Memoir Blast — Carrying the Baby
I still think I’ve got all our ages mixed up. I could’ve been eleven, I could’ve been thirteen — in my childhood it genuinely could’ve been either. Another Belinda memory, another moment where I was doing something far too adult for the age I actually was.
We were in town to collect a baby — Rebecca — and take her to my mum’s house because Mum was going to look after her. I remember seeing Belinda in Broad Street, pushing the baby in a pram, and then suddenly it was my job. No discussion, no instruction manual, just: here you go.
And then my ND brain did what it always did — ran the entire risk assessment of the universe in three seconds flat. I had no idea how to fold a pushchair. I didn’t even know how to tilt it properly to get it up a curb. But there I was, a child holding a nine‑month‑old who couldn’t walk, trying to work out who holds the baby while I fold the pram, and who folds the pram while I hold the baby.
My hyper vigilant ND scale landed on the only option available: the really old lady at the bus stop. She looked safe enough to hold the baby for thirty seconds while I attempted to collapse the pushchair — or, worst case, shove it onto the bus still open and hope no one shouted at me.
But the kicker was the fear. Drop the baby. Hurt the baby. Lose the baby. Get stuck in Reading town center with no phone, no money, no way to fix any of it.
Honestly, my teenage years must’ve been nothing but one long cortisol spike.
And layered on top of all that panic was the glow — the ridiculous, hormonal, era‑specific glow — of someone asking if she was my baby. Because in that time, in that place, every girl wanted to look older than she was. Society piled adulthood onto us before we even knew what adulthood meant.
I’ve always come across older than I was — looking older, doing older, performing older — but never having the knowledge to back it up. Was it ND wiring? Was it learning by watching? Was it child abuse dressed up as responsibility after the divorce? I don’t know. But I see the pattern now.
The child trusted with a baby, the baby trusted with a child.
Footnote:
In the end, I asked a lovely old lady at the bus stop to hold baby Rebecca while I attempted to fold up the pushchair — a child outsourcing safety to a stranger because no adult had thought to stay. My judgement on a face of safety.
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