I took days for granted.
Not particular days, but the very concept of a day... with its morning, post-lunch lull, winding down towards evening and the eventual farewell to that day in anticipation of a new one. There is no such thing as this in Newborn World.
Remember drinking a tea whilst it was hot and writing morning pages? Now there are teas in the microwave or the terrible realisation it is already past 3pm and too late for a tea. Unless I want to be awake at all hours thinking about the Babadook.
Things of the ‘old world’ don’t make sense in this new one. The ‘tea’ itself loses its meaning. If it is not enjoyed alongside writing a diary or staring out of the window imagining running an alpaca farm, what is the point of said tea? If the tea is scarfed down in the minutes between feed and post-feed-where-she-can’t-be-put-down-and-must-be-bobbed-for-yonks, what is the tea even for? Merely for energy? To propel me? Like someone pounding Red Bulls whilst demolishing a shed?!
There were rituals to things I didn’t realise I had until they were gone.
Remember when an evening was a thing? Where you would approach it and wonder, is it a go-for-a-brisk-walk kinda day? Or a what’s-wrong-with-wine-on-a-Wednesday day? Now an evening is a new adventure - bath time and soft songs and ‘sleepy time.’ Trying to get her used to the concept of evening, whilst she has been too young to understand that there is a night and a day. For her, there is only asleep and awake. Away from mummy and daddy time or with mummy and daddy time.
For nearly three months now I have been in Newborn World. And it is just that - a totally different world. A parallel universe where the ‘day,’ as it was, becomes obsolete. A thing of a near-yet-seemingly-distant past, like Beanie Babies or the X Factor.
If there is a ‘day’ in Newborn World, it is a tiny one. It lasts three hours. She wakes, she eats, she needs cuddles, she listens to the musical otter and she sleeps once more. In her world, there are many tiny days. And I have had to let go of my world and enter hers. There is no other choice. She needs me in there.
So… what happened in our first day-of-the-day today? She slept in my arms and we watched Gilmore Girls. The day after that? We played with scrunchy rainbow and musical otter, who I was delighted to discover has a different setting. Jazzy Incy Wincy Spider was beginning to sound like George Ezra's 'Green Green Grass.'
On one day recently, I managed to wash the hair that has sat in a messy bun on top of my head since she was born. That was a great day. She had a bad day just now, because she needed a poo that wouldn’t come out. We all have those days.
Once, she slept for an entire day - through dinner time! - and we were so surprised, we said almost nothing to each other throughout the meal, so unprepared were we to have a dinner time like from the old world... where we could look at each other and chat, before Newborn World required us to pass her back and forth good-humouredly, taking quick bites of food, trying to calm her during the ‘witching’ hour.
She must know something of the old world too… (or the future world, for her?)... that the dusk makes her go wild. Even in her world of tiny days, the sun going down is still magical and unsettling. The sun coming up is still a thing of wide-eyes wonder.
In Newborn World, there is no such thing as going to bed and waking the following day. There is only sleeping for a ‘time.’ One hour? Three hours? Five? You don’t know yet. Don’t try to guess. If it is five, how lucky you are!
I have nearly gone mad three times from sleep deprivation. I can tell you when they were in old world days, though not newborn days. The thing with being in Newborn World, is that it is not made for grown ups. It can be painful and hard. You have to find ways to survive it. I think I have survived because I have a husband who can also enter Newborn World and give me a break for a little while. He lets me go back to adult world and sleep for a 6-hour stint. A sleep that in old world would have been known as ‘not enough!’ But now, feels like climbing out of the Wardrobe to be normal for a while before having to go back to Narnia.
The other reason I survive madness is because, at least once every tiny day, there is her smile. A smile that says she loves it… LOVES it… that I am in Newborn World with her. She needs me in that world.
Next week she will be twelve weeks old. Three months. Ninety days. 720 mini days.
I know it will change. And that when it changes, I will miss it, even though I have, at times, been sick of it. Even now, as I write this, it is because she is taking a newly-regular nap at 9am. For the first time in ages, I’ve been able to count on having an hour to do something. And I’ve used it to try and capture in writing what it is that I've just experienced. What this land is where I've been for what has felt like both an eternity and no time at all.
Must go. She will wake soon, I hope with a smile, so that we can have a good day.
If not, and she has woken on the wrong side of the Snuzpod feeling crabby… that’s okay too. There’s always tomorrow, which will start in three hours.
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