Love liberates

The next alarm will ring at 3:15am. My eyes blur and the phone almost slips from my hand, but catastrophic consequences are averted, just in time. I lie back gently on the bed, my movements as subtle as a ninja who is trying too hard. Stillness. I am scared to breathe, but as long as you are breathing, I am allowed. I release one breath, then another, then sleep takes over. It is a sleep that is never quite complete. Two hours and sixteen minutes later, I drag both of us from slumber, and I attempt to master the life-giving skill that I only learnt ten days ago. There isn’t enough alertness to feel afraid.

It was a good, although unromantic, beginning for you. I’m not sure that you’d want to know about this but this is our story, and part of it happened before you. Every morning I awoke and put a thermometer into my mouth before my eyes even opened. Light peeked in through the shutters. I tracked everything and followed the suggestions of an algorithm to the letter. Tablets with my morning tea. Considerably less wine. Organic stuff, because that seemed important. I prepared diligently, but then I’ve always been a planner. I hope you’ll have less of that instinct. It’s fun to take life as it comes sometimes.

Now, when morning arrives, which doesn’t really feel like morning at all, you are whisked away, and I am gifted the chance to rest. But even as I sleep, I miss you. And when I tumble down the stairs, in stained pyjamas and hair slicked back, I am eager to hold you again. I prepare breakfast with one hand and I wonder if we will leave the house today. It gives me such a thrill when the world gets to see you, when they tell me that you are beautiful, and at the same time, hibernation seems right and the sofa is calling us.

Some people talk out loud in the long months of waiting, but I never did. I placed my hands on my body, and I thought about you. In the supermarket, the lady behind the till cocked her head to one side and smiled. She had been there, I thought. She understood. “C’est prévu pour quand?” It was too soon for me to get tired of this question. You would be French, and I would need to learn more words. Allaitement. Gigoteuse. Mouche-bébé.

We will go out, I decide. It takes us an hour to dress. I want to shower while you are sleeping but I am too afraid that you will wake and need me, and I will be elsewhere. So I make the best of it with dry shampoo and deodorant. My smell has changed. As you doze, I pull out a tiny outfit for you: red socks, trousers covered in foxes, and a white vest. Your early wardrobe is a source of pride for me, a result of weeks spent scouring second-hand sites and jumble sales. I didn’t realise you would average three looks a day. Kate Moss has nothing on you.

In the last weeks before you got here, I got impatient. “Treasure this time,” said society. “It’s the last bit of time you’ll have for yourself.” But society didn’t know shit. I took long walks every day, stomping through the French countryside. You came along for the ride; it was no hardship. I dreamed about you every night. You were all I talked about, and I also wanted to murder the people who sent me the words “Any news?”. I bolstered myself – and you – with pillows and lay in bed watching The Sound of Music wondering whether you, too, would be a musicals super fan. Is adoration of musicals innate? Or is it simply a result of conditioning? I thought a lot about my parents, and my mother told me the true story of my birth.

Outside home, the world is now a hungry bear with claws. I am afraid of everything. Have I strapped you in properly? Did I pull out that little lever at the side that lessens the impact of another driver? For the first time, I feel rage at the thought of anything hurting you, especially me. I am very hard on myself, but it’s no less than you deserve. By the time we reach our destination, my nerves are in shreds. I am close to tears at the front door, but then I am welcomed in to safety, to a place without judgement, with homemade cookies and tea, and a place for you to lie down and look around. This must be that sisterhood I always heard about.

You made your entrance in a climax of pain and euphoria. I had never been to hospital before, and suddenly I was wearing a gown and there were needles and people and food that was just as terrible as promised. On the day you were born, I asked everyone, “Have you seen my son? Have you? He’s probably the cutest baby in the world.”

We are home. The day doesn’t end when the shifts are three-hourly, but we survive, somehow. I do not sleep when you sleep, because I am wired, and worrying, but sometimes I manage to simply lie with you in bed and watch shows about plastic women selling plastic houses. You are me, and him, but much more than that, you are already so you: an observer of life and a baby who never wants to close his eyes.

At this moment, the future is invisible. There is only now. And these days of intensity and tenderness. One day you will run around me, a head full of bouncing curls, and try to make jokes and hold out your hand for magic kisses. You will speak in two languages and say things I do not understand. Until then, I settle in to cuddles and protection and a brand new identity. There is only now.