Mother ‘hid pregnancy from partner and children’
A 42-year-old woman died yesterday in Portimão after giving birth in her own home to a baby, who also died.
The tragic story is only being unravelled now by investigators. It appears the woman hid this pregnancy from her current partner and children. The baby “was the fruit of an extramarital relationship”, suggests Jornal de Notícias – and this explains why the mother tried to keep the situation secret.
What happened yesterday is that she gave birth ‘at home’ (there are no explanations of where her current partner and children may have been).
“After realising that she was losing too much blood, she called an ambulance and was taken to hospital in a serious condition”, says JN.
“On arrival, the rescue team realised that she didn’t have the baby with her and alerted the PSP police”, says the paper.
Agents then went to the home address, where they found the baby dead in the bedroom. It appears to have shown signs of having been asphyxiated, but this can only be confirmed following the results of an autopsy.
The mother meantime also died.
There are clearly many loose ends to this account: was the woman alone in her home when she called the ambulance? Did the ambulance team that collected her go into the bedroom to do so? If so, how is it that they missed the baby? If there were other people in the property at the time, what were their roles in this awful story?
For now, the only certainty is that PJ judicial police are ‘investigating’.
