Baby Be Mine: Sowing the Seeds

Back in the day, working as a health visitor, when you were able to develop long term relationships with women and their families, it was a real privilege to be invited into their homes to share in their lives and of their children until they started school. Not everyone wanted you to visit of course, and parents

(invariably mothers) could spend inordinate amount of time avoiding you, or telling you where to go in no uncertain terms. The irony being that these were the very families that really did need your attention! Nevertheless, women shared their ups and downs in raising their children, and building relationships (or otherwise) with their partners, and significant others.

Family life were never straight forward, and friendships were easier to maintain, or so it seemed. Women on the whole found me easy to talk to, and in return I gave them the time they needed. Sometimes this meant running late to my next appointment, but they always understood: they knew I'd been helping another family, and one day it might be them. Their life stories! Earthy, raw and down to earth, to having it all and losing everything in one blow. One reoccurring theme was motherhood: being a mum; wanting another child; having a child(ren) they didn't want. One thing was clear, if you were childless, and the situation wasn't by choice, it could be devastating.

Women are still being sold the notion that we can have it all, but the reality is that life, and mother nature, can have other ideas. Women who unwittingly don't have children can find themselves out in the cold; outsiders looking in on family life and what society expects and sculpts as the norm. Denied the status achieved by virtue of giving birth, or by choosing adoption. This may be a shocking thought in this day and age, but I tell you, I've worked with 'children and families' over the years and its a truth.

Many women of course, and I'm one of them, come to terms with childlessness and their lives develop happily, finding joy and fulfilment in other ways. But I began to wonder. What if you don't come to terms with not having a child? Or lost a longed for baby? What if your childhood was fraught and difficult, and shadows your adult life? It might tip you over the edge into grief and wild thoughts trigger a loss of moral compass.

Jen and her story was born.

Baby Be Mine is fiction inspired by these amazing, strong, and at times vulnerable, women.

see also, About Baby Be Mine

#BabyBeMineChildlessness