You haven’t known true condescension until you have attended a baby’s health review (as a parent, I imagine the babies are indifferent to such loftiness).
I appreciate that public health visitors have to assume zero previous knowledge, and, just to be on the safe side, the potential absence of all common sense. It’s the paediatric equivalent of an IT helpdesk asking whether your computer is plugged in. But even so, being spoken to in clear, concise sentences as if it was my first day in a foreign language class is not something I’m used to.
“Now, Mum, does baby eat a varied diet?”
Of course he does. In between the margarine sandwiches and cigars. (Note: humour is not well received at baby health reviews.)
“Is baby making sounds and clapping his hands?”
Yes, yes. Mainly at 4am.
“Have you any concerns about baby’s development?”
No. His granny says he is very advanced, which must count for something.
But then it came out of left field. The question I should have anticipated, but hadn’t. “Now, of course, I’m sure you’ve baby-proofed your home by now?”
Hoisted on the petard of my own smugness, I mumbled something about him not walking yet and that we were taking initial precautions and planning others, but my babbling gave me away. She tilted her head. Oh no, not the head tilt. That must be what staff in call centres do when it transpires that the computer is not, in fact, plugged in.
“Now, Mum, you know more children are seriously injured in the home than are snatched by strangers so we had better get a wriggle on.”
I still can’t believe she used the phrase “get a wriggle on” in the same sentence as child abduction. Nonetheless, that was me told.
We arrived home and the house that had looked lovely an hour previously now resembled a minefield. We had moved in with no immediate baby plans and, now that the veil had been lifted, there were potential hazards everywhere. The glass coffee table I had saved for months to buy now looked like a sharp-cornered, eye-gouging menace. The plug sockets sneered at me like dastardly wall imps.
‘Choke-able’ shells
It continued everywhere. The Psycho shower-scene music played in my head as I saw the loose cables, the unusually low knife drawer, my husband's collection of the world's smallest Lego pieces (I think he's going for some sort of quirky world record) and the cupboard under the sink full of cleaning products. There was even a small dish of tiny "choke-able" shells collected on a beach in Thailand in the late 1990s (a beach from which you were allowed to take the shells, in case any eagle-eyed eco-types are reading).
This is what happens when you have a new baby. You read about the stages they will go through, and despite their being mere weeks or months apart, you always think you have longer than you do. Add that to the tiredness and discombobulation that comes with a first baby, and the job of child-proofing your house feels like it’s light years away.
I felt like one of those people who runs around a department store on December 24th with nothing bought, as if I had somehow forgotten that Christmas always falls on the 25th. I remember scoffing at a friend who bought stair gates and cupboard locks weeks after her baby was born; now I envied her foresight.
And so, like isolated survivors in a zombie apocalypse, it’s now a race against time for my husband and me to secure our home. We know the masking tape on the cupboards will hold only for so long. A friend recommended that I crawl around on my hands and knees to see the world from a baby’s perspective and I’m slightly mortified to admit that I did. Between that and a quick online search, I now know that we need safety paraphernalia including, but not limited to, socket covers, cupboard locks, stair gates, table corner protectors (the glass table is staying), a bed rail, door jamb pads, fridge locks and toilet locks. In fact, locks for just about everything that can open, close, shimmy or twist.
Fear sells
We are surrounded by fear these days, and we all know fear sells. It sells house alarms, newspapers, anti-ageing creams, Brexit votes and industrial ice grips for your shoes. It also sells baby-proofing gizmos you will probably never need. But there is an ultimate device that you won’t find online or in any retailer, and yet it is the most successful: supervision. Easier said than done, but most household accidents involving little ones happen in homes with good parents who through tiredness or distraction drop their guard for a split second. They are not to blame, although they will undoubtedly blame themselves.
I’m not going to panic too much about buying gadgets I never knew existed. I remind myself of my grandmother telling me about the day she realised she had to “move everything up higher”. And there it was: our old friend, common sense. I intend to apply that to the baby-proofing of our home, so along with a few essential safety items, I will be using the age-old advice of moving things higher.
Or maybe we’ll just move into a cave lined with bubble wrap until he’s 20.
