My mind is spinning a bit. I'm kind of angry, annoyed and sad. And angry, in case I forgot to mention it. Why? In a news story out of the UK, an expectant mother might lose her baby. Just in case she hurts it. She hasn't done anything during the pregnancy to cause them to think that she would hurt her own child. But, still, they want to take her baby away within thirty minutes of the little girl's birth.

You heard me. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes with a child that she hasn't harmed. And doesn't plan to harm. Thirty minutes. And gone. Poof. Done.

It seems that the mother, Fran, had some mental health issues as a teenager. (Can we pause for a minute while the readers in our audience who had mental health problems as a teenager raise their hands? I'll pause even longer because statistics say that vast majority of teens have or had some kind of issue during those tumultuous years!!) She engaged in self-harm coping techniques and was treated at a psychiatric hospital for borderline personality disorder. Somehow, those two things together make her "likely to suffer from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy." Okay. That seems to be a stretch. But okay.

Now, it's not as if Fran isn't cooperating. She has agreed to enter a mother and child unit so that she can be supervised while caring for her child. But no, they want to take the baby away.

I'm pretty darn livid about this as I sit here, an ocean away from the child-stealing drama. First of all, social services were involved in the case because of an unidentified domestic issue. Fran, having recovered from her mental health issues and now living a normal life, willingly gave the social workers information about her mental health history. Why wouldn't she? She has since recovered from various issues and has shown that she copes with stress like the "rest of us." Her psychiatrist agrees. Of course, that's all too bad, so sad for this mother-to-be who was honest with the social workers. They just want to take the baby.

They just want to take the baby... even though this mother is willing to comply with twenty-four hour surveillance.

I'm just so angry.

And of course, when you read the comments of the post, you see that another child who was under watch by these same social service workers died even though the agency claimed to have visited the child 47 times in 50 days. Yet they did nothing. Perhaps they're trying to make up for the cases that they've blown by harassing this young mother and her unborn child?

My thoughts and prayers go out to this mother. I hope and pray that she does not join the ranks of birth mothers around the world. Such a sad, angry story in general.

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For more, read:

1. Avoid Murder! Place Your Baby For Adoption!

2. Now That's Some Reformed Thinking.

3. Article on Adoption Subtly Coerces Mother.

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