When adults say things about children do they think about the effect that may have when the child grows up?

When I was born my skull was misshapen because in utero my face was pressing against my mom's rib cage, thus my face formed asymmetrically. My right eye socket was larger than the left, my mouth drooped on one side grotesquely, and the bone at the top of my head had some weird indentations in it.

Well, after I was born the nurses took me to the nursery and had the nerve to put me in a back corner behind a partition, they told my mom that I was too "offensive" to be set out with all of the other babies. Their reasoning was that my appearance would "upset" people who came to look at the babies. This happened in 1986 in Suffolk County, New York. I've overheard the story several times when my parents were telling other people about it and it really makes me mad that people would be shallow enough to be "upset" by what was a very minor and common malformation that I grew out of rather quickly. At age 22 the difference is only slight and my glasses conceal it anyway. The nurses even had the nerve to make snide comments to my mom about my appearance while she was in the hospital. According to my dad they would say things like, "she'll never be a beauty queen" and "she'll never find a husband if she stays looking like that".

Should hospitals have uniform rules establishing a swift disciplinary code for employees who behave like that? My parents repeatedly complained to supervisors but were told to just let it go. I know that this happened 22 years ago but it kind of hurts knowing that from the time I was born I was labeled "offensive". I had a severe stuttering problem for most of my childhood and wasn't treated very well by people for that either. Despite having an IQ in the 130's I was usually treated like a complete moron. Once my younger sister was born all people did was compare me to her; I always had to hear how cute and precocious she was. I was only 5 at the time but I knew exactly what they were saying, these were the same people who called me "a little piggy" because of the way I looked. My parents were great, but the rest of the world wasn't.

Basically I grew up to be an angry loner who doesn't trust "normal" people. I actually developed bipolar disorder in my teens, which nearly every psychiatrist I've seen believes was triggered by childhood stress. I've been reasonably successful in life; I'm a homemaker right now but I have most recently worked as a credit analyst for a bank. I happened to marry a man who went through the exact same things (he was born with a cleft lip and palate) as a child and has the same attitudes. Don't get me wrong, we're both very nice people its just we've been scarred by the way we were treated as children. My husband, despite being a very successful software engineer suffers from a severe, post-traumatic stress like anxiety disorder.

Don't people realize that children are quite capable of understanding and retaining the comments people make about them?
PS I'm not crazy or anything, I do a lot of volunteer work with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and help out with a local program for people with intellectual disabilities. The people I'm helping don't judge me so I'm more comfortable around them.

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