All of Me

by Kim Noble

  Was she in one of those?

  She ran round and stood in the doorway.

  Is she one of them?

  Is one of those babies my Skye?

  Discovering the truth about DID and what my mind had been protecting me from all these years was hard to process. I’m sure it was the hardest part of Dr Laine’s job, informing me how my body – our body – had been subjected to the worst kind of abuse at such a tender age. From therapy sessions with Hayley and Bonny, Dr Laine had assembled the bones of our background. Then she had encouraged the dominant personality at the time to step aside and let other alters emerge during those sessions. Dr Laine and Aimee both seem to have the power to summon other personalities – although only if those personalities are willing to appear, and if the dominant alter doesn’t ‘block’ or fight it. One by one she met the poor victims and learnt their stories.

  Not all of the victims were coherent – some were too young, frozen in time as toddlers, small children or even babies, doomed to remain at an age where the pain was still as raw as the day it had happened. We all seem to have stopped ageing at a certain point. For me it was twenty-one, I don’t know why. For two-, three- and four-year-olds I think it’s obvious. That’s when their childhoods were taken away. Some of them are still too paralysed to speak. Most of them haven’t even revealed their names. They’re all scared, all scarred, all ashamed – and I just want to hug them and say, ‘It’s not your fault!’

  The luckier ones had had the chance to age and try to put some distance between them and events. Other older personalities denied the abuse although their own lifestyles indicated their suffering. Eating disorders, along with other symptoms, is a tell-tale sign. Self-loathing, especially the wish to die, was another. Judy, Sonia, Julie and Rebecca are all likely victims.

  Part of me didn’t want to know the details for fear I would never recover. But another part was desperate for any information. It may not have happened to me, but this was my body. If I couldn’t share their pain, I felt an obligation to my fellow alters to know as much about it as possible.

  Dr Laine never discovered all the details but she learnt enough. As my parents both worked, they had entrusted Baby Kim to various local babysitters on those occasions when Nan couldn’t look after her. Sometimes the sitters took Kim into their own houses. On other occasions they would look after her at ours. This wasn’t as cavalier as it might sound today. You have to remember this was the early 1960s. Communities were tighter. Children would regularly be passed around a network of babysitters who, today, probably wouldn’t even be asked. As far as Dr Laine was concerned, my parents had acted as anyone else in their position would have.

  What they didn’t – what they couldn’t – know was that one or more of these sitters took advantage of his or her position. I don’t know who the guilty party was and I don’t want to because it would disturb me more if I remembered being alone with them – especially if they were abusing Kim when they were at our house. But it’s enough to know that it happened, again and again and again.

  Unable to cope with the physical and mental pain, Kim Noble’s mind had fractured. In her place had appeared hundreds of others, all as innocent as Kim. Some suffered as she had suffered and some, like me, Hayley and Bonny, had been lucky.

  Learning the truth made me somehow feel I was dishonouring Kim. After all, she would have done anything to forget what had happened to her and here I was wilfully drawing those memories out from the others who suffered like her.

  Without the help of Dr Laine I probably couldn’t have coped. With every new revelation, I questioned whether I had to go on, whether I needed to know everything. But for me to fully accept DID, to fully take on the responsibilities of becoming the dominant personality, it was essential. Yes, it was the worst feeling of my life – but knowing everything about our body’s past was a very small price to pay to keep our daughter.

  Other personalities weren’t as lucky. One in particular was stuck in time for another reason altogether.

  Through Dr Laine I learnt that a personality called Dawn had given birth to Aimee six years ago. She was the one who’d endured the caesarean section, although I share the scar. She was the one who had just cuddled her little baby Skye when the officials from social services had come in to remove her. I can’t imagine what that must have felt like. If I had to make a choice between suffering what my body suffered as a child and losing my daughter, I would take physical suffering every time. There can be no greater loss for a woman.

