On Children and Hot Cars

About a decade ago, a friend told me a terrible story.


One of her colleagues, a father of one, had changed his routine, just for a day.  Both he and his wife worked full-time and both took the train to and from work. To makes sure that their nine-month-old son was in care for the shortest possible time, they’d come up with a plan.  He started work early; she took the baby to day care later, starting work several hours later than him.  He work till mid-afternoon, picking up their son on his way home from the train station.  She worked until the early evening but she would always be home in time to kiss their son goodnight before bed.  And this worked beautifully.


Until the day that his wife had an early morning meeting that meant she had to be in the office a few hours earlier than normal.  It was no great drama; they simply swapped “shifts”.  She would go to work early; he would drop their son off at day care.  She would come home to pick their boy up in the afternoon; he’d be home in time to kiss the baby good night.


And so, one day, she went to work early.  He got ready, later than normal, dressed their son, packed his bag, put their son in his car seat and drove in the direction of the day care.  He caught a later train to work.  He was in the office till early evening; caught the train home.  And he never, ever realised that he’d forgotten to stop at the day care; never dropped his son off for the day.


When his wife arrived at the day care, she discovered that their baby had not been dropped off that morning. She sped back to the parking lot of the train station, arriving to find the back window of her husband’s car smashed open, paramedics still in the parking lot.  Her son was not there – he’d been transported by the first responders to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.  He’d died in the back seat of his father’s car; had probably fallen asleep and then never woken up after leaving home that morning.  His father, acting outside of his usual routine, had forgotten their son, asleep in the back of the car.


This was a loving father, a caring man.  The little boy was a longed-for, much-wanted, much-loved child.  His parents had adored him, had both been doting, devoted, caring parents.  And a simple change of routine had led to his father, operating on auto-pilot, to forget to drop him at day care.

When my friend told me this story, I was six months pregnant with my first child.  And the whole idea terrified me.  Would I ever forget my child in the back seat of the car?  Could I do something like that?  My husband and I shared a car (we still do), and I really don’t drive much.  Could the change of routine, me driving the baby somewhere, mean that I forgot that the baby was there?


The answer to that question is, quite clearly, yes.  It is possible to forget a baby.  It is possible to not remember that you’ve changed your general routine.  It is possible that you may, while loving your child utterly, forget that you are actually responsible for a particular task that day, just because it is outside of your regular routine.


From the day my friend told me this, I made a change.  I started to put my handbag in the back seat of the car.  I purposely put it into a place that I couldn’t reach from the front seat, in the foot well of the seat where the baby’s car seat was strapped in.  The only way to get my bag was to get out of the car and opened the back door, leaning over the car seat as I reached in.  By the time my first baby was born, it was an ingrained habit.  I continued it through my eldest daughter’s entire babyhood and throughout my second pregnancy, even after we owned a much bigger car; a van in which you could clearly see all the seats (and car seats) in the review mirror.  Most days I still do it automatically – the girls are long out of car seats and put their own seatbelts on, but when I strap my son into his car seat, I leave my handbag on the floor beside him.  My kids are all older, the girls are able to get themselves out of their seatbelts and out of the car unassisted, and they are all unlikely to be asleep in the car and extremely likely to call out, “Hey!  You forgot me!” if I tried to get out of the car without them.  


And yet I still do this one small thing, just in case.