THE BODY of a newborn baby was found in a black plastic bag in the hot press of a house near Westport, Co Mayo, earlier this year within hours of a woman being admitted to a local hospital haemorrhaging, a coroner’s court heard yesterday.
Staff in the emergency department of Mayo General Hospital at first thought Mary Duffy (42) from Bunrower, Ayle, Westport, had suffered a miscarriage but when an ultrasound was performed they discovered a large retained afterbirth.
It then emerged the mother of five, who had given birth to a full-term baby boy at home a short time earlier, had concealed her pregnancy from her partner of 15 years, John Flynn, and their extended family, as well as from her GP.
In a statement to the inquest into the death of her infant son at Castlebar courthouse a visibly distressed Ms Duffy, a former dental nurse, said she gave birth to her fifth child in December 2008 and got depressed afterwards and was prescribed antidepressants for a short time.
The following September she realised she was pregnant again. “It was the last thing I wanted . . . all the time I was planning on having a termination as I knew I couldn’t cope with another child. I did not show the pregnancy as I could still wear my normal jeans. I got longer tops,” she said.
“In October/November John started badgering me about if I was pregnant. I told him I wasn’t because he would make me keep it and I did not want it,” she added.
In November they got a pregnancy test kit.
“I went into the bathroom and faked the test by using toilet water,” she said. She did the same the following month and her partner then made an appointment for her to see the GP.
“I went into the surgery on my own and faked a pregnancy test on Dr Keane. I felt Dr Keane would tell John if I was pregnant,” she said. The doctor did not do a physical examination on her that day.
Her parents were both in hospital in London before and she saw this as an opportunity to have a termination “but it did not work out and I did not get going. John offered to drive over after Christmas but due to the weather we could not go”.
She and Mr Flynn, a construction worker, had been having a normal Sunday at home on January 17th, 2010.
Ms Duffy cooked pizza for the children and cut up an apple and strawberries for them and lay down with her youngest child until he fell asleep. But she was not feeling well and was in and out of the bathroom with diarrhoea.
She telephoned Westdoc and was told to drink plenty of water but later remembered lunging on to the ground in the bathroom and Mr Flynn calling an ambulance.
In evidence, he said he noticed his partner had put on weight and asked her a few times if she was pregnant and she said no. He said his wife was in the bathroom for a good while on the evening of January 17th .
“I heard the shower going for a long time. I took no notice until the kids wanted to go to the bathroom . . . Mary came out of the bathroom after about two hours . . . Mary was very pale and white,” he said.
Later he saw her lying on the bathroom floor with some fresh blood beside her. He phoned an ambulance.
“The ambulance personnel asked Mary was she pregnant or had she a miscarriage and she said no,” he recalled. He telephoned his mother and she went with him to the hospital while his sister minded their children. In the hospital a nurse told them his wife had gone to theatre and was lucky to be alive.
“The nurse then told us that it appeared that Mary was after giving birth and that we should go home and search the house for a child in case the other kids would discover it. At about 3am my mother and I came home to the house and started to search . . . my mother was searching the hot press and on the bottom shelf of the hot press under some towels she found a black bin liner. She took it out and discovered a baby’s body wrapped in some towels in the bag. It was a full-grown baby boy. My mother blessed herself and was very shocked,” he said.
“I touched the baby’s forehead with my two fingers and felt he was cold and I gave him a kiss on the forehead. I knew the child was dead,” he added. They took the baby back to the hospital. He was christened Edward by the hospital chaplain in the presence of staff and gardaí, who had been called. His mother Nonie Flynn told the coroner for south Mayo John O’Dwyer she too thought Ms Duffy looked like she was expecting a baby but she said she wasn’t.
On the way to the hospital she suggested that “maybe Mary had some kind of a tumour or a growth and that was why she looked like she was putting on weight and maybe if the growth or tumour burst this could explain the blood in the bathroom”.
Dr Ruairí Waters, a senior house officer at Mayo General, said Ms Duffy’s blood pressure was unrecordable when she arrived at the emergency department shortly after 1.30am on January 18th.
“In an attempt to establish a potential source of the vaginal bleeding I asked Ms Duffy if she was pregnant. Ms Duffy replied that she was approximately 11 weeks pregnant,” he said.
He said she was in a critical condition and he immediately began resuscitation measures. She was then taken to theatre to stop the bleeding.
State Pathologist Prof Marie Cassidy, who carried out a postmortem on the baby, said it was a full-term infant or at least in the final month of gestation. The cord was still attached and she found no evidence of any marks or injuries on the child.
“Although there was evidence that the child may have taken a breath after the head was delivered it cannot be said for certain that the child would have lived,” she said.
She found the baby had inhaled large volumes of amniotic fluid either before or during birth. She concluded death was “due to a general lack of care and attention prior to, at the time of and after birth, complicated by aspiration of amniotic fluid and meconium”.
The coroner said Ms Duffy had concealed the pregnancy “for reasons best known to her” and it was clear she was very lucky to survive.
What happened, he said, was an awful tragedy for her and Mr Flynn. It was clear to him they were a caring couple and caring parents and he hoped the love and support they needed was available to them. He recorded a narrative verdict in accordance with Prof Cassidy’s findings.