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.