The Growing Season

Welcome to our regular feature showcasing the talents of the nation’s best writers.

She had tried one on once, years ago, when she was young and would happily have argued with any stranger in the street. She’d wanted to understand – what it felt like to wear one, but more than that as well. The appeal of it. It was before all the different textures were available, though there was a range of colours. Bright yellow, she’d requested, fluorescent, like one of those tropical fish.

‘This is the equivalent of six months,’ they’d told her, as they let her strap it on over her T-shirt. In the early days the Fulllife doctors had helped people position it, over the shoulders, snug on the belly, but they realised it was making people nervous – much better to do it yourself, they decided, then you can see how easy it is. How versatile. How safe.

Back then they’d used them in schools as well, as props – teenagers given the chance to see what it’s really like, carrying an unborn child. It didn’t put them off, although whether that was really the intention she’d never been sure. These days, celebrities made a show of designer pouches, of being friends with their children as well as parents – holding hands down the street in their matching outfits, courting the paparazzi. The pouch had become trendy, especially among the young – why wait, when you could study part time and still have your career, now parenthood was equal; and it came in such pretty colours. There had been Fulllife sponsorship for all baby pouchers at first, to make financially feasible what today was offered as a free-of-charge benefit to every healthcare plan. And if you didn’t have a health-care plan, there were always used pouches available. Fulllife were very generous with them. ■