Butterbox Babies

Butterbox Babies by Cahill, Bette. mass_market edition. ISBN: 9780770425173.

Stories about the Ideal Maternity Home in East Chester, Nova Scotia have been the subject of public trials and private whisperings for half a century. Now, after three years of research and scores of interviews from coast to coast, author Bette Cahill reveals the truth about the Home, its owners, the babies who were born there, and those who died there. It is a truth that will horrify and enrage, for in these pages Cahill charges that the children of unwed mothers born in the Ideal Maternity Home were offered for adoption in a manner that amounted to little more than baby farming for profit. We also learn that most of the natural parents had no knowledge of these practices. The babies placed in new homes were the lucky ones. Was the high infant mortality rate at the Home coincidence, neglect, accident, or economics? Butterbox Babies is a story of greed, hypocrisy, and justice. It is also the moving story of children who survived the Ideal Maternity Home and their search for a past. Bette Cahill traces their lives today as their search leads them from disappointment to rejection and in some cases the joy of reunion with the parents they never knew.