It was, we were told, a case of sudden infant death syndrome interrupted. What followed would transform my understanding of parenting, disability and the breadth of what makes a meaningful life.
I look back at the last day of our old life with a kind of wonder now: the million summer freedoms, the complacency of our ease. I watched the cricket with Max on my knee. Friends came to visit, and Ruth fed Max while we talked about our new neighbourhood among piles of books and packing boxes. Max gurgled regally as I changed one of his famous nappies. I organised our phone chargers and put his birth certificate carefully in a drawer with our passports and the mortgage statement. Then I hung a picture in what would soon be his room: a print from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, of a little boy sailing bravely across the ocean, with 'Max' emblazoned on the prow of his ship. I stood back and admired it, feeling all three of us to be limitless, and wondering what would happen next.
Just before six, the day already too hot, the pallid dawn creeping around the blinds: Gina, the night nanny, burst into our room, screaming. She was holding Max towards us, but he had no pulse and was not breathing. He was limp, cold, the colour of marble. I called 999 for the first time in my life while Gina started CPR. Under the operator's instructions, we moved Max from the bed to the floor. Ruth called out a rhythm while I pressed at his little chest with my clumsy thumbs, then paused for Gina to breathe into his mouth.
A police car arrived a few minutes after six. The police did an excellent job with a defibrillator. When paramedics arrived, they attached pads which adjusted the shock to his size. He had no pulse. They pushed a tube down his throat to stop his tongue from blocking his airway, then put a bag over his nose and mouth which forced air into his lungs. Max was gasping once or twice a minute. But his heart started beating again.
At six minutes to seven, we left for the hospital. When we got there, a paramedic told us Max had opened his eyes. I could not calibrate what this meant. Perhaps it would be a near miss, a story we would tell. Max was rushed past us into A&E. I had not really seen him in an hour, just the cloud of people and equipment that attended him.
