Keep Out of Reach of Children

So. Sorry for being boring, last post. Thank you for being lovely in response. Bragging is a terrible faux pas in this country, but I have the nicest fucking readers on the whole Interwebs! I hope you know I prefer trying to make you laugh than churning out that kind of thing, but sometimes I like you to know what it looks like on the inside of my head, too, because it's just so exciting in there. I'm having a foam party later just inside my left ear, if that's your bag.

Obviously, having wondered aloud about whether to write about parenting and Esme, I am back already with a tale of parenting and Esme. Because that's how these things go.

Oh, and this has turned into a long post, so if that isn't your thing, you can just look at the pictures. I can't help but think in long posts at the moment.

I have some excellent parenting tips for you today.

Tip the First: Do not leave a near-full bottle of Calpol where your child can reach it, you twat. No, not even at 0400, when you've had a monstrous night of failing to get any sleep at all beside your hot, itching, griping, chickenpoxy child whose body language says: HELLOOO I NEED TO BE STUCK TO YOUR FAAACE HELLOOO. When you give her Calpol at 0400, have the presence of mind not to put the bottle down on the bedside table, but put it back in the bathroom cabinet.

2: If you do leave a near-full bottle of Calpol on the nightstand, make sure you wake up before your child wakes up and starts pottering around the room with its tiny, inquisitive hands. That way, your child won't discover the bottle and help itself while you're asleep.

3: If you're going to notice an empty bottle of Calpol on your nightstand, do it the next morning. Otherwise, you may not notice it until bedtime, just after your child has settled peacefully in its cot for the night. Because you're going to be in A&E for HOURS, and you don't want those hours to be overnight.

4: If you do end up having to lift your sleeping child from its cot, wrap it in a blanket and drive it to A&E at 10pm, be sure to tell the reception staff that your child has chicken pox. You get a room to yourself, and a bell to ring, and a cardboard notice to hang around your neck that says UNCLEAN.

5: If you then have to spend FIIIIVE HOOOUURS OH MY GOD I HATE THIS in that room, entertaining a small, impatient child, remember that latex hand gloves make excellent impromptu balloons.

The room we were in for most of last night was of exactly the same cramped size and strip-light, ceiling-vent ambience as a York University college bedroom.

The first time Ian and I sat together in a York University bedroom, we both had hair down to our elbows and acid in our brains. My then boyfriend was there too, a tall, rangy thing of few words who drank too much, sang lead vocals in a band and occasionally passed the time by listening to sine waves.

Ian patched his rotting jeans with Liberty silk hankies in those days, but they were still gone through where his skinny, hairy knees gnawed them away. In those days he weighed nothing at all (if you wanted to have fun on a York University No-Fun^TM college bed, it helped to be thin). He wore at least two t-shirts, two open shirts over the t-shirts, and a long cardigan over the open shirts, jewellery in his nose and in his ears, and a smattering of jingly bangles on his arms. And, of course, DMs. I loved the way he dressed, because I thought that's how I would dress too in those days if I were a boy. I thought he got it just right. And I was so envious of his hair.

That night, Ian was brooding over the failure of his relationship with Salli, the love of his life and breaker of his heart, and while smoking, flicking his hair out of the way, and flailing his arms around for emphasis* while talking about Where It All Went Wrong, he was also going through his record collection.

*In this house, we pronounce it em-PHAR-sis

He put a record on for about ten seconds, then sighed with heavy dismay, said "Nope, that one's shit too," and dismissively threw it, Frisbee-like, through the open window and into the night. If you peered through the window at the ground far below you could see 12" records lying at odd angles in the bushes, catching the moonlight.

That night, when I could see straight again and it was starting to get light, I walked back home with my tall, rangy, sine-wave boyfriend, past the records in the bushes, past the University lake and all its wildfowl. I had been listening to Ian talk for so many hours that every time a goose honked, it sounded to me just like him.

I thought about that night as we sat in the small, overheated hospital room, middle-aged parents with tired faces and grey hairs shining in the strip lights, comforting our little daughter in her all-in-one pyjamas with the little pink spots. How things change.

Christ, I'm tired today. Staying awake until dawn was a piece of piss, sixteen years ago.

St Thomas' Hospital is warm, very warm, too warm, "to let the MRSA bug spread more effectively," Ian explained. Its children's ward has weird books, too. A story about a stressed-out little girl with a bag full of worries that looked like monsters. A badly illustrated story of Rob Roy. A modern-day cartoon book of the Prodigal Son story. A Ladybird book on counting that I remembered from my own childhood. Esme kept asking for the book about the bag of worries that looked like monsters, although it clearly worried her.

Dear NHS: HOW ABOUT SOME STRAIGHTFORWARD HAPPY BOOKS. Thank you.

(Dear Antonia: HOW ABOUT NOT LEAVING THE CALPOL WHERE ESME CAN REACH IT, YOU TOOL.)

And, of course, the children's ward is one of the most harrowing things you can spend a night listening to. What are they doing to that child in there? Leeches? Open heart surgery? And that's what croup sounds like! HOUGH BARK BARK HROUGH fuck is that contagious? (Google search: Yes.) What are they doing to THAT child? And that one?

At fuck knows what time in the morning, they finally gave Esme a blood test. Sat her on my lap, facing me, with her arm sticking out of the side, and gave Ian some bubbles to blow to distract her. She gave a delighted "Ooo!" at the bubbles, in the cutest little squeaky voice she has, and was so incredibly good about the test. I'd forewarned her that the lady was going to put something on her hand for a bit.

Since the first few weeks of her life, Esme has been extraordinarily stoic. She always tries new things without fuss. She puts up and shuts up when you least expect it: I often forget this about her, especially now she is two and the wrong shoes can lead to une crise de nerfs. She didn't cry at all about her blood test. I did. I am rubbish at blood tests: they make me want to pass out, and after Esme's was done I put her on Ian's lap and stuck my head between my knees, feeling utterly humbled by Esme's bravery, and by my incompetence in leaving a bottle of Calpol on the fucking nightstand. Also, feeling like I might pass out. My ribcage was evaporating.

At 0330, the nurse came in to tell us Esme was okay. Again, I lifted a sleeping Esme, wrapped her in a blanket and carried her to the car. She didn't wake up until lunchtime today, when she must have wondered if it was all a dream, before spotting the bright orange sticking-plaster on the back of her hand. "Oh!"

Parenting tip 6, by the way, is that when you leave St Thomas' Hospital car park, you can avoid paying the parking fine by approaching the car-park exit barrier from a 45° angle to its right, then steering niftily around it. Ian, you're my hero. Again. Even though you wouldn't let me go out for a cigarette after the blood test and I really hated you for about ten minutes, you grown-up pious douchebag.

Tip 7 is that I will only be buying Calpol sachets from now on, taking a safe dose or two out of the box, locking the box away and keeping those two sachets on a high shelf in the bedroom for emergencies, so the worst thing I can leave within Esme's reach at 0400 is a couple of empty paper envelopes.

And yes, 16 years ago, Ian went out and got his records back out of the bushes. I doubt they ever sounded the same again.