Feelings, and Frights

I really cant get over how strongly maternal I feel now. I used to never be interested in kids. I was the one who, when colleagues brought their babies in to work for everyone to see, I would hide in my office and avoid them like the plague. If someone handed me a baby, it would start screaming. I never even noticed kids except when they were being annoying!

These days I notice babies everywhere. When I was pregnant, I was amazed at how many strangers would smile at me and ask about my pregnancy. Now I’m the one smiling at pregnant ladies at the shops, and talking to complete strangers about babies. I actually GAWK at newborn babies, with a sort-of wistful smile on my face, and tell whoever I’m with to look too… as in “LOOK at that baby!” (hubby finds it particularly strange I think, seeing as how all my adult life I swore I was never having kids)

Last week we had a bit of a fright. I’d put Skye down on the carpet in our walk in robe, and she was busy looking at her reflection in the mirror on the sliding door. I was sitting right beside her, but when I wasn't looking she must have picked something up off the carpet, because I could see her sort of chewing on something, but when I looked in her mouth I couldn’t see anything. If I had have seen it before it went in her gob, I would have assumed it was a blade of grass – wrong…

A minute later she started choking – I grabbed her and shoved my finger down her throat as quick as I could and felt around – felt something, first impression was “oh my god it’s a staple!”… but I grabbed it (pushing it against the side of her windpipe to get it out) and dragged it out with one finger. A small streak of blood came out too. It was some kind of metal shaving – THEN I freaked! Kept shoving my finger back down her throat to see if there was any more in there. She kept screaming – in fright I think. This shaving must have got walked in on one of our shoes, and buggered if I know where she found it, as the floor had been vacuumed the day before.

Afterwards I hugged her and hugged and didn’t let her go for ages. I think I was still shaking 2 hours later. She is just SO precious, and I'm so worried about something happening to her. I spoke to my mum about it, and she says that its just that natural maternal instinct to want to protect your child coming through.

I kept looking at this metal shaving, which really did look like a blade of black grass, except it was thin black metal. I kept thinking "What if" - what if some of it had broken off and gone down into her stomach. I had visions of it tearing right through her intestines, her waking up screaming with blood coming out the other end etc. I was SO upset and so worried… I didn't sleep properly for a few days from worrying about it - but she seems ok. She was fine within about 10 minutes. Hubby says I gotta stop thinking about what could have happened, and instead focus on the fact that I WAS there, and that she's fine.

Since then I see danger just about EVERYWHERE! But I'm really trying not to let fear take over. She has started crawling, and within a few days of crawling, she started pulling herself up on any available piece of furniture too - so now she's standing and cruising along while holding on to things. I cant let her out of my sight for a minute or else she's up to mischief and into everything!

I've never been an overly neat and tidy person, I'm not a clean-freak - but having a little one crawling around is really making me much tidier - vacuuming once a week doesn't cut it anymore!