Incident every working mother should read !!

By the end of this post, you would agree that the post justifies the title I have given. I got to know about this shocking incident a few days back from a friend and I have been telling this incident to a lot of people and have wanted to write about this since long.

This is a true incident. Both husband and wife were working and had a two year old baby. Husband’s and wife’s family stayed in some other state. Since none of the families could come and take care of the baby, they appointed a caretaker woman which is a pretty normal practice in a lot of households where no family members are available to look after the children of working parents. The woman came everyday in morning before the parents left and stayed with the baby till they returned. This continued for a few months. The baby seemed to have adjusted with the caretaker and things were running absolutely smooth.

One day, the mother came back from office unannounced by lunch time. She saw that her baby was fast asleep and asked the caretaker when had she slept to which she replied that the baby had gone to sleep after her breakfast. The mother asked the caretaker to take a leave since she was now available at home.

When the baby did not wake up even after five-six hours, she panicked and called her husband. They took the baby to the hospital where his blood samples were taken. And when the reports arrived, its revelations shocked everybody. The doctor told them that the baby’s blood had traces of sedatives/ sleeping pills.

The caretaker mixed sedatives in baby’s food so that the baby would fall asleep all during her stay not causing her any trouble and she could while away her time without any efforts to actually look after the baby.

I am not much aware if the parents registered a police complaint and whether the caretaker woman was caught or not. But I just hope they did and the woman was caught.

I am not a mother, but just listening about a child being drugged to sleep sent chills down my spine. I can just imagine how the mother would have coped with this. Had it not been for the coincidence of her returning early, she would have never known about this cruel act and it would have continued damaging the child’s body to God knows what extent. I am not sure about the medical effects the sleeping pills could have on a child, but the very fact that they were being used on a child was a shocker to me.  

Just thought of sharing this incident. It might just help someone.

This post is written as a part of April A to Z Challenge 2014 under Non-Themed category. I am doing two posts for this Challenge and Themed posts can be found here.