Hannah's F I R S T

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Well, it wasn’t quite as dramatic, but you can be assured it got my adrenaline pumping. After getting over the initial panic, logic and common sense kicked in and I convinced myself that Hannah was alright.

Immediately, my next thought was : how embarrassing, how could I ever have allowed that to happen? What kind of Mummy am I?!



For the last month or so, Hannah’s motor skills have developed exponentially, leaving poor Gong Gong and Po Po utterly exhausted and eager to hand over this clumsy bundle of activity to her parents by the evening.

She graduated from sitting up unsupported to crawling, turning, climbing and walking with support in a matter of weeks. We had to lower her cot, add cot bumpers and purchase a playpen to keep the young lady from injuring herself. Above all, we followed a fellow blogger’s advice and started teaching her the meaning of … NO. After all, it made more sense to teach her to obey a command (mainly to stay away from danger), rather than childproof the entire house (which is impossible).

Hannah seemed to be making quite a headway in this, often stopping her enthusiastic crawl whenever she hears a stern NO. Perhaps we became a little over-confident.

One morning, I was reading her some nursery rhymes and she started getting up to her usual tricks. She flipped, turned, crawled, rolled and moved steadily towards the edge of the bed, which is perhaps two feet from the hard ground. Rather than line the bed edge with pillows, we had previously decided to stop her with verbal commands, which had worked up to now.

You can guess what happened next.

Somewhere in the middle of “twinkle twinkle little star”, our little darling tucked her head, turned over and rolled off the edge of the bed onto the floor.

It took a split second for it to sink in.

All at once my heart rate tripled and Hannah’s inconsolable wails pierced the air. I was certain that picture of her casually rolling off my bed would play in my mind over and over again, each time amplifying to nightmarish proportions.

Despite managing severe head injuries at work on a regular basis , checking my own baby over proved more difficult than expected. I toyed with the idea of visiting a paediatrician, but finally convinced myself that it was just a bad bump. A quick look at several websites gave me more reassurance, but ultimately it was Po Po's cool reaction that made me feel better all at once.

"Hannah's a tough girl. You should have seen your brother. He's fallen off the walker AND the bed and knocked his head so many times as a baby."

Indeed, a quick check with my colleagues at work later in the day revealed a simple truth. 3 out of 4 babies seem to tumble from elevated surfaces at least once in their lifetime, as though this is a rite of passage.

Anyway, Hannah seems to have graduated from the "School of Hard Knocks" with flying colours. A week on, she suffers no ill effects from the incident and has progressed further in her plight for independence.

"Mummy, see, no hands!" seem to be her latest war cry, and Daddy has counted a full 20 seconds of Hannah standing alone unsupported.

What a relief.