New Mummy blog: My baby has caught her first cold

Our baby caught her first cold this week. She’s feeling very sorry for herself, and I’m feeling very sorry for her too. Seeing her bleary-eyed face and hearing her struggle with snuffles, wheezes and sneezes, while being unable to explain to her what is going on and why she feels poorly, is tough.

I also feel a little guilty, as if I should have somehow seen it coming and staved it off; as if I haven’t protected her and therefore have failed in my first duty of motherhood.

Ridiculous, isn’t it? After all, it’s only a cold, and along with coughs, cuts and scrapes, it’s an inevitable part of childhood, and there will be plenty more (and worse) to come.

But while she’s still so shiny and new, and I have the ability to keep her safe and out of harm’s reach (if not out of the reach of germs), it seems to me imperative that I do so. While I don’t want to raise an oversensitive little girl, unwilling or unable to leave her cotton wool-padded world to join the real one, it just seems there will be plenty of time for the real world when she’s a little bigger, a little more robust.

For the real world is a scary one. This came crashing into focus the moment Honor was born and my maternal instinct kicked in.

[New Mummy blog: And so it all begins]
[New Mummy blog: The best baby ever, of course…]

Of course, like most things, it’s relative, and my version of scary comes from a most fortunate, privileged viewpoint. My worries for Honor would be alien in their smallness to many, just as the huge and very real worries of many mothers all around the world are, and I hope always will be, unknown to me.

My worries are unquestionably, happily mundane, concerning the everyday of Honor’s future: playground squabbles, teenage angst, her first taste of heartbreak.

Yes, there are some big, loosely shaped spectres hovering in the back of my mind, which only really let me know they’re there in the early hours. These include unfounded fears over Honor’s health (thankfully free from problems, current cold notwithstanding), and the panicked “is she still breathing?” that still has the power to grip suddenly and at random causing me to hold my breath until I hear hers, and shows no sign of waning.

And there are the abstract worries: about the sort of world Honor will join as an adult and what the future will hold, about things brewing and things as yet unforeseen.

But conversely, thoughts of troubles that may be in front of her do turn, too, to the opportunities that may also await her. It’s a scary world, but one full of possibility for those brave enough to try.  I have the opportunity ahead to raise this wonderful child through a happy childhood to a future full of promise. If I can help her to believe the world is hers for the taking, and be there to patch up the scrapes and kiss away the tears along the way, then perhaps I’ll do all right in my motherhood duties after all.

And all this from a little cold.