Muristek
Our six-week-old baby has settled into a routine of sorts… | Séamas O’Reilly
But her parents are both in a state of high alert
My baby daughter is awake, so that’s something. This is, you see, what parents and their kind friends refer to as being ‘alert’, the faint praise that forms the bedrock of every newborn parent’s suffering id. ‘She’s so alert,’ we say, for want of anything else. She has many admirable qualities. She’s extremely cute, certainly, and well… I’m sure other things will occur to me as I go on, leave it with me. But for now, she’s awake and not crying, so we’re patting ourselves on the back, since this is a rare and delightful occurrence.
Her sleeping patterns are broadly reliable (which is a blessing), but require us to be holding her at all times (which is not). This means my wife goes to bed at 10pm and the baby sleeps on me, while I watch schlocky movies and spoon light snacks into my face, with one hand, without moving for a few hours. Over the past six weeks, I’ve come to enjoy this time we have together; me lying stock still on the couch, her quietly purring on my chest, motionless save for the brief flinches caused by me wiping away crumbs which have, like a test case in a book on perfect parenting, fallen from my mouth and on to the top of her head. This lasts until about 2am, when she stirs and I bring her up for a change, hand her to her mum for a feed, and collapse into bed, only to wake up at six with the toddler and start the process again.
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