When my first child was a few weeks old I bought a bottle of gripe water. When I opened it and smelt it, oh my lord I was transported right back to my own babyhood! The memory that smell evoked was so overwhelmingly strong - I had an immediate sense of lying down, and my feet being lifted up, before being given a spoonful of gripe water. When I told my mother of this memory she said I was remembering lying in my pram, which had a large space under the mattress, in the 'belly' of the pram, where such things as spare clothes, nappies, purse, gripe water and so on were kept (as well as any shopping she'd bought). So mum would lift up the foot section of the mattress to access this space. She told me I couldn't have been much older than about 10 months, because then I wouldn't have been lying down, but sitting up in the pram.
