Confession time: 'I dropped our baby'

In the week before my daughter was born, my wife and I enacted a pact that we hold as sacred as anything put in place between non-warring nations.

We call it the Dropped Baby Pact.

The terms of our agreement are simple. We are not to judge, comment or criticise the other under any circumstances what so ever should we accidentally and inevitably drop our kid.

It first happened (that just made it sound like this has become a hobby, it obviously hasn't) when our daughter was just 4 months old.  She battled with sleep in the early stages of her life, so one night she'd nodded off on the couch next to my wife and wound up rolling off… THUD… onto the floor.

The resulting phone call from my wife (I was at work) was an unintelligible ramble of breathing and verbs.

"laaaalaaaa uhhhhhhh pheeeeeell uhhhhhhffff ha koooooooochhhh," was all I could make out down the line.

"Take a deep breath honey, what happened?" I asked.

"Lila rolled off the couch and onto the floor!!" was the response.

"Is she ok?" I questioned. "Yes," my wife replied.

I paused and chose my words carefully.

"Oh my God she did her first roll, that's fantastic!"

That's how the Dropped Baby Pact works. No judgement.

To be fair, I hold the record for the biggest drop. It was at bench level and left me totally distraught.  Wifey swept in, scooped her up amid tears and screams (from me, not our daughter) and there wasn't a pair of judgement eyes to be seen.

It's just one of those situations that brings out the worst in each of you. It's so easy to become a Captain Judgey Pants until the pants are on the legs of the other person.

A friend accidentally dropped her kid for the first time the other day and had placed that nausea inducing confession phone call to her partner, who proceeded to unleash a volcanic tirade that put Mt Vesuvius to shame.

"How could you let this happen?" he ranted. "You've got to be more careful!"

She genuinely looked terrified to be heading home to face the wrath afterwards and their's is a strong, happy relationship.

It's not like either of you ever intend to drop your child, it's accidental, so there's absolutely no reason to play the blame game.

According to our doctor friend, babies are resilient little creatures who's skulls are quite flexible in the early stages of life and are better equipped than full grown adults to cope with a trauma should one accidentally occur.

I'm no parenting expert and I certainly don't advocate dropping your child intentionally, but we've found our household pact has helped our marriage when our slippery little sucker has attempted a reverse two-and-a-half somersault tuck from our arms while being hoisted out of the tub.

Christo is a dad, husband, radio announcer and web junkie. He's been on The Edge 96ONE and the Nova radio network and is now based on the Gold Coast where he's a part of 1029 Hot Tomato and is a Senior Writer for Ultimate Magazine (Sanity's instore publication). Find out more at www.christoradio.com and follow him on Twitter @christoradio.