Children are so unique. When you have more than a couple you begin to sense how much they can vary one from the other. You’d think coming from the same family there would be much more similarity. I was ever an inexperienced mother and so was continually aware of my deficiencies in all things to do with child rearing. Learning on the job so to speak was a necessity for me.
I still remember the look on the midwife's face at hospital when I rang the bell for her to put my first son back in the glass container in the corner of the room. When she asked me why I didn’t do it myself, I told her I hadn’t learned how to walk carrying a new born baby yet. I was deadly serious! Perhaps I would knock his head off while crossing the room. Their necks are not strong enough to support their heads, maybe he would slump and choke as I tried to carry him. To say I had never held a baby in my entire life was not an exaggeration. It seemed ridiculous then to be expected, a day later, to take this tiny fragile baby home in such a state of dangerous ignorance.
My inadequacies as a mother left me particularly vulnerable at the baby clinic which I would have to attend regularly. Here they examined the baby and weighed them. Since I was breast feeding in those days when bottle feeding was more common I would find myself in a queue with huge burly babies and mine was like an underweight chicken. The midwife would look at my tiny baby and say, “Well, what is happening here, he’s not thriving is he?” Then, she would weigh him and say how underweight he was and I would slink back home the incompetent mother. My failings recorded in neat script on the baby weight record card each week.
By the time I had my second I was more confident. Babies can survive incompetency, I told myself. I was no longer thrown by the huge fat babies around me. One mother had a thin baby like me and stood crying as the midwife lectured her on the importance of giving the baby enough milk to sustain him. I, by now, was made of sterner stuff and stood stony faced as she lectured me too. Am I bothered? Written across my face. Then when she took his nappy off I was scolded because his poo was liquid in nature. “Your baby has diarrhoea and this is serious, he needs special electrolytes to protect him from dehydration.” Thankfully, by this stage I realised that all breast fed babies had constantly runny poo so was not alarmed by either his weight or the consistency of his nappy.
With my third son at the baby clinic I was resigned to being lectured on runny poo and low weight and stood in line watching mothers reduced to tears by their fears. It didn’t take much. A comment as innocent as “She doesn’t grip my finger really well does she?” would have a new mother’s eyes watering in concern. When you are feeling inadequate, any criticism is a bridge too far. Mothers are ever prepared to feel responsible and/or guilty where their children are concerned. I was then completely thrown when the midwife measured my third son’s head and showed me that he was off the chart in terms of head circumference. Not sure what to make of this comment I asked what that meant. She answered that his head was so large they suspected water on the brain and would be monitoring him carefully in the weeks ahead. I wept all the way home and viewed my third son for months expecting his head to expand like an inflated balloon. It didn’t and although finding hats to fit him was a challenge he thrived and was a normal child. I wish someone had taken me aside and said worry less and love more. But when you are parent, the truth is you are usually doing the best you can in the circumstances. If you could do more you would. Worrying is part of loving, I suspect.
There was one other difference with my third son when he was a toddler and I have no idea if it is linked to head size or not. When he sneezed he would blast with his mouth closed and huge snots would invariably stretch down like long mozzarella drips extending to his feet. His brothers would lecture him “when you sneeze open your mouth!” This however was beyond him and we grew accustomed to his ‘nose to toes’ snot connection. It became one of his party pieces for the family accompanied with cries of “That’s a thick, green one!”
Of course mucus/snot/catarrh is actually part of the body’s immune system’s response to infection. Mucus moistens and cleanses the nasal passages, traps foreign particles and stops them filtering into the respiratory system. As well as fighting infection it humidifies the air reaching our lungs. The glands of your throat and nose produce between 1 and 2 litres of mucus a day! An unsanitary reality.
An early expert on sanitary conditions in London, a certain Sir John Simon, had fought to apply new theories of public health to cleaning up the foul smelling sewer that was London in the mid nineteenth century. He also is reported to have written bittingly about one lady,
“Sandy Davis has balanced her post nasal condition with something like prefrontal lobotomy, so that when she is not a walking catarrh she is a blithering imbecile.”
Sir John Simon (English Physician 1816-1904)
However, since Sandy Davis, the actress mentioned was not born until 1937 (April 27, 1937 – March 2, 1992) Sir John Simon is unlikely to have actually been the source of this quote. Sir John Simon’s name does however feature on the frieze of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in celebration of his many outstanding contributions to public health.