  The more of the story I learnt, the worse the ordeal sounded – not just for Dawn but Hayley and Bonny too. And of course for Aimee.

  It had begun during a routine visit to Dr McGilchrist at Mayday, when he told Hayley he had to inform social services of any women with mental health problem who were pregnant. Fine, Hayley thought, and understood why. A social worker, called Christine Impy, came to the house to do an assessment which, again, Hayley completely endorsed. Hayley couldn’t have been more co-operative. As she told Christine, ‘If there is any danger to this baby from the inside or outside, then she has to be taken away and protected.’ Further assessment appointments were booked to take place at the social services offices and Hayley didn’t miss one. Christine couldn’t have been more impressed; not only was Hayley attending all her antenatal appointments but everything at home looked exemplary: there was a stroller (bought by our dad) and a crib, clothes, a high chair, car seat, bassinet, bottles, bath, diapers and toys – you name it, Hayley’s baby, as far as Christine was concerned, was going to have it. Even the nursery was all beautifully decorated well in advance. Nothing was being left to chance.

  Christine was equally as thorough. A pre-birth appointment was arranged which Hayley, a lawyer, a policeman and thirteen other interested parties attended. It was agreed by all that Hayley and her baby should be transferred to a mother-and-baby unit after the birth for monitoring. There Hayley would have support and Christine and co. would have final confirmation that she was more than capable of being a ‘normal’ mother.

  If only they’d stopped there, a lot of heartache could have been avoided. Two personalities’ lives might not have been scarred forever.

  Social services decided, as a final safeguard, to get an independent DID specialist to assess Hayley. Two weeks before Aimee was born Hayley attended a meeting with Dr Elizabeth Hall at 9 a.m. on a hot August day. By the time it finished at five, Hayley was exhausted. But, she reasoned, the more time she spent with Dr Hall, the easier it would be for her to see that Hayley was going to be a fine mother. Certainly it should be clear that her baby would be in no danger.

  After the meeting was when things began to go wrong. After months of attention, suddenly it was hard to get information out of social services. Pre-arranged appointments with Hayley were cancelled and when she phoned to find out which mother-and-baby unit she would be going to they said it had yet to be decided.

  But my baby’s due any moment …

  Days went by. Finally, three days before the scheduled caesarean operation, Hayley was informed a social worker would meet her at the hospital. Little did she know that the social worker had instructions to remove Aimee the moment she was born.

  Nobody told Dawn anything. Even when Aimee was taken away minutes after birth, Dawn was still kept in the dark.

  ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘She’s been taken to intensive care for tests.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  Dawn wasn’t the only one denied access. The visiting room was packed with friends and family bearing balloons and flowers. My Dad had been there for ages and now Lorraine and her sons, Ivy, and our neighbours had all arrived as well. They were all told the same thing: you can’t see the baby and you can’t see Kim. As one, they all had the same fear: is there something wrong with the baby?

  For Dawn, separated not only from her child but also her well-wishers, the not-knowing must have felt even worse. If her baby was
having tests, it stood to reason doctors thought she must be ill. What was wrong with her? What wasn’t she being told?

  The answer, it turned out, was the truth.

  Dawn’s baby was not having tests at all. Social services were trying to get an order allowing them to remove the baby. They assumed it would be a matter of minutes before it came through. In the end, the order wasn’t granted until five o’clock – a full day during which child and family were separated.

  When a doctor suddenly appeared with her daughter, Dawn could have been forgiven for thinking everything was going to be okay. Feverishly she grabbed her little girl and hugged her for dear life. She barely looked up when her visitors were allowed in for the first time. She certainly didn’t notice the social worker appearing at her side – but she would never forget the next few moments for as long as she lived. As Dawn screamed, the baby was removed once again from her mother. Her life with foster parents would begin the following day.

