'You became so frightened eventually you toed the line'

It took 31 years before the Sacred Heart nuns admitted to Mary that her baby boy had died of septicaemia, writes Claire O’Sullivan

Mary*, a 17-year-old from Tipperary, knew her newborn wasn’t well. From a big family herself, she understood babies.

“I kept trying to tell the nuns that my baby was ill but they wouldn’t listen. I knew there was something wrong as he wouldn’t feed and he had always fed. Eventually they lost patience with me and stuffed the bottle down his throat, down the throat of a clearly ill baby boy. He was so beautiful, my blonde haired blue-eyed baby boy but they wouldn’t call in a doctor,” the now elderly woman whimpers.