Be alert

It's Mid-Autumn Festival today and I shouldn't be writing a sad post.  This year is baby's first Mid-Autumn Festival and though she is not able to hold her lantern and walk (she would rather sit with her lantern and chew on it), I feel we are moving too fast and she is growing up at a high speed.

Yesterday, baby is able to climb up the stairs.  Scary.  Not to mention she is repeating her name after us.  Talking.  Babbling.  

What's more scary is how some parents can be so absent-minded till they can cause the death of their children.  Yesterday's news was about a 1 year old girl who was left in the car by her father for 5 hours.  By the time he found her, she was already weak and pronounced dead in the hospital.

Accidents happened, I agree.  But this is to me is carelessness and attention is not where it's suppose to be.  It irks me more that I can imagine this happening to my family.  Because it's so real.

Just as I am shopping for a baby car seat for her safety, but here the parents forgotten about her because of the convenience of the car seat.  Imagine the girl was not strapped to the car seat but someone carrying her instead.  No way you can forget her.  But then again, being in a moving car without a car seat is very dangerous.  And I am not saying you should do that.

Absent-mindedness is an illness, I feel.  I know it's easy to blame the parents for the death of the poor child, but being absent-minded is not acceptable to me.  Not when you are caring for children.  Nope.

No matter how fatigue you are, how exhausted you are from that nightly chore of feeding, how sleepy you are, you should always, and I will put it in caps, ALWAYS, be alert when it comes to children.  You cannot be lax about them.  You should keep an eye or both eyes on them.  You cannot leave them alone, even for 1 second.  

You heard incidences of children drowned because the caretaker left the child in the tub of water alone, even for that 2 minutes.  You read about parents driving the car into their child.  

How many times incidences like this happened?  This incident of leaving the poor child, strapped to the car seat for many hours?  Not only in Malaysia, but also in other countries?  And just in February, a mother accidentally stepped on the accelerator and the car slammed into the kindergarten gate and her daughter was right in front and was hit?  The poor girl died.  And just last month, a mentally unstable mother jumped from a condominium while holding to her 3 year old son?  The saddest one that I have heard so far was a mother in China who left her son in a tub of water and she found the water to be too cold and she turn on the hot water tap (which direct from the gas heater) while her son was in the tub and suddenly the phone rang and she went to pick it up and someone was telling her to go and play mahjong and she went, leaving her son in the hot water and her son was boiled to death?  The father came home and found the son boiled to death and was enraged and took a cleaver and went to look for his wife and chopped off her hands?  This is not carelessness or absent-mindedness.  This is pure evil.

My DH is a very absent-minded person.  He is forgetful and sometimes he can do some things and forgot immediately if it's done.  There are times when he forget which one is the brake and which one is the accelerator.  I live with one person like that, so I can imagine the worst case scenario in my own home.

He is pretty laid back and feels that things happened for a reason and that I am too careful about everything.  So many times we got into an argument because I feel he is not putting his 100% attention on our girl and it can be disastrous.

I have to drill into his head that things like this can happen.  I can imagine him forgetting his girl in the car while he go and do some things.  That's why things like this scare me.

Even now, when baby is sleeping, I always touch her chest to see if her heart is beating.  I will check her breathing if it is normal.  I will stroke her head to make sure her body is not cold.  You can call me paranoid and I do sometimes overreact.

We are talking about a human being's life.  And our absent-mindedness or carelessness can take away their life.  And they are helpless right now.  You can't tell them to open the seat belt and scream for help.  You can't tell them to run or walk or call someone.  They depended on us entirely.

Sigh.

And because I Google about infant death caused by parents, I saw so many articles on it.  One was about this boy and his sister was left in the car by the mother.  The car engine was running as the mother taught of just going out for a very short time.  The boy climbed over to the driver's seat and accidentally release the hand brake and the car started moving and he panicked and open the car door and jumped out (just like in the movies) and he was ran over by another car which happened to pass by?

Double sigh.

OK, enough of all this.  If I was the wife of this guy who caused the death of their daughter because of his absent-mindedness, I would have divorce him right away.  By continuous being with him, the memory of the incident would never leave.  Would I forgive him?  Not immediately.  If I was the one, would I forgive myself?  Never.  I may sound harsh, but I think we can never be forgiven for causing the death of another person.

I do wish that things like this will never ever happen to us.  I wish that all parents to pay 100% attention on their children.  Don't let the iPad or Tab or smart phone to entertain them while you are eating or doing other things.  Play with them, hug them, love them, spend time with them.  

I can't help to be reminded of this incident each time I see the empty car seat that is fixed to my car.  Sigh.