Some things make me go oh. Not in the nice gooey ooh sense but the oh no, my palms are starting to sweat and my stomach has butterflies.
Thinking about my “Feel the fear and do it anyway” section of my Mission has really opened my eyes to how many silly things I have become squeamish about or have even developed a downright fear of. I don’t mean the horrors of life like serious illness or bereavement, or even actual phobias, but things that most people aren’t overly concerned by.
I was once told by a yoga teacher that you carry fear and anxiety in your chest. I hate the idea of a bundle of lead cocoons weighing me down and so I wonder if confronting them in picture form could release the butterflies.
So here is my first butterfly release – the anterior fontanelle.
The what I hear you say? The soft spot at the front of a baby’s head in the first 2 years of life, the bit where there is just a membrane between the window to the brain and the big bad world. It pulses sometimes and when the baby is ill it may bulge or become sunken.
Looking closely at the fontanelle makes me feel a bit ill. To touch, it reminds me of a drum, with the skin pulled tight so to allow just enough movement to make a sound. But drums can be broken and the idea that something sharp could penetrate the brain through that thin layer is just overwhelming grotesque.
Thankfully both my children have had cradle crap, a layer of yellow yuckiness that goes somewhere to disguising exactly where their fontanelle is. I love to touch and stroke and even sniff my baby’s head just as long as I can scout around that soft spot.