What is it with baby-obsessed characters in recent television offerings? We’ve seen a baby swap, an IVF journey, a woman with an obsession with a mother’s unborn child and a phantom pregnancy. We’re going to look at storylines on The Bold and the Beautiful, The Secrets She Keeps, and Home and Away.
The last year has seen three television shows have characters that were baby-obsessed. The women we are going to be talking in this article come from an assortment of backgrounds and the circumstances surrounding their obsessions vary depending on the story. The following storylines will be covered:
- Steffy’s quest to adopt a sister for Kelly – The Bold and the Beautiful
- Reese switches Baby Beth with a stillborn baby – The Bold and the Beautiful
- Tori’s IVF journey – Home and Away
- Jasmine’s phantom pregnancy and obsession with Baby Grace – Home and Away
- Agatha’s obsession with Meghan and her unborn child – The Secrets She Keeps
Steffy’s Adoption Journey
Steffy’s baby-obsessed storyline begins when Hope announces she’s pregnant with Liam’s second child. Wanting to put an end to their longstanding feud, they decide to become friendly for the sake of their daughters.
However, when Taylor re-enters the picture and becomes hellbent on getting her precious daughter the family she deserves with Liam. Hope, seeing her mother’s rival as a danger, she tells Steffy that either Ridge’s former wife leaves or Kelly doesn’t get to see her sister.
Steffy, not liking this, decides to adopt a little girl. Little does she realise that the adoption will turn out to be nothing but a cover up that the baby girl that the Forrester heiress and her mother had just paid $250k for is the baby Hope and Liam thought had been stillborn.
When the truth comes out, Steffy is left heartbroken as Hope and Liam walk out of the house with their daughter.
Steffy refuses to forgive Thomas for the part he played in keeping the secret. She also champions for his ‘blossoming’ relationship with their stepsister after Hope becomes a step-in mother to Douglas. To top it off, she also blames her rival for taking the baby away from her when she [Steffy] had no actual legal right to.
What made this part of the tale ridiculous is that Steffy was trying to relive her childhood with Phoebe through Kelly and the child she didn’t know was Beth.
Hope’s Agony Over Baby Swap
Concurrently with Steffy’s adoption, when Hope and Liam decide to go to Catalina Island for a quick babymoon, they don’t realise the horrors they will endure.
Liam tells his wife to continue on without him and he’ll join her when he can. Hope arrives and soon goes into labour during the massive storm. The only doctor at the medical centre is Reese Buckingham and there is no nurse. Her blood pressure spikes and she passes out.
Back in LA, a frantic Liam can’t reach Hope given the storm and asks his father for help. Brooke and Ridge are informed of the situation too and join the Spencers on the helicopter, despite the danger. They get to the island and learn Hope has given birth but the baby is stillborn.
Months Pass
For months, Hope and Liam mourn the loss of Beth. Both find solace in Steffy’s adoptive daughter whom she names Phoebe after her late sister. However, little does anyone realise, the little girl being raised by the Forrester heiress is Elizabeth Avalon Spencer.
The only people who the truth outside of Reese who switched Beth with a stillborn include Zoe, Xander, and Flo. She also posed as the birth mother of the child. Later, Thomas discovers the truth chooses to keep his mouth shut. He even runs Emma off the road when she overhears the truth
During this time, Thomas uses Hope’s grief, the breakdown of her marriage and her bond with Douglas to his advantage. He tricks her into a marriage that she clearly doesn’t want but uses to get back at Liam. At the altar, Phoebe crawls up to Hope and calls her mama, which startles everyone.
Steffy and Liam worry that Hope has become baby-obsessed with Phoebe, but she denies it. However, Bill’s son begins to realise something isn’t right with the adoption and begins to piece together the puzzle. It’s not until Douglas learns the truth when he overhears his father on the phone.
Douglas The Little Hero
Little Douglas ends up saving Hope and Liam and reuniting them with Beth. Having learned from his mother to always tell the truth, he tells Liam that Phoebe is Beth. At first, Liam is sceptical but his little cousin is insistent. Upon walking into the nursery, he realises the kid is right and bursts into tears.
Liam attempts to contact Hope but she’s on her staycation ‘honeymoon’ with Thomas and her phone has been hidden from her by her new husband. After a thrilling turn of events, the former couple are reunited with the daughter they thought they lost.
The two things we HATED about this storyline is that they made Hope to look like she was baby-obsessed and the events played out for so long. It spanned nine months and continued the Thomas obsession storyline.
One of the most annoying things about this storyline was how Steffy thought she was entitled to Beth and sobbing “But I’m her mom” when Hope went to take her home.
Tori’s IVF Journey
Tori Morgan has always wanted to be a mother. Having thought she was pregnant to ex-boyfriend Ash, she was disappointed when she discovered she wasn’t. However, she asks her close friend, Robbo to be her sperm donor. He says yes, feeling this could be his second chance to become a father. This comes after his wife Lauren and his kids Lucas and Sofia were murdered years earlier.