  I can’t imagine how traumatic that must have been for Dawn. Like me, she hadn’t been party to the prenatal assessments. She didn’t have a clue why social workers were involved or why any of this was happening. She just knew it was wrong and it was unnatural. Even her body was telling her that. As she lay there sobbing through the night, Dawn felt the milk forming in her breasts – milk meant for Skye, milk that she would never be able to have.

  Dawn has had to live with the memories of the actual removal but it was Hayley, appearing soon afterwards, who had to face the trauma when she discovered what had gone on.

  ‘Ask Dr Hall,’ she begged a social worker. ‘She’ll tell you I’m fit enough to look after my baby. Check her report!’

  ‘That’s why your baby was taken,’ the social worker replied. ‘Dr Hall made it clear you would not be able to cope.’

  Hayley was shocked. She thought the pre-birth meeting had gone well. She didn’t know what Dr Hall had said but hadn’t thought there was any problem. Although Christine had always been efficient and kind, Hayley felt betrayed by the system that had allowed this to happen. She accepted that having commissioned a report from an expert, social services were duty-bound to follow the recommendations.

  I’ve since seen the report. It makes me sick reading it years later. How must Hayley have felt when she saw Dr Hall’s instructions to social services which effectively said: ‘Remove baby at birth – arrange adoption, mother will never cope, so do not let any bonding take place.’ It sounds like some evil punishment, but there was more, the worst bit of all: Dr Hall had thought that if I had any contact with the baby, I might hurt her.

  Hurt the baby? Hurt our baby?

  How could they believe that? After everything Hayley had been through, her track record of risking her own life to protect anonymous children, she honestly felt she’d been stabbed in the back.

  No wonder she faded away soon after.

  It wasn’t just Hayley who had cause to feel upset by the report. Dr Laine had conducted her own risk assessment of each of the alters and their separate attitudes to the forthcoming baby. She had been very moved by Hayley’s transparency, especially when admitting she would be the first to ask for the baby to be taken away in the event of any risk. Professionally Dr Laine felt accused of being so biased towards her patient she would not see the danger to the unborn baby. She thought her own ethics regarding child abuse were being called into question. Dr Laine was quite certain that the alters she had met would all love and care for Aimee although extra help would be needed over some trigger areas.

  Hayley, unlike Dawn, knew that Skye was healthy and alive. Tragically for her, it wasn’t enough to keep her from taking a step back. Gradually as the legal fight to win our daughter back commenced, Hayley gave way more and more to the personality called Bonny.

  Suddenly she was the dominant alter. She was the one in charge of finding our daughter.

  Bonny’s first step was to demand to see our file at the social services’ offices. What better way to bring her up to speed? To say they were less than helpful is an understatement. However, by trying to hinder Bonny’s progress they actually played straight into her hands. The standard procedure in this instance would have been for a social worker or other employee to have accompanied Bonny into the office while she perused the files. There was bound to be some harrowing reading matter in there. Policy was to protect the readers. But someone had left Bonny alone. That was a mistake. Not only did she not get upset – she stuffed page after page of notes into her bag and read everything marked ‘private’. Everything about baby Skye was in there – foster parents, their address, how much they were being paid, plus social workers’ logs and reports. There would be no shortage of information when we reached court.

  It’s such a harrowing story, yet to a large extent I may as well have been reading it in a newspaper. I didn’t feel that loss felt by Dawn and Hayley at all. I didn’t meet our baby until she was four months old. By then she was called Aimee. That had been Lorraine’s choice after a solicitor had advised Bonny that if she was serious about pursuing legal action to have her daughter returned, then ‘Skye’ might seem a little too hippyish. Bonny’s attitude was ‘I’ll change whatever you like to get my daughter back’, so she agreed. I don’t know how it came about, but Bonny had actually chosen the name ‘Ben’ for Lorraine’s son and so she thought it would be a nice gesture to return the honour to our sister. So that’s where Aimee came from. Bonny chose the middle name, Melissa.

