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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Rachael Healy

MP, rape victim, teenage mum . . . and first Mother’s Day as a grandparent

A smiling Natalie Fleet wearing a pink sweatshirt with the word Nana on it
Natalie Fleet MP, Labour MP for Bolsover, at home in Nottinghamshire. Photograph: Gary Calton/The Observer

Today marks Natalie Fleet’s first Mother’s Day as a grandmother – or nana, as she says. The Labour MP for Bolsover will spend the day in her constituency, surrounded by her children, her daughter’s newborn baby, her husband, mother and sister.

Fleet is only 40 years old. Her eldest daughter, now 24, was conceived when Fleet was a teenager after she was groomed by a much older man. “To have a child conceived at 15 felt as bad as it could get. Being a nana at 40 feels like I’ve won the jackpot,” Fleet says. “So I’ll spend my first Mother’s Day as a nana with the baby… just enjoying the fact that she exists, that my daughter could choose who the dad was. It’s something every woman should have.”

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