There are a few Robin Barkers floating around cyberspace. If you're looking for Robin Barker the Canadian hairdresser, you've come to the wrong place. Apart from anything else, he's a bloke.
 
  This Robin Barker is the Australian author of Baby Love, The Mighty Toddler and Close To Home, a collection of short fiction.

Baby Love
and The Mighty Toddler are lengthy tomes full of practical advice for parents of babies and toddlers and were written while I was a hands-on midwife, and child and family health nurse.
For more on the baby/toddler books go to BABY LOVE and THE MIGHTY TODDLER.
                    
 After retiring from parents and babies I went off to the University of Technology in Sydney and completed a Grad Dip in Creative Writing. It was supposed to be a Masters but I underestimated the complexity of writing fiction and unable to come up with the required MA project (a novel), took a Grad Dip instead.

  Underestimating the hard work and the requirement of at least a modicum of ability is a miscalculation of many aspiring creative writers as demonstrated by this story from the incomparable Margaret Atwood:
  "A brain surgeon meets a writer at a cocktail party: 'So you write?' says the brain surgeon. 'That's interesting, I've always wanted to write. When I retire and have the time, I'm going to be a writer.
'What a coincidence,' says the writer, 'because when I retire, I'm going to be a brain surgeon.'"
 
 Feeling a bit like Margaret Atwood's retired brain surgeon (I realise many will find comparing a retired nurse with a retired brain surgeon a bit of a stretch but you get the picture), I eventually came up with some fiction I was prepared to put into the public domain - a book of short stories, Close to Home. Close to Home was published in May 2015. For more go to  CLOSE TO HOME.
                   
 For parents looking for words of wisdom, and opinions (of which I have plenty), some comfort or a bit of a laugh about the weirdness of parenthood, go to BABY and TODDLER  BLOG.
This will feature regular helpful - or otherwise (depending on your point of view) - info about babies and toddlers. I've kicked off with a short recent history of all the batty advice mothers have had to deal with since the 1970s
                   
  And the STORY BLOG?
  The STORY BLOG has nothing about babies and what-to-do-with-them (unless they find their way into a story).
  In the STORY BLOG you'll find stories, questions that intrigue me, books and films, whatever else takes my fancy.

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