babies

Lilah did little more than sleep and eat and cry, which to me was the most fascinating thing in the entire universe. Why did she cry? When did she sleep? What made her eat a lot one day and little the next? Was she changing with time? I did what any obsessed person would do in such a case: I recorded data, plotted it, calculated statistical correlations. First I just wrote on scraps of paper and made charts on graph paper, but I very quickly became more sophisticated. I wrote computer software to make a beautifully colored plot showing times when Diane fed Lilah, in black; when I fed her, in blue (expressed mother's milk, if you must know); Lilah's fussy times, in angry red; her happy times, in green. I calculated patterns in sleeping times, eating times, length of sleep, amounts eaten.Then, I did what any obsessed person would do these days; I put it all on the Web.

She is doing that on purpose, he thought as he tried to force his own smile away from his wide, damp jaws. She is being adorable as some sort of hideous ruse, to spite me. What a mean baby!...Do not fall in love with that baby...

Human making is our mission.

A baby's cry is precisely as serious as it sounds.

Shrieking Brooke__ name as loudly as I could, out in the corridor, I brought her running quickly to my room.__hat__ happened, what__ wrong?_ she immediately cried concerned, legging it up the stairs two at a time. She appeared breathless outside the kitchen door. Brian appeared sleepily at his door too, awoken by the noise, and watched us.__he__ moving,_ I cried.__hat? Flutters like before?___o more, here feel._ I grabbed her hand and pushed it down onto myexposed belly. Brian averted his eyes as I stood, belly out and top up over my bra, in the middle of the corridor.__ can__ push you that hard,_ she exclaimed, pulling back her fingers surprised. __t will hurt you, or her, I can__ do that.___es, you can,_ I insisted. __ou won__ hurt us._ I pulled her hand back and pushed her long fingers into my belly and we stood waiting, hardly daring to breathe. You kicked again, hard into my side, under Brooke__ long pink fingernails. Brooke jumped away from me in shock and then burst out laughing. She clapped her hands together delighted.__ell?_ I asked her.__he kicked me,_ Brooke shrieked still jumping up and down clapping. __he kicked me. That was amazing, let me do it again._ She came back over towards me slowly. Cautiously she pushed her fingers into the same spot on my side. We waited again in silence and I saw her face slightly drop as the seconds ticked by.__h it works,_ she yelled, as again she jumped back shocked as the tiny little feet thudded from my insides at her hand. __ love it. Do it again._ I laughed and then Brian stepped forward.__an I have a go?_ he asked quietly, fiddling with his hands and stepping out of his room towards us.__f course you can, come here.__nd that is how we spent the next few minutes out in the corridor by the kitchen, shrieking, whooping, and jumping around. If anyone had been in the house, I know they would probably have thought we were all mad. Mad, no. Thrilled and excited, most definitely.Baby girl, you did that to us. Thank you.

You tell me I have to crush a field of babies to keep breathing? Sure. You say people who rely on me aren't going to live unless I turn someone's head into a bowl of gravy? I'm there. I don't feel bad about it. I don't think about it. It just is what it is. It's survival.

The children we bring into the world are small replicas of ourselves and our husbands; the pride and joy of grandfathers and grandmothers. We dream of being mothers, and for most of us that dreams are realised naturally. For this is the Miracle of Life.

There is not much you can say about a baby unless you are talking with its father or another mother or nurse; infants are not part of the realm of ordinary language, talk is inadequate to them as they are inadequate to talk.