Free Mommy by Mistake by Rowan Coleman Page A

taken to an execution. She lay on the hospital table completely drained of color with her eyes brimming with unshed tears. When the technician told her the scan was fine, she could hardly believe it. In fact, she didn’t believe it.
    While Lee’s tension seemed to lift then and finally give way to happiness, Jess’s fears bound themselves even more tightly around her. The doctors, her and Lee’s parents, even Lee commanded her to stop fretting so much. She herself was sure that once the baby was in her arms where she could see him and hold him, she would stop worrying. Then at last all the fears and ghosts of the past would be put to rest.
    But she was wrong.
    From the second the midwife put him in her arms, there was a whole new world of worry. Jess was scared that he didn’t feed enough. She was worried that he slept for too long, or that he didn’t sleep enough. That he didn’t seem to poo as much as the book said he should or that he had too many wet nappies. Stupid things that when she asked the maternity nurse or doctor about made them smile and look at her as if she was slightly mad.
    “It’s normal,” the doctor would say.
    “He’s perfectly healthy,” the nurse would say.
    “It will be all right,” Lee would tell her.
    And she’d know that they were right and they had to be right; but she still couldn’t shake off this terrible feeling that somehow, somewhere, something was going to go terribly wrong.

Six
    N atalie could not stop laughing. There was something about fifteen or so women and two men sitting in a big circle on a dusty floor singing “Row, row, row your boat” while doing the actions with babies who were either asleep or looked utterly bored that was very, very funny and which made her laugh so much she had to stop and catch her breath between fits of giggles. But it was the marching around to “The Grand Old Duke of York” with babies that couldn’t even roll over, let alone march, that made her practically hysterical.
    “This isn’t a joke, you know,” Steve said, despite chuckling along with her as they marched to the top of the hill and down again. “It’s really good for them, music and singing. It stimulates all of their senses.”
     
    Baby Music had been Steve’s idea. Just as everybody had been on the point of leaving Meg’s and saying how nice it was andthat they must do it again sometime, he had suggested they set a date.
    “I’m taking Lucy to a baby music class in that place down by the park, it starts next week,” he said. “Why don’t we all meet there next if you like?” And before Natalie knew it she had been half press-ganged and half volunteered herself for yet another new and strange life experience, and found that she was even a little depressed that she had to wait a week before they were due to meet at the class.
    Now, as Baby Music reached its tumultuous crescendo, Natalie was practically crying with laughter as Meg threw herself into “Itsy Bitsy Spider” with the energy and drama of an opera singer, while her toddler spun like a top in the middle of the room and Frances frowned with faintly irritated concentration as she tried to get little Henry’s tiny fingers to do the actions.
    When the four of them made their way outside after the group was finished, Natalie was in the best mood she had been since before she was pregnant. It struck her that when you were out of the world of work and more or less out of touch with your old single or childless friends for the first time ever, finding new friends was almost as challenging and difficult as it could be finding a boyfriend. Natalie was beginning to realize that it had been a stroke of luck that she had met Meg and Tiffany on the day the electrical system went wrong. In fact, her dangerous wiring was possibly the best thing that could have happened to her because now she knew Jess, Steve, and even Frances too.
    Because of them, her life had taken on a new and reassuring dimension. For the first