  I don’t know if Lorraine was aware of the irony or if Bonny had worked it out. Thirty-seven years earlier we had been named ‘Kim’ by a nurse. I had always sworn I would never let that choice be taken away from me. And here we were, decades later, and our daughter had gone through exactly the same thing. Was it fate? Damn bad luck? Had we wished it on her somehow? I still have no idea.

  Actually, it gets even more complicated than that. Before we got her back, Aimee’s foster parents went against all procedure and renamed her Daisy – and even gave her their own surname! That’s the name that appears on the front of her red medical book.

  So before the age of one Aimee had already been given three different names. And I thought I was the only one with identity problems!

  The foster parents should have done lots of things differently. Dawn, Hayley and later Bonny were told that we could expect regular updates and photos of our daughter. That never happened.

  Luckily, we had our own source.

  Lorraine was allowed to have contact with Aimee in a social services office and brought home photographs for Bonny. At least someone was on her side.

  The first time any of us set eyes on her again was nearly four months later after Bonny had started legal proceedings to get Aimee back. Aimee was brought into an NSPCC contact centre where they were set up to observe children with adults. There was a TV camera in every corner, two-way mirrors and hidden microphones, everything the scrutinising psychiatrists needed to make a judgement. I don’t know how anyone was meant to act naturally in that environment but Bonny was allowed to go in. We have an amazing photograph of Aimee looking up at Bonny and you could see that she knew who it was. Aimee was laughing and the pride in Bonny’s face is unreal. (I wish it had been me!) This meeting became a weekly ritual until finally the court inspector was content that there was a bond and that we were not a threat. Only then were we allowed to go into a mother-and-baby unit where we could be monitored with our baby over a six-month period. If we looked like we could cope, then the courts would consider letting us be reunited.

  It was such a lot of pressure. In a way I’m glad it fell on Bonny’s shoulders and not mine. She’d campaigned in court long and hard with support from Lorraine, our councillor friend Anna, and Dad. Some of our neighbours were amazing as well, Jean and her now late husband Stan welcomed us round there to talk or just sit, and Dad’s sister Ivy was always there for us as well. I never appreciated why, of course, so from my point of view it was just nice to see them all. But they were a great help to Bon
ny.

  The case went from magistrate’s court to county court and all the way up to the high court where the judge was appalled that it had reached that far without being sorted out sooner. It had been a gruelling four months but finally Bonny was getting to live with Aimee – even if it was under twenty-four-hour supervision.

  All the while the court case was going on, we were having no treatment from Dr Laine. Not officially, anyway. Our lawyer had pulled out for a good reason – a conflict of interests. On the one hand we had been asking him to highlight our disability to qualify for free therapy from Dr Laine. Then Aimee had come along and we had to focus on the positive to convince a court that we were of sound enough mind to look after her like any normal person.

  Obviously there was a conflict and only ever going to be one winner. But even after we had to drop our therapy, Dr Laine still kept in contact by phone, encouraging and doing as much as she could.

  By the time I learnt the facts of this horrendous story, some months after finally accepting the DID, Hayley had already been superseded by Bonny as the main player in our day-to-day lives. Bonny, in turn, had become the true mother to our daughter, Aimee. Looking back, it feels criminal that I didn’t accept our diagnosis earlier. If I had, I wouldn’t have missed out on so many important years with Aimee. At that age every day is special and unique. You never, ever get them back.

  It was at the mother-and-baby unit – basically a large house like an Arbours centre – that I first met Aimee. I realise now I’d been virtually mothballed for months. The last time I’d looked it had been August – and now we were in December. In hindsight, the other personalities had had more important claims on the body’s time – and obviously it had shielded me from a lot of the harrowing details. But here I was, at the end of 1997, in a room with a little girl. There was no preparation, no run-throughs with Dr Laine. One minute I was enjoying a glass of wine in the summer, then it was winter and I was with a little girl people claimed was my daughter.