For the longest time I've felt like I'm on hold. I would rather think of myself as on standby. I can't.

I've been brushing up on my first aid this week, down at the Red Cross of Singapore. As things would have it, my partner is a forty-two-year-old childless woman. I've known her for three days. On the second day we exchanged the usual information about age, marital and maternal status. "I look so young because I have no kid, lah," she said. "But really I have fourteen kid. I call them niece and nephew." And she showed me a picture on her phone. "The newest, ah. So small. I spend so much time taking care of all of them."

It's not a new concept, of course. Neither is the lament that our society is becoming too individualistic. "I say to my husband, lah, what if we have no children? He say, no worry, I take care of you, you take care of me, lah. But it's me who takes care of my mother now. She worries for me, because I think now I can't have children and there will be no-one to care for me when I am old. But kids don't care for their parents now. You can't expect, nuh."

That night I have a dream. I am pregnant, but only briefly. When it's finished, I feel empty, devoid of any tangible evidence - even a solid memory - of what I'd so fleetingly known. A woman at the supermarket, passing by in the cereal section, tells me my baby's soul came loose from its body and got caught in another's fertilised egg, and is out there, living in the world. Later, I meet a long-lost friend in a place neither of us have visited since we were seventeen. She shows me her belly and tells me her news. And I'm struck with awe because I realise, as I touch the outside of her rippling womb, that the soul she carries is familiar. And that it belongs not to her, or to me, or to the baby itself, but to our village and our world and the family of humankind.

But she pulls back, and her hands encircle her bump protectively. "Mine," say her eyes. "Mine, mine, mine." I know then, she will hover when I hold the baby. She will decline my every offer of help. And I will resent her for it. I wake up crying.

On the train I see people going about their day, minding their business, taking care of their own. None of them expect to be hit by a truck. None of them imagine they'll collapse. But, says our instructor, we as a society should be prepared for these events. We must be willing to step forward. But most importantly, we must be able. It takes skill to walk into a crowd and convince everyone you can help, and it takes knowledge and practice to direct your actions. When you walk out of this class at the end of the week, I hope you will no longer be helpless. Instead, I hope you will be on standby.

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There's new stuff happening at the International Infertility Film Festival site. Namely, the team at Imagining Ourselves are calling for submissions on the subject of infertility for their upcoming theme of Motherhood. Anyway, I wrote all about it here. Please pass the details on - I would love to see the subject of infertility represented as part of this project.