Mom wants back baby she threw in bushes - Court gives grandma full custody, mother gets access

Subrina Markland, the Kingston woman who threw her two-day-old baby into bushes on her way from the Victoria Jubilee Hospital in March, has been

granted access to the child by the Family Court.

Markland told THE STAR that she beamed with joy when the judge made the ruling late last week.

"It was the most wonderful moment," Markland said.

Markland's fifth child has been in State care at the Bustamante Hospital for Children since the incident, which occurred after she said voices in her head told her to throw the infant into the bushes, along Sergany Drive in Eastern Kingston on March 16.

"I didn't understand how I came to the point of doing it," Markland said. "When I reach home and my son asked, 'Mommy, where is the baby?' I just started to cry and I kept on crying until the police came in the evening and said that they found the baby."

The 30-year-old said: "I was really depressed because at that moment I didn't have anybody to talk to, and I was being argued at by my mother and everybody else. They were saying that now is not the time to have another baby."

Markland's lawyer, Steven Jackson, made the argument in court that his client has recovered from the postpartum depression she was enduring at the time of the incident, and she was now fit to mother her child again.

"I told the court that it would not be harmful for the court to make an order for the child to be released because she is now in a position to accept the baby," Jackson said. "The father and his mother also agreed that the child should come out of State care because they are capable of taking care of the child."

The court granted full custody to the father's mother and also granted Markland full access to the infant.

"When I hold him in my arms, I wanted to cry but his grandmother told me not to because it could have happened to anyone," Markland recalled.

But when Markland's other four children began playing with their baby brother for the first time, she couldn't hold back the tears.

"They were really happy to see him, and said that he is cute," Markland said.

Meanwhile, Jackson also wants to caution the public against ostracising mothers who have been through similar experiences.

"Whenever cases like these come up, I wish for persons in the general public not jump to conclusions and to bash mothers without knowing the full facts of what took place prior to the offence being committed. Most times underlying factors could have played a role into why the offence was committed in the first place," Jackson said.