I Am Not Your Baby Mother: Summary & Key Insights

Growing up in South London as the child of West Indian parents, my sense of identity was stitched together from many fabrics. The Britain my parents immigrated to was not one eager to welcome them into its fold; it demanded resilience and silence in exchange for survival. From an early age, I learned that to be Black in Britain was to be watched, and to survive under that watchful gaze required adaptation.

In recounting my early years, I wanted to show how cultural duality marks so many of us. At home, we carried the sounds, food, and language of the Caribbean; outside, we moved through spaces that were often unyielding, asking us to mute ourselves to fit. That constant negotiation shaped me long before motherhood entered the frame. It also instilled a fierce pride—one that I would later need when the world questioned my right to belong in certain spaces: maternity wards, parenting groups, media panels. My identity was not a costume to be put on when convenient; it was a truth I had to learn to carry unapologetically.

When I became pregnant, I expected joy tempered with the usual anxieties of first-time motherhood. But I hadn’t anticipated that my race would become an obstacle in receiving compassionate care. My encounters with the National Health Service exposed an insidious bias: that Black women’s pain seems less urgent, our bodies less trustworthy, our needs less deserving.

Through research and lived experience, I came face to face with alarming facts—Black women in the UK are statistically several times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. These are not isolated tragedies; they are indicators of systemic neglect. In my own experience, I had to fight to be listened to, even when my body was screaming that something was wrong. The medical system’s assumption that we are innately “strong,” that we can endure more, dehumanizes us in moments when we are most vulnerable.

Sharing this was not easy. But silence benefits the status quo. It was crucial for me to name what so many women experience privately—to turn whispered warnings into public conversation.