This Morning

Our son is moaning from his crib. He sounds like a zombie searching for brains, like a beached sea lion, like a hospital ward full of tummy aches.

We are ignoring him because it is 5:45 am and the upcoming 15 minutes (and preceding 10) are the only time we get to ourselves.

We are ignoring each other, too, we have a sectional couch just so we can sit each at each end, our laptops buzzing faintly while we pour our first cups of coffee down our throats.

***

At 12:15 am today I was lying in bed, alone, while SA comforted Trombone after a nightmare. Trombone had woken, screaming “No! NO! NO!” and crying. It was one of the most disturbing sounds I have ever heard. I was lying in bed, alone, in the dark, trying to find a comfortable position, feeling as though there was a giant bowling ball in my gut. Feeling as though someone small but powerful was tossing a bowling ball back and forth in my gut. Someone small and powerful whose feet or arms now reach up into my lung’s neighbourhood and whose butt likes to dance against my belly button.

What the hell were we thinking, I thought hazily, picturing us a few months down the road; best-case-scenario another baby with Trombone’s temperment lying by the side of the bed for 3 months squalling every 2 hours for food while its big brother has Chronic Zombie Nightmares until we cut out dairy before bed (the mind does wander a bit at that time of day). What the hell were we thinking! to mess with our delightful status quo not once but, having regained a semblance of it, TWICE.

Maybe, if we could regain its semblance once, we could regain a semblance of that semblance, a mirror image of its photograph. By then, like a game of Telephone, it will have been warped – or positive-spin, shaped into a whole other, new status quo. Yes, I am just, again, coming to terms with The New Normal. Trying not to mourn my past but instead embrace the opportunity to change and grow along with my progeny.

SA came back to bed, having comforted; Trombone having agreed to go back to sleep. We lay next to each other, not sleeping, for half an hour before getting up to drink warm milk and have snacks and sit quietly on our sectional couch each at each end reading internet pages that appeal to us. Thank god for the Internet, up and running 24 hours a day. The hippo tumbled and shouldered its heavy load inside me as I crunched an apple, finally quieting when the warm milk hit. After an hour I trudged back up to bed, wedged my many pillows around me and breathed deeply until sleep came.

***

He has stopped moaning and is now calling the names of farm animals. He is truly awake now; off schedule, off book, who knows why. With a third of a cup of coffee in my gut, I feel warm and lucky and tired and hungry and glad that it’s Friday and ready for another
car ride
bus ride
day
weekend
child

and also not ready at all.