He was 45 years old. This embarrassing scene happened two years ago and the episode is just one of the many challenges we have faced since Stephen, our second child, was born with Down's Syndrome. Scroll down for video. Worried about the future: Gillian, 69, with her son, Stephen, who has Down's Syndrome. So difficult has it been that I can honestly say I wish he hadn't been born.
I know this will shock many: this is my son, whom I've loved, nurtured and defended for nearly half a century, but if I could go back in time, I would abort him in an instant. I'm now 69 and Roy is 70, and we'll celebrate our golden wedding anniversary next month. We were childhood sweethearts and married when I was just 19 and he was I sailed through my first pregnancy with Andrew a year later, and both of us were really looking forward to a second baby to complete our family.
There were no antenatal scans or blood test to detect abnormalities in those days and although I had a sixth sense, call it mother's intuition, that there was something wrong with my baby, the doctors and midwives insisted I was being hysterical and refused to perform an amniocentesis where cells are taken from the amniotic fluid and tested. A healthy year-old, with a thriving baby, I was considered very low risk to have a Down's baby. The following Wednesday, I looked at him in his cot: his small, almond-shaped eyes, broad, flat nose and the one crease on the palms of his hands.
Not what she planned: Gillian sailed through her first pregnancy with Andrew, left, and was looking forward to a second baby completing their family. She didn't know Stephen had Down's when she was pregnant. It sounds shocking now but that was how we used to describe people with Down's Syndrome in those days. She told me she was sure he wasn't, and it seemed everyone else was blind to what I saw so clearly.
Gay dating for serious relationships between men, homosexual marriage
None of the doctors and health visitors even mentioned it, so for seven months I blundered on, trying to convince myself that my baby was 'normal'. However, when Stephen became ill that summer and I took him to hospital, I overheard a paediatrician refer to him as a 'mongol baby'. I had been right all along. In that instant, my world came crashing down around me. Questions I couldn't answer raced through my mind: Had I caused his disability?
How terrible would his life be? What impact would it have on his brother Andrew, then only two? How on earth would Roy and I cope?
That was the day normal life ended for Roy, Andrew and me. Perhaps you'd expect me to say that, over time, I grew to accept my son's disability. That now, looking back on that day 47 years later, none of us could imagine life without him, and that I'm grateful I was never given the option to abort.
However, you'd be wrong.
Cycling the Kent coast - Telegraph
Because, while I do love my son, and am fiercely protective of him, I know our lives would have been happier and far less complicated if he had never been born. I do wish I'd had an abortion. I wish it every day. If he had not been born, I'd have probably gone on to have another baby, we would have had a normal family life and Andrew would have the comfort, rather than the responsibility, of a sibling, after we're gone. Stressed: Gillian believes the family would have been happier if she had aborted Stephen and gone on to have another baby.
Gillian and Roy's marriage has lasted: But they've had a difficult time raising a mentally disabled child. Instead, Stephen - who struggles to speak and function in the modern world - has brought a great deal of stress and heartache into our lives. That is why I want to speak in support of the 92 per cent of women who choose to abort their babies after discovering they have Down's Syndrome. Mothers like Suzanne Treussard who bravely told her story in the Daily Mail two weeks ago. Suzanne, who was offered a termination at 15 weeks, braved a backlash of criticism and vitriol from some readers.
But I'd challenge any one of them to walk a mile in the shoes of mothers like me, saddled for life as I am, with a needy, difficult, exasperating child who will never grow up, before they judge us. They should experience how it feels to parent a grown man, who is no more able to care for himself than a toddler - and at a time of life when your children should, all things being equal, be taking care of you. They should know how it feels to live every single day under a crushing weight of guilt. They should know how it feels to watch Stephen's constant suffering and witness the almost daily destruction wreaked on all our lives.
Roy, like a lot of men of his generation, is not terribly good at showing his emotions, and never says much about Stephen's condition. He loves his son, but knows he cannot be 'fixed', so chooses not to waste time contemplating the 'what-ifs'. For my own part, however, I don't think I will ever come to terms with Stephen's disability.
In his early years, it caused me physical pain seeing friends' toddlers reaching milestones when my son was still so baby-like. Stephen didn't walk until he was five and couldn't speak - even now he has only a few words and communicates using Makaton, a form of sign language.
This made working out his needs a constant struggle. His incontinence meant that washing his clothes and bedding became my full-time job. Needed support: As a child, Stephen stayed at a specialist hospital in Ramsgate, Kent, when his mother couldn't cope.
I'd been a radar operator and intelligence clerk in the RAF before I was married. But now my life was taken up by trying to meet Stephen's needs - let alone those of Andrew and Roy. So, exhausted and racked with guilt, I was close to the end of my tether when, shortly after Stephen's third birthday, he became unwell and cried incessantly for three days and nights.
Worse still, he could give me no indication of what was wrong with him.
Brenda Blethyn
My husband was working late shifts as a driver at the time, and by the third night I couldn't stand the noise any longer. In a rage, I picked Stephen up with every intention of throwing him down our flight of stairs.
Thankfully, by the time I reached the top step, I thought, 'What on earth am I doing? A couple of days later I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital suffering a nervous breakdown. I was prescribed tranquillisers and then treated as a day patient for several months afterwards. I'd never had psychological problems before, but I believe that parenting a mentally disabled child could push anyone to the edge.
Recognising that I could no longer cope, our GP arranged a respite place for Stephen at a specialist hospital in Ramsgate, Kent. I was consumed with guilt - I'm his mother and the nurses told me he cried a lot in the beginning, presumably because he missed me - but I knew I wasn't strong enough, physically or mentally, to care for him every day. When a permanent residential place for Stephen was offered at a nearby hospital, Roy, our GP and I decided this was for the best.
Dating Kent Singles
I honestly felt nothing but relief that the problem had been resolved. Years later, I was told by a professor studying the parents of children with disabilities that it is very rare for marriages to survive.
Although Roy and I have always had a solid marriage, we were both deeply unhappy. Our unhappiness followed us everywhere, like an unspoken frosty presence in the room. Once Stephen moved to the hospital I saw him as often as I could, while still meeting the needs of the rest of my family. It turned out the reason Stephen had cried so much over those three days was that he had a hereditary condition, unconnected to Down's, called haemolytic anaemia, which meant his red blood cells were being killed off quicker than his bone marrow could produce them, leaving him drained and exhausted.
One day, Stephen's doctor sat us down and told us that Stephen needed an operation to remove his spleen. Without it, he said, he would 'go to sleep and never wake up'. Those were his exact words. Looking back, I believe the doctor was guiding us towards allowing our son to pass away naturally, but we were not much more than children ourselves, in our mids, and didn't understand then what he was trying to do for us.
I wish we had - it would have spared us all a great deal of pain. Instead he had the operation and spent five weeks at Great Ormond Street Hospital recovering, with me at his bedside as often as possible. A year-old mother has a one-in-1, chance of giving birth to a baby with Down's Syndrome, rising to one in at the age of His weekend visits home became harder to bear as he grew older.