It’s something like a universal law that the moment you publish a piece about the joys of parenting, your child will immediately fall ill, tumble down a well, or develop a deep and abiding interest in the podcasts of Jordan Peterson. Last week I might have implied I enjoy my children’s company, so naturally it was only a matter of time before I had one of those days that makes you realise parenting is actually hard. As in properly, annoyingly hard. As in “this is why rich people refuse to do it” hard.
My wife, having a proper job, left for a work conference in the early morning, so I was on breakfast and drop-off duty, conducted with such haste and alarm that I hadn’t quite noticed my four-year-old daughter’s chin rash had become a bit more pronounced than it was over the weekend. We’d noticed it a few days before, a redness tinged with broken skin that we put down everyday chafing. It was only when presenting her at nursery that I realised this broken skin had scabbed over, and specifically in the tell-tale pattern of impetigo.
If you’re not familiar with impetigo, it’s a mostly harmless but very contagious skin infection that causes superficial discomfort, and is mostly notable for leaving your child with luridly disgusting lesions around their mouth. These begin red and then solidify with what doctors insist on calling, with sadistic descriptiveness, “honey-coloured scabs”. As such, impetigo boasts all the benefits of bubonic plague (looks quite rad, garners a great deal of sympathy for child and parent alike) but none of its true drawbacks (kills you dead).
The sight of these scabs crusting over is not pleasant, but to have missed it entirely is worse. This suggests that you are either the world’s worst dad for barely looking at your child for an entire morning in which you have washed, dressed and fed them, or the world’s worst dad for seeing these crusted lesions and still thinking, “Ah what the hell, let’s bring her to nursery anyway”.
For very sensible reasons, once impetigo is spotted, there is a mandatory 48-hour period in which your child cannot go to school or childcare while the medication you purchase for it goes into effect. These reasons were not immediately relatable to my daughter, who was very confused at being dragged away from nursery amid a crisp murmuration of my mortified apologies to staff. She reacted to this by crying and screaming, despite the fact she had been, just five minutes earlier, crying and screaming at the thought of going there in the first place.
From there, we schlepped to the chemist to get the salve necessary to treat her chin, which was by now so clearly and obviously infected that every glance at her made me burn with shame. On exiting, I discovered she’d stolen two packs of Paw Patrol branded bandages, some face wipes, and several lollipops, which necessitated a dart back inside to pay for this contraband as my face, like hers, grew red as a beetroot.
Once home, I washed the infected area with salty water – an absolute dream of an experience, and one I’d recommend to anyone undergoing stress – and applied the hydrogen peroxide ointment, which lasted on her face for about 45 seconds before it was rubbed or licked away by a child who could not understand why I was lathering her in foam. Did this immediately undo the cream’s effects? Would reapplying it risk an overdose? Who’s to say?
I took to my laptop to cancel all appointments for the day, and saw that a not-entirely-glowing review of my new book had just been posted online, the kind you know is bad because your publishers keep telling you it’s “actually quite good, really”. Then came the news that the budget for said book’s launch had accidentally been undersold, leaving me in the hole for perhaps three times as much money as I had to hand, discounting my abundant riches in Paw Patrol branded bandages and face wipes.
[ Prestige Drama by Séamas O’Reilly: Warm satire on TV melodrama about the TroublesOpens in new window ]
Not that I had time to worry about any of this, as I settled into a routine of keeping my little poppet dosed with paracetamol and face cream all morning, until my adoring and kind sister Orla popped in to visit the patient and mind her for an hour. Suddenly, my daughter was all smiles, delighted to be in the company of someone who had not lost several kilos to stress since waking, and began beaming from ear to ear as I decamped upstairs to fulfil my one remaining deadline. A column, the very one you’re reading right now, about the joys – the steadfast, unerring joys – of parenting.
