“That’s not to say that I agree with these people, Madeleine,” her mother-in-law added, which mollified her somewhat, “but you must admit, it’s not a good situation. And my advice to you—as someone who is occasionally, and it seems increasingly, in the public eye—is you would do well not to court any controversy.”
Madeleine couldn’t think of a reply to this and, after a beat, in which the two women sat in awkward silence, Harriet continued, “My point is that it might be best for you to lie low for a while, dear, perhaps not be so quick to move on and forget? Of course, I appreciate now that Clara is better—thank goodness—you want to put the whole frightening episode behind you and get on with your life, but the other little girl is still in the hospital and people tend to have awfully...strong opinions about these things. If I were you, I might think about how I would respond if a wider audience—the general public, I mean—makes the connection and perhaps wants to proffertheiropinions.”
Madeleine thought about it. She understood where Harriet was coming from, but it wasn’t as if she used the blog or any other media she was involved in to foist her opinions on anyone else.Mad Mumwas only ever intended as a lighthearted, jokey take on motherhood, and a million miles away from a serious forum about the pros and cons of childhood vaccination. She’d started it for that very reason, as a foil to the more prevalent How to Be a Perfect Mum brigade.
And what were the chances of her audience making such a connection, in any case? No, Harriet was just playing devil’s advocate after overhearing the obligatory gossip and mutterings of a small town like Knockroe.
Her mother-in-law was simply making a mountain out of a molehill, Madeleine was sure of it.
Once little Rosie O’Hara got out of the hospital, the whole thing would be forgotten about in no time.
15
“Look, I’m not saying that people shouldn’t keep an eye out, what I am saying is that for their sake, as well as your own, kids don’t need to be mollycoddled.”
“But how is helping them up and down a slide mollycoddling exactly? And perhaps those parents who ‘hover’ over their kids, as you like to put it, aren’t necessarily trying to keep them safe, but actually want to spend time with them, play with them.”
“Sure, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that...”
“Then why are you ridiculing them? Making fun of people for actually wanting to spend quality time with their kids, when chances are they’ve been out working hard all week and may have barely seen them from the start of one day to the next. But, of course, you don’t have to consider those things, Madeleine, because you’re at home all day—”
“OK, guys, let’s not turn this into a working versus stay-at-home parent situation...”
“Honestly, Gemma, I think you’re taking that piece way too seriously. My point was not that parents shouldn’t play with their kids—that helicopter stuff was completely tongue-in-cheek, as I’m sure most of our viewers can appreciate. But the crux of the article is that for kids, playgrounds have become joyless and safety oriented to the point of boredom. They want to explore, they need to get a bit scraped and cut up now and again... It helps with their development. It reminds me of this discussion I had with one of my friends recently about jelly head—have you ever heard of jelly head?”
“No, but perhaps some of ourMorning Coffeeviewers have...”
“Well, just in case, it’s this little soft spot on a baby’s head that acts as protection for their skulls—”
“The fontanel.”
“Yes, that’s it, thanks, Anita—I knew there was some fancy medical name for it.”
“Leave it to our author panelist to find the right word.”
“Haha, exactly. Anyway...it fuses up at around eighteen months, I think, but my point is that it’s there for a reason—to safeguard the brain. When they’re at crawling stage, babies need to be hardy, they fall over, crash into things, sometimes even get dropped by their parents...”
“Now, that’s a guilty look if ever I saw one—Madeleine Cooper, are you telling us that you might have dropped one of your own children at some point?”
“Um, guilty as charged, Louise, like many parents watching this morning, I’m sure! But it certainly didn’t do Jake any harm, not that I know of anyway. I suppose my point is, kids are hardy by nature, so there’s really no need for parents to drive themselves nuts worrying. And then of course there was this other time when Clara had just started to crawl... I laid her down on the bed, took my eye off her for a split second and when I turned back hadn’t she rolled off it...”
* * *
I sat in the hallway of the hospital, numbed by what had happened the night before.
I’d honestly thought that finding Greg dead on the kitchen floor two years ago would be the worst thing I’d ever have to endure.
But I was wrong.
Last night, watching the medical team crowd around my convulsing daughter, Rosie’s little body racked by seizures as they worked to stabilize her... The memory of that horrific visual prompted even more tears, when I honestly thought I could cry no more.
Lucy’s face when I finally arrived back at the hospital with Christine, telling me that they’d rushed Rosie to ICU following a sudden onset of multiple seizures. They’d put her on a cocktail of anticonvulsant drugs and back on the ventilator, but it didn’t look good...
Since day one, I had been struggling not to think about the official stats on childhood measles and its complications:
One out of twenty kids came down with pneumonia.
One out of every thousand will develop encephalitis.
