We’ve had a fairly quiet few days, just working, chasing a toddler and a few cups of tea with family. Polly decided at the end of last week to try and liven things up though with not one, not even two but three bangs to the front of the head between Wednesday and Saturday- the last one of course being the most dramatic. She does seem to do this, she’ll go a few months without any major incidents then do three in a week! The first involved head-butting a coffee table and was fixed with a cuddle. The second involved, ok I’m not going to lie, I’m not actually sure what it involved. We were at one of the toddler groups and there was the usual craized frenzied rush from the little people when the box of musical instruments comes out at the end, Polly was of course in the thick of it even though she’s one of the smallest and then when she sat down two minutes later proudly holding a tambourine she had a cut on her forehead. No tears this time, just a very confused mother. The third, well like I say this was the biggest, this one involved a train set table. We’d popped into the town’s toy shop with Auntie Georgia and Polly was having a field day in the ball pit there (yes for those of you who haven’t frequented the toy shop in Sidmouth it does genuinely have a full sized ball pit at the back of the shop for the kids to play in!). She then started running around and ran in the direction of said train set table but unfortunately she totally misjudged it and face-planted the side of it. Cue screaming toddler. Cue nose bleed. Cue very panicked mother and a very upset Auntie (who in no way could have prevented this!!). So we said goodbye to the plans of an early lunch, a walk along the river and the birthday party we were heading to and instead took a trip to the local minor injury unit. After a near two hour wait, two poos in the waiting room (both from Polly I should add), a picnic involving wotsits and mango chunks on the magazine table and enough presses of the musical Disney book she found that the noises are now ingrained in my head forever, she was given the all clear. So instead of running around eating jelly and jumping on a bouncy castle we headed home for duvet cuddles and a bit of Strictly Come Dancing.

This wasn’t the first time she’s given us a scare, at 12 weeks old we had a frantic dash to hospital with the murmur of meningitis from our local doctor ringing in our ears. After a three day hospital stay, four attempts at a catheter, a lumbar puncture and many tears from Polly and Mummy she was finally diagnosed with a viral infection. This was still a terrifying experience that I hope never to repeat.  And a few months ago at a toddler group she fell while playing on the soft blocks (the irony of that!) and split the skin between her top lip and gum. This luckily happened two minutes from the main doctors surgery so there was no two hour wait etc etc, instead a quick check by the nurse who said ‘don’t panic accidents happen, she’ll be fine’.

So basically the conclusion is that accidents sadly do happen as little people are learning everything from how to walk to how to come out from the musical instrument mosh pit with the loudest instrument. As long as we aren’t being negligent a lot of the time we do need to take a step back and let them learn these things for themselves as most of their life will be spent with us not there to hold their hand up the slide or pick a book off the shelf for them. At the same time writing this I do find myself thinking about one of the bigger news stories from the last couple of days involving a terrible case of a parent actually inflicting these kinds of injuries on their child. I honestly don’t understand how people can do this, I mean when Polly did each of these bumps I myself actually felt physically sick and know like most parents that if there was a magic button that transferred the pain to us the grown ups then I’d press it in a heartbeat. I’m sorry to finish the post on a negative but sadly this is a very real problem that doesn’t seem to ever go away. I’m going to sign off now as it’s just made me a bit emotional thinking about this, I’m going to say goodbye and go and give my like pumpkin a cuddle and hope she never encounters anything like that at all and that one day I do get proved wrong when these cases just don’t happen.