Ah, thanks all for being there. I feel better already and no, I won't go back to that thread. I've already told someone not to be so fucking patronising and that is a first for me in ten years on Mumsnet.
OK, it was a thread about criminalising women whose children are born with FASD. And all the predictable things got said: about how this would be an unacceptable assault on women's reproductive rights etc. And also all these women trilling about how they had a couple of glasses too many before they realised they were pregnant and should they be slung behind bars for that?
And it just sparked a deep well of irritation in me. It's like all those threads about child protection where posters pick up on single issues and start frothing about, well I don't always have a full cupboard, and my kids sleep on a mattress, should I expect social services knocking at the door? Women who have never ever been poverty-stricken or deeply damaged or at any kind of risk of losing their children.
And, to be extra fair, I've had a really rough week with ill children and an ill partner and enormous pressures at work and an encounter with my dd's speech therapist that left me feeling furious that the NHS has not taken better fucking care of my daughter. So I'm in a really ratty mood - a foul mood.
But anyway, I had said throughout this thread that I completely agreed that reproductive freedom is absolutely central to women's liberation and that criminalisation of behaviour during pregnancy must be resisted. I have been a pro-choice activists for 30 years; I've worked in abortion clinics, FFS. But I also said that these threads bothered me because the children are always invisible in them - seems that people are far more bothered about asserting their right to party than discussing the more complex issues involved. I particularly took issue with posters who suggested that 'these women' shoudl be offered support rather than condemned (good idea! It's that easy!) and I pointed out that children like mine, who had been exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero, are almost invisible on these threads. I also pointed out that in effect we do 'punish' women by taking their children off them, if not by criminalising, and that we have few effective responses to the women who give birth to many, many damaged children who are all instantly taken into care.
So of course I get the inevitable poster telling me I'M trivialising the issues, that I have to choose which side I'm on, and that that means the interest of the 'subordinate' group shouldn't even get lip service. Oh, and that I have her sympathies.
Why am I so upset by that? Well, I don't care about winning that argument - she didn't get what I was saying, maybe I expressed it badly, she's not about to affect my life or my daughter's. I suppose it just comes at a point when I'm feeling quite isolated with how I'm managing issues with my daughter (apart from on here - bless you all); where I'm feeling constantly criticised for being 'soft' with her and I suppose just getting a glimpse of the road ahead, which some of you are a lot further down. And if I'm honest, because I'm feeling down and a bit vulnerable, I felt hurt that no-one said, "How sad for your daughter, Devora, tell us a bit about what life's like for children who were exposed to alcohol in utero".
I've really used this for a spot of cheap therapy, haven't I? I'm very impressed if any of you have made it to the end . Just say 'there there' and I'll feel much better.