had removed the shoes and laid them on our duvet cover. That night, I lay in bed and could not get the sight of those shoes on the bed out of my mind. The bed began to feel as though it was contaminated, and that I would become contaminated unless I took action. But, my rational mind was busy telling me how ridiculous those thoughts were. Our son was only at the stage of crawling – it’s not as if he’d been wading across the floor of a public toilet before wiping his shoes on our bed. I was completely exhausted, and did not have the energy to get up and change the bedding, although that is what my irrational mind was telling me to do.

I came to a compromise with myself. I got up, got a pack of Dettol wipes from the kitchen, and proceeded to give the duvet cover a cursory...

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