Baby Sarah’s death gave Jacinta new role in life

City Lives – Denise McNamara meets Jacinta Murphy of the support group Féileacáin

When Jacinta Murphy was pregnant with her second child, she knew immediately there was something wrong.

The native of Mervue who was an ornamental plasterer with Irish Cornice in Carnmore could not put her finger on why this pregnancy was different.

“A mother knows. That’s why professionals have to start listening to mothers. They think it’s over-anxious mothers. Nobody would listen to me.”

When the baby was delivered by caesarian section at 38 weeks there was a deafening silence in the delivery room.

The baby was whisked away and she could tell by the expressions on the nurses’ faces that something terrible was afoot.

Sarah was born with a chromosomal abnormality called Patau Syndrome and she passed away the following morning.

“A part of me died that day,” remarks Jacinta, the pain still raw even after the passage of 14 years.

She recalls that the staff at University Hospital Galway were fantastic. She thought the nurse was “bananas” urging her to take a photo of Sarah.

“I have only two Polaroids and if the house went on fire they’d be the only two things I’d save.”

Jacinta had only just moved to Craughwell when baby Sarah died and she remembers with fondness how her new community embraced their tragedy, laying the grave with straw to resemble a little nest.

After her six-year-old daughter Katie returned to school and husband Noel went back to work as a bus driver, she remembers sitting at the kitchen table distraught.

“I was wrapped in a blanket of grief and loneliness,” Jacinta says.

“I thought I was going crazy. I had nobody to bounce off. I remember I was on the roundabout in Oranmore and couldn’t figure out which exit to get off even though I’d been on it hundreds of times.

“You can’t concentrate. Your self-worth and confidence is gone. You start to doubt yourself. I became overprotective of Katie and thought I was going to lose her too.”

No support group existed and there was no specific counselling around stillbirths and neonatal deaths.

Jacinta decided to seek out therapy, which marked the beginning of a long journey and a complete change in career.

While she loved her job, she felt she had found her true calling and decided to retrain as counsellor and psychotherapist, specialising in this type of tragedy.

In 2008 several parents attending workshops decided to set up a support group for those who had experienced a similar loss. Féileacáin was launched in Cork in 2010 and in Galway the following year. The name means butterfly in Irish and the logo was designed to resemble two parents cocooning a baby.

The first project the volunteer group got their teeth stuck into was creating memory boxes, following in the footsteps of a similar UK organisation.

They launched the cocoon project, calling on people to knit tiny blankets that would be the cornerstone of the boxes and were later often used to wrap the baby in their final resting place.

Knitting groups were set up across the country and these became a place where women who had lost babies years ago began to open up. The prevailing attitude up until very recently was to close a door on the grief and get on with life.

For  more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.