The sad and motivating story of a “mermaid” mother shows us how many barbarities can be avoided, if needy and uninformed families know where to go, if, by chance, life presents them with a child with hydrocephalus
Year 2014. Felícia, as we decided to call her, because she asked for anonymity, is approximately 30 years old and has a happy marriage with her husband and three children. Her life takes a 360 degree turn, giving birth to a fourth child, male, with hydrocephalus and spina bifida. ”It had never happened in my family, nor in the family of my children’s father. I was the first to ‘be born’ a baby like that, ”she said.
Despite the support she received from her parents and sisters, Felícia was discriminated against and mistreated by her husband’s neighbors and family. To protect the baby from all the evil intentions of people close to him and even strangers, she gave up herself and marriage.
”My husband was influenced by his family; he did not have the courage to propose a ritual that the family advised him, which was to abandon the baby in the woods. But she started to harass him. I would leave it with him and find the baby elsewhere, far from the father. He couldn’t stand even the child’s crying. He was unable to place his son on his lap. He pretended that he didn’t hear him cry ”, she lamented.
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