Pansy Campbell anticipating another baby girl
Pansy Campbell is happily awaiting the birth of her daughter next Monday but for her, nothing will ever replace her missing ‘Baby Pansy’ who would have been one year old in August.
“On that day mi dress up and bake a yellow icing cake and me and the kids eat it,” said Campbell, who was at the Lionel Town hospital for her regular check up. ‘Mi bawl day and night. Mi think how if him was here him would a eat piece of the cake.”
Campbell’s two-pound premature infant has been missing since last September. The health ministry and officials at the Mandeville Hospital, where the child was being treated for Respiratory Distress Syndrome, believe that the child died on September 1, 2002 and was later transferred to Lyn’s Funeral Home.
However, Campbell and her common-law husband, Roy McLean, have adamantly insisted, all along, that their child is still missing, spurring the RJR Group to pay for the first DNA test in June of this year. After that test came back negative, health officials identified five other babies’ bodies that they thought could possibly be ‘Baby Pansy’. But those tests turned up negative too.
“DNA tests conducted on the bodies of five other babies received at Lyn’s Funeral Home during and after the first week of September 2002 have revealed that none of the babies is that of Pansy Campbell,” the health ministry said.
Since then the couple’s lawyer, Dwight Reece, has been in negotiations with the health ministry regarding a settlement.
“The doctor said that mi still worrying about her (Baby Pansy) and me can’t do that because mi pregnant,” said Campbell, who is insistent that her child is still alive.
She has still not decided on a name for her new baby.
“If dat baby were here now me wouldn’t pregnant now. Mi haffi replace that one because mi love children,” she said.
According to Campbell, she has everything prepared for her new baby although she still has some apprehensions after her last experience.
“Mi worry if dem a go gone wid her again but me say that it is not the same hospital,” said the mother of three.
Her son is 16, and she has two daughters aged 14 and 12.
“My other three children were home delivered but (Baby Pansy) was the first one that I had gone to the hospital with. That was because the midwife that delivered the others died and Roy said to me it better you go to the hospital,” said Campbell, who along with her husband burns coal and sells it to send her children to school.
“From the coal burning we save like $1,500 for them to go to school. Them will pinch that for all two weeks and then when that finish then a so,” she said.
Her bags for the hospital have been packed already, she said. She has already bought stuff for the new baby although she will be using some of the things she had had put down for Baby Pansy.
“Mi would not mind if mi could get back that one to hold him as well as this one so mi would have two of them,” she said.
