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In The Land Of Babycakes

Making babies is fun, having them is not. Of all of life's events, becoming parents is the most conservatising. Any pretensions to radicalness are the first casualty. But...

Outlook Web Desk

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He feeds, sometimes in a frenzy, searching for my nipple like a shark scything through a school of tuna. At other times, getting mouth to breast is as delicate an operation as docking the Mir Space station. While he sucks, his hands float to one side and stroke the air as though he were Krishna playing his flute. I'm drawn to him like the most love-sick, dumb-struck gopi of the lot, content to watch him feed, thrilled to bits that I'm his chosen milkmaid.
"Agoo!" I exclaim.

My baby looks at me and the unoiled cogs of his motor functions clank to life as he lies there on the bed and flails. He stops. He lies there, helpless as a flipped turtle.

"Aggee!" I remark, setting off another manic upside-down doggy paddle.

"A..." He looks at me expectantly, wondering what the next syllable might possibly be. "Aaaa...gooo!"

This can go on for hours.
Week five and he's discovered his hands. He stares at them astounded that such an excellent source of entertainment, amusement and fascination had been so thoughtfully provided right there on the end of an arm.
Sixteen weeks old and he can support his own weight—just. He pushes his legs down dead straight and hangs on to my thumbs, while his hips do a little Elvis gyration.It's an instant cure for all unhappiness. I plant him like a flagpole and he looks around from the great height of his verticality, hugely pleased. It is exceptionally endearing.
We drift together at night. I lie moored in him like a boat on a very small sandbank, lulled by the rhythmic tug of his sucking. As his belly fills, so the rising tide of sleep covers first him, then me, releasing us both to resume our separate journeys on through the dark.
"Oooh my goodness, look at that hair!" We soon got used to being stopped in the street for people to exclaim over this extraordinary coif. His hair has an entire separate identity of its own. He was the hairiest baby to have been born in High Wycombe hospital or possibly anywhere else. A one-week-old baby. With a side parting.
"Hello, pudding," I say.

He looks up and smiles like all the Christmas lights coming on at once.
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