The doctor had insisted on being a single parent but reluctantly allows Robbo to join her IVF journey. Of all the embryos, there is only a few that form. The first pregnancy ends in miscarriage. Tori goes behind Robbo’s back and has another one inserted. This doesn’t go down well with Jasmine who calls her friend baby-obsessed and two stop talking.
However, the tension eases and Robbo and Jasmine become friendly with Tori again. However, drama ensures when the couple are forced into hiding on their wedding day with a pregnant Tori. After months, the doctor goes into labour and delivers a daughter she names Grace.
Tragedy strikes when the new mother suddenly collapses and is rushed to the hospital and is placed in a coma. A custody battle erupts between Robbo and Justin. Grace ends up with her dad and step-mum Jasmine, despite Justin’s objections on the issue.
Jasmine, Robbo, and little Grace become a family unit which changes the nurse’s perspective on wanting kids. The little family is thrown into disarray when Tori awakens.
When she holds her baby for the first time since the birth, Tori thinks she’s been handed the wrong baby. She is told that weeks have passed and her little girl is no longer the newborn she remembers. Jasmine gives her the photo album she made for her.
Jasmine Develops An Obsession With Grace
A few months after Robbo is tragically killed, Jasmine begins to feel strange and not herself. After seeing a pregnant woman at the gym, she checks her phone and realises her period is very late. She comes to conclusion that she’s pregnant as she has all the symptoms. Off-screen, she takes a pregnancy test which Irene confirms later.
Upon entering her ultrasound with Tori and mother-in-law Wendy, Jasmine discovers she was never pregnant. She’d been suffering a phantom pregnancy. Wendy accuses her daughter-in-law of faking but Tori explains that it’s a very real thing.
After the situation plays out, Jasmine becomes determined to spend more time with Grace, becoming baby-obsessed. This is something Justin was worried about and tells Tori to ditch her grieving friend.
A Not-So Dangerous Situation
Upon learning that Ari’s brother Tane stayed at Marilyn’s house for a night, Jasmine takes it upon herself to remove Grace thinking the situation was ‘dangerous’. She lies to the babysitter and says it was on Tori’s orders.
Baby obsessed, Jasmine flies into a rage when Irene and Marilyn confront her about it. She says it is what Grace’s father would want and she was only trying to honour that. She also argues that it wasn’t like Grace was being taken by a stranger.
Marilyn feels terrible and fears that Tori will never let her watch Grace again. Her friends reassure her that it was Jasmine who was in the wrong, not her. Tori confronts her friend and demands to know why she lied to Marilyn and took her daughter.
Jasmine threatens to leave the Bay if she doesn’t get access to Grace, making Tori feel guilty. After making up, Tori allows Jasmine to pick up her daughter after the baby wakes from her nap. This worries Justin when he and Leah overhear her cooing over his niece.
Did Jasmine overstep? Yes, she did. Sure, she was upset that she wasn’t having Robbo’s baby. Is she bitter about it? Very which is why she claims to be honouring her late husband’s wishes. He would’ve been very disappointed in her for saying all those things. Robbo would also have trusted Marilyn’s instincts. Tori did which is why she didn’t mind of she watched her despite Tane being in the house for only one night.
Agatha Is The Definition Of Baby-Obsessed
Channel 10’s new mini series, The Secrets She Keeps is based off Michael Robotham’s novel of the same name. It focuses on two women Meghan, a married mother of two with a third on the way and Agatha, an outsider who craves her victim’s life.
Agatha has been baby-obsessed for a longtime and grew up in a broken home. She was raped as a teenager and fell pregnant with her rapist’s child which was taken from her the moment the infant was born. Not to mention, her boyfriend Hayden left her. To get him back, she reveals she is pregnant but, the whole thing is a sham. She fakes her pregnancy and is obsessed with Meghan’s ‘perfect’ life.
Having followed the blogger mum’s every move online, Agatha feels she is entitled to take Meghan’s third child as she already has a daughter and a son. In other words? She finds her selfish for having that third baby when she should have been happy with the two.
Not Knowing The Full Story
Agatha doesn’t know the full story with Meghan’s so-called ‘perfect’ life. She doesn’t know that she and her husband Jack are under financial pressure, that the mum-of-two had a one-night stand and that the Shaughnessy marriage has been rocky for some time.
The baby-obsessed woman doesn’t realise that Meghan’s life is far from the perfect but she won’t hear it. All she wants is the perfect existence as the parent to a little human. However, she doesn’t know the first thing about being a mother. She was never treated as a human being by her mother and stepfather and is the messed up individual she is now because of their failings.
What kept us on the edge of our seats is how her lies spiralled out of control. She conned Hayden’s family out of money to continue fuelling her lie. Once she lied about who Nicky was to Hayden, it was basically all over for her and it just continued to snowball.
