Too dumb to be a mum?

Kerry McDougall – the girl Social Services claimed was too dumb to be a mum – talks about Mother’s Day and the new baby she is expecting in the SUNDAY MIRROR newspaper at the weekend.

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Kerry and Mark's story looks stunning in the Sunday Mirror

As regular sell your story blog readers will know, this long-running story already commands its very own page on my main sell my story website Featureworld and this is because I have followed this couple’s emotional journey since September 2009.
During that time I really have been through their nightmares – when Kerry was judged by Social Services too dim to marry and their wedding was cancelled – to the unthinkable happening when I picked up the phone and Mark could barely speak through the tears. That was an hour after their baby Ben had been taken from the maternity ward by social workers who deemed Kerry too stupid to keep him (and ironically because they weren’t married Mark had no rights as a dad…)
I have also been through times of sheer joy with them. The most wonderful times were when they got Ben back (this was after numerous court cases) and when they finally got married.
But on a daily basis I absolutely love seeing the little photos Mark and Kerry upload onto Facebook, where we are friends. Perhaps they remind me more than a little of when I had my first child. I too was a very young mum with a beautiful boisterous little boy and some of the photos take me back 23 years…
In those pictures Ben is in Kerry’s arms, Ben is sat in a high chair laughing, Ben is running on the beach, Ben is learning to take his first steps, Kerry is chatting about how much she loves him and their new life in southern Ireland (they fled there from Fife to try to keep their baby) and most recently she’s uploaded photos of her positive pregnancy test. She is now all set to have a similar gap between Ben and his brother and sister as I did with my first and his little brother (I then went on to have a daughter with a 17 month gap – madness!)
So to me, this story was a definite to celebrate Kerry’s first proper mother’s day (last year Ben was in care…) and together with some of Mark’s own photos, it looked fantastic in the Sunday Mirror.
Unsurprisingly, I have now placed their story again with two big UK women’s magazines – and Mark is writing a book. Roll on the next chapter…

Read more blogs for Kerry’s story:
Pick Me Up
Reveal mag
Mail on Sunday

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Alison Smith-Squire

Alison Smith-Squire is a writer, journalist and media agent selling exclusive real life stories to newspapers, magazines and TV. She owns the sell my story website Featureworld.co.uk, which was set up to help ordinary people sell their stories to the press.

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