Friday 13 May 2011

A parents instinct

Now that the twins are a little bit more active, life has become a bit busier and days a bit longer, so writing has once more taken to the sidelines and makes less of an appearance than Wayne Rooney's hair!

But tonight I'm making an effort because it's something that I've been thinking about for a couple of days

I was reading a little bit from an extract of Kate McCann's book in The Sun (now is not a time to judge my reading material) and I suddenly realised that now I am a mother of my own kids, my feelings towards the whole situation has changed. In the years BOB (before Olivia and Beau) I was one of those to jump on my high horse and say how senseless they were as parents to leave their children in a room on their own that is not within easy reach. Yet now I can truly see their thought process. 

You develop a certain sixth sense when your child is born, a natural instinct for what they need, what's right for them and what they need from you just grows. Then you start to take that instinct for granted and you feel that you are totally in control and that your child is safe. For those that are parents, just take a moment and think about it, every day we make decisions that could potentially put our children in danger. For example, I take the kids for a walk every day and sometimes when I come back I leave the kids in the pram in the back garden - our private area. Also, we don't lock the front door during the day and the kids are a few feet away from the door. When I've been shopping I've turned away many times from my pram. In all these instances someone could've taken my children, but maybe naively I developed this certainty in my head that it won't happen to me because I'm in control of the situation.

I can only guess that this was the way the McCann’s felt on that fateful night. As parents they trusted their instincts, was that wrong?? The decision they made, I think, was not flippant, but discussed with best intentions in mind.

Although I never laid blame at the feet of the McCann's, I now have so much more empathy with their situation, for this will effect them not only as parents but as people, making choices and decisions without fearing the outcome, no matter how big or little it may be.  

To lose a child is goes beyond the scale of pain I think. The other week me and Rick were sat downstairs having put the kids to bed. It must have been maybe an hour after we had done so, suddenly the alarm went off on the respiratory sensory monitor. This means no heartbeat is being detected. We both flew up the stairs and fortunately it was just that Beau was now moving around the cot and had moved off the monitor. When I tried to move away from his cot I found my legs would not move and I just collapsed, I nearly puked and felt like I could not breathe. It honestly took  me the rest of the night to get over the shock. Now, there was a false alarm - God forbid something really had happened.

From what I have seen of Kate McCann, she has shown great strength and dignity and I hope that someone out there really does know what happened to Madeline and will come forward and help her and her family.



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