Gillian Relf, a 69-year-old mother from Kent, England, told Daily Mail that after dedicating more than forty years of her life to looking after her son, who needs constant care and attention, she thinks it would’ve been better had he never been born.
Gillian, who married her childhood sweetheart Roy when she was just nineteen years old, became a first-time mother at the age of twenty when her son Andrew was born.
Gillian and Relf were living their dream life with their son Andrew when they decided to welcome another child and complete their family. So, she conceived for the second time.
However, a few months later, she felt something was wrong with the baby and the pregnancy. But the doctors and midwives assured her that everything was fine and she was being paranoid.
“There were no antenatal scans or blood tests to detect abnormalities in those days, and although I had a sixth sense, call it mother’s intuition, that there was something wrong with my baby, the doctors and midwives insisted I was being hysterical and refused to perform an amniocentesis.” She wrote.
And finally, her second baby Stephen was born in January 1967.
“The following Wednesday, I looked at him in his cot: his small, almond-shaped eyes, broad, flat nose, and the one crease on the palms of his hands.”
“He’s a Mongol, isn’t he? I gasped to my mother. It sounds shocking now, but that was how we described people with Down’s Syndrome in those days.”
