face was hidden in the shadow cast by the overhead light.

Other than the three sisters, I was utterly alone, with no family and no friends beside me. There was no pain relief given, no midwife or doctor present.

Whatever happened was God’s will, or so I was told by Sister Conrad, a pale-faced older nun who muttered prayers under her breath through my ordeal.

Many mothers and babies died here. We all knew the stories handed down between each ‘inmate’. There were bramble-covered crosses on the land surrounding the home, with the names of those unfortunate girls who lost their lives giving birth. I prayed with a kind of manic fervour that I would not be one of them.

It was the start of 1951, as bleak and as cold a start to any year that I could remember. I had been at the mother and baby home for more than four months before the birth of my child. Every day had been like a fresh punishment in this dour, imposing place. Once a country house, the two-storey building was now home to the county’s ‘shameful’ unmarried mothers – women like me who had been abandoned, left to fend for themselves as their bellies swelled with their disgrace. It was a cold place, with high ceilings and austere furnishings, adorned only with devotional statues and images.

Each morning before dawn we were all awakened by a nun, and together we traipsed into the chapel for Mass, the first prayers of the new day, after which we were led in silence to a meagre breakfast of porridge. The duties of our day were set before us by the nuns in attendance, and mine were usually in the steaming, broiling laundry room. Throughout the late stages of my pregnancy I was expected to haul dirty washing – nuns’ habits, bed sheets and linen – into the great vats of boiling water. Once dredged inside, I would have to stir them round, my face red and my body sweating with the heat and effort involved. Carefully, trying not to

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