Boarding without your baby is the sort of thing that can happen all too easily in the disorienting world of new parenthood
I have left my baby on walls, in public toilets, up trees, on trains, rolled under beds and, on one very memorable occasion, in an envelope at the bottom of my handbag. I had to fumble under keys, books, a spare jumper and some tissues to pull it out. Not in real life, you understand; but in a thousand sweaty, sleepless, eye-juddering, neck-clasping nightmares. For one woman this week, that nightmare became true.
Like John Candy in his polka van seeking to bring solace to Kevin’s mother in Home Alone, I am not here to criticise the woman who left her baby in a Saudi airport as she boarded the plane to Kuala Lumpur. I have no right or any authority to question any other parent’s ability to cope under stress or navigate the unfamiliar. I certainly have no interest in puffing up my own sense of smug accomplishment by revelling in comparison and mother-bashing (here’s looking at you, YouTube commenters). I have left enough bags, coats, phones, tickets and keys on enough benches, buses and other people’s bonnets, while juggling and jiggling a helpless baby, to know that sometimes you simply do not have the capacity to carry all the disparate parts of your life along without occasionally faltering. About two months into motherhood I spent two hours in my own garden sitting on a plastic bag, entertaining the baby with clothes pegs and singing the songs from Aladdin because I had forgotten not just my keys and wallet, but also any snacks, toys, or phone.
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