15 August, 2008
I'm starting to adjust to fatherhood - mostly, so far, it involves breathing exercises to try to ease out this ball of tension in my guts. My sleeping hasn't been too bad but I'm SO tense. I went to work Wednesday and today, and I'm sitting here with tension tummy. Yesterday, I was supposed to bring Joshua into the centre of town to meet his mummy (who was off getting her hair done for the first time in about 6 weeks) and I couldn't leave. That's right - couldn't leave the apartment with the baby. I was running through a million things in my head - what if he cries, what if he needs changing, what if he wakes up hungry, what about all the noise, the pollution, cars, what if someone tries to take him, oh my god. I started feeling a migraine coming on, and my stomach was so twisted up I felt sick. So I phoned Jo and said I wasn't coming. Let's try again another day, I said. The two of us, gently.
I'm not actually a stressed-out person, normally. I was telling myself in my head that there was no need to feel like this, and that I was being irrational. It was a pure physical reaction and no amount of breathing or Tai Chi or rationalization was helping. I think I'm having an overload of protective hormones.
17 August, 2008
Well, we brought him out for his first trip into the outside world and it was fine. He slept through almost all of it. It was raining for two days and Dublin has been flooding, and seabirds, some of them as big as the baby, were ambling around the Grand Canal docks looking for crumbs and fighting each other for territory. He was all bundled up in a giant blue outdoor suit with a hood, and every now and then he'd wave his arms around in his sleep. We sat by the water and drank coffee and ate chocolate. I was ecstatic, Jo was exhausted; when we got home again, Joshua woke up and Jo went to sleep.
That's how it's been - we sleep in shifts, like emergency workers. Last night I took late duty from 11pm to 2am and Jo got up at 5am for the graveyard shift while I slept through till it was time to get up for work. I feel a weird combination of energy and exhaustion. My back hurts from holding the baby (he likes to be held a lot, and has 3 different reasons for crying - 1) He's hungry, 2) He needs a nappy change, and 3) He just wants you to hold him, and sometimes sing to him.)
I've already made up, and forgotten, at least twenty songs, some of them quite creative. I've sung him to sleep several times. When he cries, Jo leaks milk. The whole thing, when you compare it to my life up to this point, is quite mad, and quite beautiful.