[user104658]

Postnatal Depression is a huge problem in the western world, our standards of Postnatal care are really awful to be honest so it's not surprising. And then many new parents are isolated with no help from friends / family / the community.

I know that me and my partner had absolutely zero help with either of ours, and our first daughter as a newborn, simply did not sleep. She only slept in someone's arms (and getting her asleep, and keeping her asleep, even then was a military operation). In the end the only way we managed to survive was to accept it and sleep in shifts, so that someone was always awake with her. There was NO other option and sometimes I think, what if that baby was with a single parent? How would they ever sleep? The effects of chronic sleep deprivation can be catastrophic. For example, it is a MAJOR suicide trigger in people who have never even shown suicidal tendencies before.

It's all completely unnatural and add to that low incidence of breastfeeding, it's a time bomb. The reason being that pregnancy and childbirth send hormones completely out of whack, and breastfeeding is a big part of naturally rebalancing those hormones. When it doesn't happen, there's a risk of causing all sorts of imbalances, and to put it in simple terms, hormone imbalances can make people completely bat**** crazy.

So, first and foremost, what we need to do is make sure that people have help and support in those crazy first 3 months or so. Failing that, yeah, I do think there should be some sort of "safe place" where someone could, if it really comes down to it, leave a child completely anonymously without the fear of being stopped or questioned.

As for this baby, the good news is, if the mother isn't traced, healthy newborns have a near 100% adoption rate so the baby will no doubt end up with someone who really wants one.