I failed to provide the necessaries of life

Dinner. Saturday Night. Cadbury Crunchie Ice Cream 2 litre container on the table.

The OC eyes the container then raises an eyebrow to her mother: "How much Ice Cream have you had Mum?"

Mum winces: Too much!

The OC: "Can I please have too much?"

At eight and a half she is able to not only ask for food, she can use her wit and kid-cunning to elicit a bigger helping. At eight days old that wasn't the case. At eight days old the OC was a screaming purple angry thing who couldn't get the food she needed no matter how hard she cried. And she did, cry! I was a new mum, I had no idea what I was doing despite the best efforts of The Cook to encourage both of us to behave. We were both sobbing. And I did, cry! A lot! We didn't know it at the time, but when we were released from hospital after a fairly uncomplicated emergency caesarean five days after her birth, we were taking home a starving baby. If we hadn't sought help, she too would have been malnourished

When I read this yesterday, I immediately thought of my family, and others close to us, who in the early days of parenthood were malnourishing our children, not because we felt a desire to abuse them, but because we didn't know what we were doing wrong. There but for the grace of god went we. We sought help from a lactation consultant fairly early on in the piece because breast is best...but it's not the only way. We had friends. We had people around us from the same background, who spoke the same language. We had the resources to help us. Who did Tahani's parents have to go to? Who helped them out when the baby was screaming from dawn till dusk and then on to dawn again? I put it to you that this baby DID cry. I would hazard a guess this child was starving and after exhausting herself to sleep she was indeed a "very good baby" and slept more than most.

This baby was only 11 weeks old for goodness' sake! Where were Plunket? When did the midwife bow out of service? What was the feeding like in those earlier weeks? What was the story when the mother and child were discharged from hospital?

The situation has of course been exacerbated by the vultures who espie tragedy from afar and feel the need to dance in front of the camera and say 'see, I told you so - it's the lofty government's fault...not ours.' I cannot see what Christine Rankin's soundbites have to offer this dreadful case. If you can't see the video, a transcript is here I cannot fathom why the media have given this woman so much airtime. A woman whose time as CEO for WINZ was described as a 'litany of failures.' I'm all for redemption and making good, but my opinion is that Rankin shrieks and wails over a tragedy of which little is known. My intuition tells me that this was a family in crisis (no major surprises there); a family who fell through the cracks. Those same cracks were clearly visible at the start of the OC's life - I stood on the tipping point. Which hole did they fall down? Our pit of despair opened up in the maternity ward - a place where the OC and myself should have been swept up and looked after...but we weren't. Whatever the case for Tahani and her kin, this was almost certainly a family who may not have had all the benefits that my peers and I have had.