To report to social services *possibly triggering*

[Predicter]

Or a midwife?! NC’d because i’ve spoken to a few people IRL about this.

Woman I know is pregnant, currently 32 weeks. She’s only 22. She planned the baby but her DP has since left her. Was at my friends house yesterday and the woman was there (i’ve known of her for a while but don’t come into contact with her a lot) my friend is closer to her.

So yesterday this woman is speaking about her unborn baby in the most vile way I’ve ever heard. I felt utterly sick. She confided that she thought she wanted a baby but now she doesn’t. She said she’s googled how to get a late term abortion and when she realised she really couldn’t, googled how to cause a late miscarriage. She said she has looked up how to induce a cot death. I feel chills just writing that.

She smokes weed and said she will probably have to do the same thing she does to her dog to get the baby to ‘shut up and sleep’ (i’ve witnessed her blowing weed smoke into the dogs face before so I assume she meant that).

A big part of me thinks this is just pre-natal depression and she needs some sort of help. However the way she was telling us these things, I really believe that she will hurt if not kill her baby. When she left my friend and I where absolutely reeling, both having young children and not knowing what to think.

I barely know this woman and feel it’s not my place to get involved but I believed what she was saying and if I woke up to news that her little baby had been found dead and I had kept quiet about this I don’t think I could live with myself. I need to tell someone.

I’m thinking if there’s some way I could try to get this woman help before she has her baby, but in a subtle way, then she could still love her baby. I don’t want to make things worse for her by calling SS straight away but I’m unsure how to go about speaking to anyone else about this?!

WWYD?

I don’t think there’s much point reporting to RSPCA. The threshold for them acting is very high indeed, or so it would seem.

Last year I reported my ex because he’d let our dog get so fat she couldn’t get up the stairs. When I saw her she could hardly walk at all. The back garden was literally carpeted in dog shit and there was broken glass right outside the back door. An officer went round to see the dog than rang me to say she was fine and he’d ‘given the owner a few tips.’ Personally I’d have thought what he was doing was animal cruelty, but evidently not.

The dog died in April. Her life was no doubt significantly shortened by being so obese.

So I don’t think RSPCA would do much good, and it would only exacerbate the situation further. Let SS do their thing and hopefully any help she needs will be forthcoming.