Borrowing other people's troubles
I've just heard that Ivan, David Cameron's son, has died at the age of six.
Ivan had Ohtahara syndrome, which as the news will tell you, is a rare sort of epilepsy that has profound effects on a child's development. And one of the first symptoms is that the infant has recurrent fits starting in the first few weeks of life.
As most of you know (or can find out by looking through the archive), my own son, **TODO - pictured in my current default icon - spent a week in neonatal intensive care for recurrent fits at a week old. Ohtahara syndrome is just one of the huge long list of nasty things that might have been causing it. Luckily, it looks more and more certain that in **TODO's case, it was just One Of Those Scary Things Small Children Do Sometimes, and he's fine.
I've been feeling things have been hard recently, with chronic sleep deprivation, and everyone having minor infections, and minor behaviour issues and tantrums, and emotional rollercoasters all round, and did I mention being very tired? But this has really made me appreciate again just how wonderful my kids are and how lucky we are, and how small our troubles are in the broader scheme of things.
It's also got me welling up. I've identified with David Cameron as a person far more than any other politician I can instantly recall. I'm a long way from him politically. Perhaps it's to do with him being pretty close to me generationally, and publically Doing Being A Caring Father at a time when that was important to me too - although again, we've made rather different choices about time division between career and childcare. Seeing that photo of him looking down at Ivan in his arms - well, I feel I can easily imagine what he was feeling at the time, and I feel that for my kids. And I'm also imagining how he's feeling now, and it's one of the most awful things I can imagine.
Ivan had Ohtahara syndrome, which as the news will tell you, is a rare sort of epilepsy that has profound effects on a child's development. And one of the first symptoms is that the infant has recurrent fits starting in the first few weeks of life.
As most of you know (or can find out by looking through the archive), my own son, **TODO - pictured in my current default icon - spent a week in neonatal intensive care for recurrent fits at a week old. Ohtahara syndrome is just one of the huge long list of nasty things that might have been causing it. Luckily, it looks more and more certain that in **TODO's case, it was just One Of Those Scary Things Small Children Do Sometimes, and he's fine.
I've been feeling things have been hard recently, with chronic sleep deprivation, and everyone having minor infections, and minor behaviour issues and tantrums, and emotional rollercoasters all round, and did I mention being very tired? But this has really made me appreciate again just how wonderful my kids are and how lucky we are, and how small our troubles are in the broader scheme of things.
It's also got me welling up. I've identified with David Cameron as a person far more than any other politician I can instantly recall. I'm a long way from him politically. Perhaps it's to do with him being pretty close to me generationally, and publically Doing Being A Caring Father at a time when that was important to me too - although again, we've made rather different choices about time division between career and childcare. Seeing that photo of him looking down at Ivan in his arms - well, I feel I can easily imagine what he was feeling at the time, and I feel that for my kids. And I'm also imagining how he's feeling now, and it's one of the most awful things I can imagine.