Just Mary Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a classic case. He gave me medication, which I took and I met him two further times, after which he told me that I had fully recovered. In all, it must have lasted for about four months
and thankfully, I have never had any episodes of depression since.
    I thought that once you had one child, they would just keep coming: that it was a matter of having babies to order. Particularly since my two brothers and my sister continued to have more
children: they were all very fertile. But it didn’t happen with me, and about two years after Feargal was born, I said to Enda, ‘Isn’t it funny there’s no sign of another
baby?’
    When Feargal was three, we arranged for me to go back to Dr de Valera. I was still a young woman — I was only 30, for God’s sake. The doctor did more examinations and then said that
it could be that I might not have any more babies. I think he was a wily old fox and that, from the internal examinations and other tests, he knew more than he was letting on to me. He told me I
might not be a very fertile woman and he asked me if we had thought of adoption. Afterwards I went back home to Enda and told him all this, saying that I would like us to adopt. Enda felt the same,
so I went back to Dr de Valera and he began to set things in motion for us. It was all to be arranged through the St Patrick’s Adoption Society in Dublin. We told our respective parents and
families and were happy to go along with all the initial formalities. My brother Brian’s wife, Ann Lenihan, was particularly supportive during this whole process and came along with me on
many of the exploratory visits. She was and has remained a true woman friend to me.
    Not very long afterwards — or so it seemed anyway — Dr de Valera contacted me to say that he had a client who was single and pregnant and that the background would suit us well. And
then, on 4 September 1968, he rang me and told me that we had a baby son. I was delighted, because I had already been rearing a son and reckoned I would know what to expect. We went to Dr de
Valera’s clinic on the appointed day to collect our new son. Feargal, who was four at the time, came with us. There was a nurse there also, as Aengus was just five days old. I think it was
because he was so tiny — almost newborn — that I thought of him as my son from the very beginning. He was a beautiful baby — he has remained a very good-looking man — with a
head of dark hair and gorgeous, swarthy skin. I just loved him from the minute I held him; so did Enda. As far as Feargal was concerned, we did all the right things without realising we were doing
the right things, because he held the new baby as well the first time he met him.
    The three of us took Aengus home and Enda’s sister came over and there was lots of fussing over him. That evening we put the cot up in the corner and put Aengus in the cot. He was such a
good child. Aengus didn’t cry much as a baby (although he became more spirited as time went by!): it was almost as though he was just happy he had found his mother.
    Adopting Aengus was a momentous thing to do. It was unusual enough to adopt in those days when you already had a child: most people who adopted didn’t have children. I realise that I may
have made the process sound less complicated here than it was at the time — there were undoubtedly procedures and bureaucracy to be negotiated — but it was nonetheless far simpler then
than it is today. Of course Aengus knows all about it: we told him in stages as he was growing up. When he was a young child, I got a book from Barnados,
How to Talk about Adoption to your
Child
. I told Aengus that I had been sick and not able to have another baby in my tummy, but that another mammy who was not sick had the baby for me. They say you should start to introduce a
child to the idea early and explain more when they start to ask more questions.
    As time went by, however, we never emphasised the issue and it never