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Newborn Flushed Down Toilet by “Accident”

Filed under: Newborns, Pregnancy & birth, In the news

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it has never made atmosphere to me, dividing people into camps of respectable or evil. i’ve always been more comfortable viewing the world in shades of gray. but then something happens.

A British woman, Claire Jones, 32, recently admitted to a court that she accidentally flushed her newborn down the toilet. Apparently, she didn’t realize she was giving birth and thought the pains were diarrhea. “While I was still on the toilet, I flushed it, and I felt something pull,” she told the inquest. “I stood up slightly, and I could see a foot in the bowl of the toilet.”

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It gets worse. Jones, who was pregnant from an affair with a co-worker, did not call for help, though there were people in the house. Instead, she wrapped the lifeless infant, whom she later named Daniel, in a towel and hid him in the trunk of her car. For 10 days. “I should have called for help - know that now but I just panicked…It wasn’t until I was arrested that I remembered I had put him in the boot of the car. I miss my son every day.” I believe her. I mean, I believe she misses her child.

Fourteen years ago this month Susan Smith drowned her two little boys, an 18-month-old and a 3-year-old, in a South Carolina lake, still buckled in their car seats. I remember feeling bewildered, bereft and bothered by her actions. I say bewildered, bereft and bothered because I had given birth to my own son just a few weeks prior. I watched news reports of the boys’ burial (in the same coffin) while breastfeeding my baby. I believe Susan Smith also misses her boys. Every day.

So what was that and what is this and what of the countless other mothers who have seen fit to murder their own children? I am not qualified to say. But it does hammer home one thing I’ve learned these past 14 years. That is, mothers are not angels. Mothers are not magic. They are made of blood, sweat and tears, and are susceptible to all the ills, weaknesses and demons that haunt the whole of us.

“Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face,” wrote George Eliot. Pity Daniel, the newborn, whose life began with Claire Jones.

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