Irrational or rational fear?

A close baby loss friend of mine recently voiced her fears over her husband's upcoming overseas trip.  She's afraid of something bad happening to him.  Her fears are overwhelming.

Another good baby loss friend has often spoken of similar fears... that something will happen to her husband, her only reason for being, the only thing she feels she has left.

I've felt it myself.  So, are our fears, as babylost parents justified?  I think of course they are.  I was fearful of things like this 'before'.  But now morbidity seems so real.  Shane doesn't necessarily 'get' that.  I mean, I'm sure he does, but we express it differently.  We fight over our driving skills, how we do things, and now that includes all things baby.  Sometimes they are real fights, sometimes simply disagreements.

But however it goes down I remain with the fear that something will happen.  And it will be bad.

Let me use the example of driving.  Shane is a bit of an agro driver.  I don't mean for you to picture him burning through the streets and weaving in and out of traffic.  But to me it seems that everything is always the other person's fault.  If there is a little old lady putting down the highway when he needs to get past, then she simply shouldn't be there.  Or a learner driver.  Whereas I'm the (mostly) calm driver who figures that there are more important things for me to stress over.  If I feel Shane is going a bit too fast, or taking the corners too fast, or too close to the car in front, or if the car behind us is travelling too close or... well, you get my drift... then I try to word my request so he doesn't get defensive (fight material) about his driving.  I try to point out that it's not his driving that worries me but rather it's the other person.  Because you just don't know what they are going to do.

His response to anything is usually along the lines of "it'll be right".

Today we had a discussion over the dangers of four wheel motorbikes.  In his opinion four wheelers are less dangerous than two wheelers.  Yet, statistically there are more four wheel accidents on farms and properties.  But apparently, according to my husband, that is because of the stupidity of the rider.  And he's not stupid, so it would never happen to him.  So, it doesn't matter that he doesn't wear his helmet, because no-one wears helmets on farms (this convo started because I was pointing out that if someone doesn't wear their helmet while they are working then they aren't covered by Workers Comp Insurance if they have an accident).  It's a common enough conversation between us.  Then I'm trying to "explain" that accidents are called accidents because that's what they are.  I asked him then if that means when I sprained my ankle last year, but simply walking down the road and rolling it was due to my stupidity.  Thankfully a) he didn't answer me :) and b) he didn't think about the fact that the reason it happened was because our big galoomf of a dog was bounding stupidly all over the place, and jumped sideways into my leg mid step which knocked me off balance!!).  Anyway, I digress.

Point being that accidents and things do happen, and we don't have to do anything to cause them.  Them being bad things.  Planes fall out of skies, tyres on cars bust, and houses...

Brings me to the point of this post. 

I got up to feed Toby this morning at 2am.  The wonderful little egg-thermometer was blue, telling me that it was an unsafe cold temperature for a baby.  So I plugged in the oil heater.

I hesitated when I did it, as it's run on a powerboard, and there are two plug holes to use, so I paused and wondered if it actually matters which one I use, and then plugged it in anyway. 

It immediately started hissing and smoking and spitting.  Holy crap!  Shane was asleep but woke with whatever my reaction was, and flew out of bed.  I was doing the very unhelpful girl thing of panicking.  No idea of what I should do.  By the time he got to it, it burst into flame. 

An electrical fire, in our bedroom, at 2am, with our baby in the bassinet. 

Short story is that thankfully Shane was able to pull the plug and put it out before any real damage was caused.  Like our house burning down. 

I'm now in the spare bedroom with Toby because there was too much smoke for me to be comfortable putting him back in there.  Even here I can smell the toxicity of the smoke, but it's mild.  The other thing is that with no heater in there it was cold.  And Shane had had to open the windows and put a fan on, so it was even colder. 

So we're in the spare room.  Shane's still in our bed.  He has to get up to work very early, and has an hour long drive to the other property, so he can't afford to be tired.  Which he will be anyway. 

:::

But me?  I don't want to go to sleep now.  Ever.  I'm scared of something else bursting into flame.  We have powerboards in this house, because there aren't all that many power points, but regardless, as we have talked among ourselves about, how hard is it to survive without power boards these days anyway?  Everything is electrical.  Even the double powerpoint behind the television... well, somehow it needs to run the tv, the sound system, and the dvd player in the very least.  We also have to plug in the fan on the heater somewhere.  Not to mention the Wii. 

So, my 'irrational' or not so irrational fear has been re-awoken.  That something bad will happen out of turn.  So if I just stay awake forever, I can prevent it?  I need to sleep.  Wind down.  Shall try now.

Next little cute monster feeding in approximately one hour.  All welcome.