The day I almost killed my daughter

It started out like any other Sunday. We went to a car boot sale in the morning and gave our girls £1 each. Thing One immediately dropped hers and Thing Two immediately offered up her own £1.

We did not let her give the £1 to her sister. Instead. she carefully chose a little doll in a wood crib, her chubby hand opening like a flower to reveal her sweaty, shiny £1.

“Thank you for mine Dolly.”

…she said shyly to the seller’s shoes.

Back home we dined on Marmite and cheese sandwiches in the garden which was washed down with milk and slices of apple.

I then brushed off the crumbs from my T-shirt and cracked on with digging a large hole to plant an Acer in. My husband got busy laying down foundations for a summer house. The children bounced on their trampoline, they played in their paddling pool and they frequented their cubby house.

I was busy swearing at the Ivy roots that my spade would not cut through and my husband was busy making sure the foundations were flat for the summer house. We had our backs to our babies, as so much more important were our tasks!

We did not notice Thing Two get off the trampoline and wander round and round the garden. Did she stop to pick up a snail or a dying daffodil head before she found the weed killer?

She appeared by her daddy’s side and her mouth was on the nozzle. Her little chubby hand that recently held her £1 was now on the trigger.

We went on our knees, trying to make eye contact and stay calm, but we were begging…

“Did you spray it in your mouth, baby? Tell daddy!”

Too scared to admit the truth, for fear she might be in trouble, she vehemently denied spraying the bottle. She didn’t seem ill. In fact, she seemed fine. She wanted to go back to bouncing on the trampoline.

But, soon the sickness came. She was lying on the sofa, her blue eyes to big for her grey face.

“Baby, do you feel ok?”

“I’m ok…”

… she whispered. But, she was not. She got sick again and again. My husband raced her to A&E and I stayed at home with her crying sisters, pacing, obsessively cleaning and waiting for my phone to ring.

At last.

She is going to be ok. We’ll be here for a while yet, though.”

I crumpled into a pile of her dressing up clothes.

I was not there when she had her anti-sickness and she got treated or dehydration. Apparently, when they asked her to open wide, so they could put the lolly-stick in her mouth, my amazing daughter, with her sore little throat croaked…