Does being a doctor make me a better parent?

I was standing in the check-in queue, sunburned, exhausted and very late for a seven-hour flight from Toronto to London. My wife had, sensibly, returned from the holiday a day earlier. In one arm I held my screaming one-year-old daughter, Lyra. Her folded pram was slung over the other shoulder. I was clutching passports and a nappy bag and surrounding me on the floor were my suitcases and an assortment of carrier bags overflowing with food, nappies, books and toys. Lyra went silent, I felt her abdomen tense, her face turned deep crimson and she forced out a long and resonant fart which sounded far more like it came from me than from her. A little area cleared around me in the airport. For some reason, probably fatigue, I put a finger into the nappy gusset to check that it was just a fart. It wasn't.

There are superficial similarities between being a doctor – especially an infectious diseases doctor like me – and the first year of parenthood. Faeces is the common currency of both tasks. Viruses abound. A friend who is a paediatrician likes to say that, up until the age of five, children are functionally HIV positive. We've had stretches of months where coughs, snot and bouts of diarrhoea have taken turns wrecking sleep for everyone while I remain helpless.

So far there have been exactly two occasions where I felt skilful as a parent because I am a doctor. First, Lyra was born in a heatwave. I kept her hydrated and avoided admission to hospital for IV fluids even though we were struggling with breastfeeding.

The second display of skill came when Dinah had an episode of mastitis, a blocked infected milk duct. We used hands, expression pumps and, of course, a baby, to drain the infected breast. The best moments of parenting are inextricably mingled with the worst. All three of us naked in the bath at 2am, covered in rapeseed oil for the boob massage, the water cloudy with milk, and the fever finally subsiding – a high and low point in equal measure.