Lately I have been really taking time to understand and appreciate the purpose why certain material things are necessary for babies, especially the idea of a car seat. I have always grown up knowing that a child must sit in a car seat but I don’t think I appreciated its purpose till now – when I know I will be responsible for the life of someone so fragile…but it took the following event for the whole car seat concept really sink in.
My appreciation all started on a drive back from Philile in Diepsloot township. Three of us ladies had done a couple of volunteer hours with the preschool kids there and were now on our way back home. Now the one lady came with her 6 month old son who was placed in the car seat. But after 2 minutes of sitting in the car seat the child just started going ballistic. The drive home is generally short but we were stuck in peak traffic and with the wailing child in the back seat the whole journey felt like forever and my irritation levels were coming to quite a peak.
All I could think about was “SHUT THAT CHILD UP!....DO SOMETHING!” The mother mentioned that the child was probably hungry but she was adamant that she would not take the child out of the car seat till the vehicle had stopped. We were not in an area where you could just stop on the side of the road because it was Hi-jacking territory and Hi-jacking peak time. But I thought, “gosh this is terrible - just feed the child already”. By the time we got to our final destination I felt such a relief when the child shut up…I just wanted to leave the mom and baby there and RUN Home. The mother held the child softly and said “okay baba I will feed you now!” She turned and apologised to us for the noise and we politely said it was fine. But mean while I wasn’t fine on the inside…the child had stirred up enough hormones and irritation levels in me that I was almost freaked out about having a child of my own. I felt like I was such a mean person and almost forgot about the whole volunteering expedition that we had just ventured on 45 minutes ago. Then the mother just said to us “I promised myself that I would never take my child out of the car seat if the car was moving because a friend of mine decided to feed her baby quickly while the vehicle was moving and they ended up in a minor accident which caused the baby to go flying and hit the dash board. The adults were fine but the baby died and the parents have been living with regret ever since! And that’s why I just couldn’t take my son out!”
Her words were like a bucket of ice cold water being thrown onto my flames of emotion. I stood there completely almost frozen and had a choking feeling in my throat for even feeling the way I did. I thought of SIAM
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