This post continues from the previous post.
From two months: the vaccination horror. The MMR controversy rumbles on, and may survive us all. No one wants an autistic child; no one wants their child to die of measles; and are all these vaccinations good for an infant immune system anyway? You can read every piece of literature on the subject. You can make a decision based on probabilities rather than certainties. You can cross your fingers and not walk under ladders, which was my response to the problem. Most of us feel adrift. It's The Fear, you know.
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| Dangerous Sleeping Positions For Babies |
Later on: traffic, meningitis, odd neighbours, insane bus drivers mowing down queues of waiting pedestrians at bus stops, drugs, sex, organophosphates, saucepans of boiling water, smoking, rare but newsworthy childhood diseases, pollution, electric shocks, TV violence, tattoos, body-piercing, atrocious music, Kentucky Fried Chicken. As the journalist Barbara Ellen put it, 'Whatever the situation, whatever the weather, whatever the age of your child, The Fear is always there - your own black cloud dragged along on the end of a dog lead.' Which reminda me: I forgot dogs, which can maul your little ones. And dogshit, which can blind them. The list has no end.
Every new parent doubts their own competence. We are always imagining the worst. Carry baby down the stairs, and think, what if I drop her down the stairs? Take him into a shop, and think, what if I leave him in the shop and he is taken by loons? The anxiety is never ending.
CLIFF:My wife was constantly fretting that something was wrong, reading books, particularly by some woman ... Penelope Leach. Penelope bloody Leach. Ah, she made our lives hell.
So my wife regularly thought that, for instance, that bump in the head shouldn't be like that, that there was something seriously wrong. And, of course, I spent my whole time trying to assuage these fears but without any knowledge whatsoever. So I was worried that I was the one stopping our child getting the lifesaving operation, or whatever. I remember lots of these sorts of things. And being woken up not only by the baby but by my wife worrying about things. It just seemed to be one incessant worry.
ANTHONY: Couldn't sleep for the first few months, 'cause I was convinced someone would come in the night and steal R. Used to sit up like a caveman in the moonlight, checking out every bang and knock and nightly noise.
And specific circumstances generate new, specific fears. We followed all the advice for our firstborn about cot deaths. No smoking - which wasn't too hard, as neither of us smoked in the first place. We didn't give her a pillow, or swaddle her with 17 duvets, and we put her down to sleep on her back, as recommended by everyone in the world. The only trouble was, she wouldn't go to sleep on her back. So we tried her on her side, which is the next best option. It didn't work.
After weeks of misery, we took a deep breath and did the worst thing any parent can do, according to experts: we put her to sleep on her front. Every night, as she drifted happily off to sleep in the Death Position, we waited for the doorbell to ring and the hooded man with the scythe to come in. We dared not mention what we had done to other parents, in case they rang up social services.
A few of oar best friends knew, but they thought we were taking the most terrible risk - akin, perhaps, to putting your child to sleep every night on the hard shoulder of a six-lane motorway. Needless to say, she survived. Two and a half years later our son was born, and he did exactly the same. And we did exactly the same. And exactly the same thing happened. Nothing. To find out more, you can check out Dangerous Sleeping Positions For Babies.