The night feeds you'll miss
While it's happening it's only tiredness. Afterwards it turns out to have been the one hour of the day when the two of you were alone in the world.
By Baby Kangoo Team
Nobody enjoys this at the time, and anyone who says otherwise is remembering it from a distance.
At the time it is dark, you are not finished sleeping, and there is a good chance you are quietly doing arithmetic about how many hours are left. Nothing about it feels like something you'd want back.
And yet it is the single thing parents name most often when asked what they miss.
Why it turns
Because of what it was, structurally, underneath the tiredness.
It was the only part of the day with nobody else in it. No phone worth looking at, nothing to be got through, nobody arriving. One adult, one very small person, one lamp. For a few months you had an hour like that every single night, and you will almost certainly never have anything like it again.
"It was the only time in that whole year that nobody wanted anything from me except him."
You can't feel that while it's happening. Exhaustion is a very poor lens for noticing that something is rare.
What actually disappears
Not the fact of it — you'll remember the night feeds existed. What goes is everything specific about them.
Which chair. Which side of the room the light came from. The particular noise they made when they were nearly done and nearly asleep. What you did with your free hand. What you thought about at four in the morning, night after night, which was probably the same three things.
And the ending is invisible, like all the endings. There is a last night feed and nobody knows it's the last, and the next week the routine is simply different.
Four lines, once
You are not going to keep a diary during this period, and you shouldn't try.
But once — one night, on your phone, one-handed, while it's still true:
- Where you sit, and what the light is
- What the room sounds like at that hour
- What they do with their hands
- What you think about, honestly, including the boring parts
- What you can see out of the window, if anything
Five lines. Ten minutes of a night you were awake for anyway.
Why this one, of everything
Of all the things worth writing down in the first year, this is the one that changes most between living it and remembering it.
Most of the rest gets remembered roughly as it was. This gets remembered inside out — as tiredness while it's happening, and as tenderness afterwards, and the second version is the one you'll be left holding for the rest of your life.
The notes you make now are the only chance to have both.