Isn’t it obvious?
She was delivered by a difficult birth. She’s always been motivated to become a nurse by the desire to help babies who arrived on the world after a difficult birth, her friends have said.
That struck me as strange.
So I did a web search.
If you do a quick internet search, without actually clicking on any links, you will already notice that difficult births can affect the babies not only through effects on physical health including brain development but also on their psychological well-being, sometimes because the mother too is profoundly impacted by the difficult delivery.
(Keep in mind that affected brain development can also have effects on the development of the personality.)
Lucy Letby is an only child so she may have been under a tremendous amount of pressure to be the perfect child, always smiling, always saying hello to everyone, appearing to be very kind, working hard and being called geeky and awkward but also dancing salsa. Trying hard to fit in and look perfect?
She seemed to be a blond woman in all the photos, but her hair’s actually medium brown. A police officer called her “beige”.
She’s apparently had thyroid problems since age 11 and the fact that she was able to graduate at all apparently was such a major and to some degree unexpected accomplishment for her that her parents supposedly placed an advert in the local newspaper to congratulate her.
- She wanted to stop babies who had difficult births to have to go through what she went through.
(NO, I am NOT trying to excuse her.) (Yes, the medical crises she caused may also have given her an opportunity to shine but that does not strike me as her main motivation.)
It also explains why she did things such as talk about the happy time of a baby’s bath after the baby had passed away and the parents were overwhelmed with grief.
Yes, her notes show that she was highly conflicted over what she did. The brakes in her brain – the brakes that modulate behavior – weren’t working properly.
It’s oddly connected to the bioethics idea of what constitutes a life not worth living, in two ways: https://angelinasouren.com/lives-not-worth-living/
I know of two female scientists that their mother’s response to their arrival drove them throughout their entire lives to prove their mothers wrong, to show them that they were worthy of life. One of the mothers had wanted a boy and the other one had not wanted any more children at all. (It must be horrible to know that your mother resented you. I probably can’t even begin to imagine what that must be like.)
No, I am not saying that Lucy Letby’s mother resented her. I have no way of knowing that. It wasn’t mentioned anywhere.
( I later found this, though: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/lucy-letby-manchester-crown-court-chester-cos-lucy-b1077247.html )
I’ve always liked myself. So did these two women who I just mentioned. Lucy Letby, by contrast, seems to have loathed herself.
People like Lucy Letby will never admit that to the public. That they destroy because they loathe themselves. Because they feel that a life like theirs is not worth living and because they are very angry over it.
