Cave People Were Short

I did something atrociously stupid the other day. Makes my heart stop just to think about it. I must admit, I do have a tendency to rationalise my parenting decisions by saying "Well, before Western civilisation...", or "When we were cavepeople..." Cavepeople slept with their babies, didn't schedule naps, didn't breastfeed for 10 minutes per side, didn't worry about whether baby had rolled over et cetera. So fitting in with that philosophy, I've had this romantic idea that I'll be very organic in how I introduce food to LM. No processed rice cereals or jarred foods - I'll just read his cues, let him explore food, and let nature and millions of years of evolution take their course.

So when he reached out for a piece of apple I was eating and held on, I didn't wrestle it away from him. I figured he'd suck on it a little with his as-yet-toothless gums and get used to some new flavours. But gums are stronger than I thought and he managed to bite off a piece. By the time I realised what had happened, and did the finger-sweep, it had disappeared down the gullet with much gagging and coughing. I thought he might be choking (and I'm still not entirely sure he wasn't) so I flipped him forward and began patting vigorously. He settled down and stopped but a minute later he vomited many, many times. Which is actually kind of weird considering he got hold of a piece of paper when we were in the car the other day and ate half of it, yet that didn't make him sick. But apparently apple doesn't agree with him as much as bonded eight by 11, and I had the traumatic experience of watching him throw up ounce upon ounce knowing it was my fault.

In my defence, my mother was there and encouraged him to take the apple. She felt even worse than I did. "You know I would NEVER normally do something that stupid," she said. I think she was worried I'd never leave him alone with her again. But I should have known better.

Just beforehand, I'd been telling my mother how I'm not going to do rice cereal because all that iron isn't all that well-absorbed anyway, and besides, when we were cave people no one had rice cereal.

"Well, yes" she said diplomatically, "but you can see the difference that good nutrition makes in just one generation."

And now I've remembered, cave people were really, really short. And they lived in caves. And they ate raw meat and insects. Suddenly rice cereal and jarred food isn't looking so bad.

The only bright part of the experience was realising that I was able to stay calm in the moment when I thought my precious baby, the light of my life, might be choking on something I had foolishly given him.

P.S. If you want to make me feel better, tell me something stupid that you did to your baby (or pet, or baby sitting charge et cetera).