Public safety trouser announcement

"So, what do you think?" I ask the health visitor anxiously. She peers into my baby's mouth with a frown and the in-drawn breath that usually precedes an expensive quote from the garage...

Rewind 48 hours to the Sunday - these things always happen on a weekend, don't they?

Having shed 3 stone of babyweight, I was delighted to discover a whole new wardrobe... in my old wardrobe. Clothes I hadn't been able to squeeze into for many months have been touchingly reunited with my more-svelte self. Including a pair of flares, or to give them their name in full, "super-flares". In my defence, they are the only pair of flares I've ever owned, bought on a whim. And worn on a whim, on the day in question.

Now, you know those surveys, that the likes of RoSPA put out every year or so? The ones listing bizarre causes of accidents? And you read these pieces and you think, what moron injures themself with a pair of trousers? I mean, how do you do that, exactly? Read on, dear reader, read on...

So it's Sunday afternoon, I'm chatting to husband mine about some rubbish too inconsequential to recall, while the kids play on the floor. My baby-radar is on, and I clock Baby Boy crawling towards me. I assume he'll do his usual thing of stop, look up and grin at me, or perhaps pull himself up on my trousers and give me his best puppy-dog 'play with me!' eyes. He does this a lot.

Today however I am wearing flares, rather than my usual jeans. Today he's decided to lean on me, rather than get a good handful of trouser. Today, he sits up, launches forward, and glides smoothly between my legs - through deceptive denim curtains that decline to support his weight - to land smack on his face. The sound of impact is sickening. The blood more so.

Baby's screaming, I'm freaking out, husband is trying to work out where the blood is coming from as Baby Boy is smearing it all over his face. It turns out the blood is coming from his mouth. His two tiny teeth have gone through his upper lip, and somehow seem to have impacted on the stub of a tooth that had started peeping through just a day or two before.

I can't see that tooth any more. There's just a bloody pit. A premonition of photo-shopping a front tooth back into school photos flashes through my head. By this point, a few minutes later, Baby Boy seems to have got over the shock. He's happily trying to catch my nose as I'm peering into his mouth, in paroxyms of guilt at having not foreseen this foolish flare disaster.

Whatever damage is done, it's not put him off his food, and he seems content enough in himself, so the call is made not make the dreaded trip to the out of hours doctors. Which brings us back to the baby clinic health visitor...

"Hmm, yes, he's taken a nasty knock. The tooth's still there, but with the swelling it's hard to tell if it's chipped. We'll just have to wait and see."

Wait and see. How I hate those words.

Parents - beware your trousers! They don't tell you that in the parenting books...