A Book That Lost Its Home and Found Its Way Back - Letters to My Baby

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was living in London, thousands of miles away from my family. Like many first-time mothers, I had questions, fears and moments of self-doubt. I wished someone could hold my hand and tell me that everything I was feeling was perfectly normal.

So I wrote the book I wish someone had written for me. I wanted to reach out to all new mums, hold their hands and guide them through it all. I started writing it when my own daughter was just one year old. Our house was being renovated at the time, and I did not even know touch typing.

Letters to My Baby is a collection of approximately 85 letters written by a fictional mother to her unborn child, beginning in the sixth week of pregnancy and continuing until the baby’s first birthday. It is a missive from a mother who has 'been there' and is now offering help and support to other women embarking on the same voyage. The fictional mother is not a supermom. She makes mistakes, becomes anxious and often feels overwhelmed, just like any other new mother.

The book was published by A.H. Wheeler, a name that will awaken memories in generations of Indian travellers. It was launched on 7 January 2007 by Shri Kapil Sibal, who was then the Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology.

Meanwhile, outside the book launch, the little girl who was just one when I began writing the book was now three years old and had far more important things to do.

For more than a century, A.H. Wheeler bookstalls were a familiar sight at railway stations across India. Before a long journey, people would stop to buy a newspaper, a magazine or a book to read on the train. Those little shops were as much a part of railway travel as the chai vendors, the cries of the porters and the whistle of an approaching train.

Their shelves carried stories into crowded compartments, across cities and villages, and into the hands of people who might never have entered a large bookshop.

And now, my book was on those shelves as well.

To my delight, Letters to My Baby began finding readers across the country. Warm letters and messages started arriving not only from mothers, but also from fathers and grandparents.

It was reviewed in newspapers including The Times of India, Hindustan Times, The Indian Express, India Varta and Dainik Bhaskar, among others.

One reviewer called me a ‘baby whisperer’. Another said the letters reminded her of the ones written by Rani Mukherjee’s character to her daughter in the film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

A feature article written for Women's Feature Service was syndicated to more than twenty newspapers across India.

Today, we would probably say that it had gone viral.

But this was before ‘going viral’ became part of our everyday language. Social media was barely a presence in our lives, and I had no idea that the article was being reproduced in newspaper after newspaper across India.

"I have been waiting for a long time for a book like this to come out,” said Dr Simonie Dey, a gynaecologist from Allahabad.

Perhaps the compliment I treasured most came from one of my readers called Meena: “I bought the book for a friend of mine who just had a baby. I started browsing through the book and soon got engrossed in it. By the time I finished reading it, I wanted to have a baby, even though I am now a mother of two teenagers.” For a book written by one mum for other mums, I could not have asked for a greater compliment.

The book went into a second edition.

But shortly after, disaster struck.

A.H. Wheeler became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the Railway Ministry, which eventually reached the Supreme Court. The company eventually lost its case and had to close its publishing house as well as its railway bookshops across India.

The familiar Wheeler stalls disappeared from railway platforms.

And my book disappeared with them.

Overnight, my book, my baby, became homeless.

I was devastated.

I bought back a few hundred copies. The remaining stock was trashed.

I tried to find another distributor who could put the book back into the market, but it was not easy to manage from London. Amazon was not yet in India, and selling a book independently was nothing like the straightforward process it can be today.

Eventually, I had no choice but to give up.

The copies I had rescued remained in my parents’ garage in India for years. Neither my parents nor I had the heart to throw them away. They gathered dust, growing older and more worn, but they were still my books. They were all that remained of the dream with which I had begun.

After my parents passed away and their home had to be cleared, I finally had to let those copies go.

I cried as the raddiwaala took them away.

For years, I believed I had failed it.

But Letters to My Baby had not disappeared because readers did not want it. It had received wonderful reviews, found readers across the country and gone into a second edition. It had simply been caught in the collapse of the company that had published and distributed it.

Its journey had ended before it had really begun.

Now, nearly twenty years later, I am bringing it back.

This time, not through a publisher or a chain of railway bookshops, but on my own website, one letter at a time.

These letters were never meant to replace doctors, medical books or pregnancy manuals.

They were simply one mother's way of reaching out to another.

A hand to hold.

A reassuring voice saying, I've been there too.

Before bringing the book back, I revised it carefully, updating facts and information that have changed over the past two decades while preserving the warmth and spirit with which it was originally written.

When I began writing these letters, my daughter was one year old.

Today, she is a young woman.

In many ways, we have both grown up.

But every time I open these pages, I meet the young mother I once was.

She was frightened.

She was hopeful.

She had no idea what lay ahead.

She only knew she wanted to reach out and hold another mum's hand.

Nearly twenty years later...

she's finally able to do that again.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Scroll down to the bottom and leave a comment!

Subscribe to my free mini magazine below for your exclusive weekly dose of humour, stories, little nuggets of trivia and first news of my upcoming books.

Want to know more about the Author? Click here – https://www.hansawriter.com/get-to-know-me

Keep smiling friends. Life is beautiful. Cherish each moment. 

© 2026 Hansa Writer. All Rights Reserved.