Tapas & Tantrums

We ate tapas at a small Mediterranean restaurant near Carla’s mother’s. It’s the type of place where fake clematis crawls up wooden rustic beams, fairy lights hang from the ceiling, mandolin music plays through hidden speakers, and candles poke up from old wine bottles. It’s also the nearest to Spain we were going to get this year. During the meal we talked, mostly about Amelie, her christening, and how strange it was not seeing her sucking the edge of the table – Amelie is currently going through the stage where the only sense she truly has confidence in is taste. We ate tapas and drank cheap wine and then we left. Two minutes into the drive back home, we got the call. As soon as I heard Carla’s mobile play Sweet Home Alabama by Leonard Skynard, I knew it was her mother. Carla didn’t even say hello, her first words were, "What’s happened?" I interjected, and she whispered back that Amelie is hysterical. Regrettably, I knew she didn’t mean funny. As it turns out, Amelie didn’t take well to being in a strange bedroom, in a strange bed (well, actually it was a travel cot), so decided to let everyone, including the adjoining houses know of her unease. Amelie gets like this. She is, at times, inconsolable when she’s upset, and we’ve found the only way to calm her down is to pick her up and take her outside. There’s something about the fresh air that really confuses her. I had the same problem when we moved to the country two years ago. Alas, fresh air wasn’t an option those first couple of days after Amelie was born.

While it’s implausible for her to know for sure, it did cross my mind more than once that Amelie chose to enter this world during a time when the days are short-lived, and nights are relentless, to make our inauguration into parenthood that little more challenging. Carla went into labour at 3am on a cold December Friday, and it took another 15 hours before Amelie opened her lungs for the first time. She must have liked the sound of her own voice because she didn’t stop again for almost 20 hours after that. The physical strain Carla had been under had almost dissipated upon seeing Amelie. And after consuming three rounds of what she considered the "best toast" she’d ever eaten, she began to take to the role of mother much better than I was at being a father. It was decided, considering there was 24-hour mid-wife support on tap, that I should go home and rest. I wasn’t going to argue. That night was very strange. Although an angry wind blew outside our window, all I remember hearing when I closed my eyes was Amelie’s cry. All I saw on the inside of my eyelids was Carla’s face bent with agony.

I returned the next morning, early. I had purchased a newspaper to document the occasion (Carla’s idea), a small teddy for Amelie, and little chocolate treats for Carla. I imagined, before entering the delivery room, to find both mother and baby on the bed together in peaceful slumber, held in the warm hue from the bedside lamp. I saw myself tiptoeing in, kissing both on their forehead, and adjusting a blanket that had slipped from Carla’s shoulder. It was all so perfect. As I passed the reception, a midwife greeted me with a smile, one that lent itself more toward sympathy than simple cordialness. I thought nothing of it and carried on my way. In the distance, I heard the shrill of a newborn baby, the noise not too dissimilar to a tropical bird dancing on a hot skillet. I laughed to myself, and pitied the poor bastards who had to deal with that child. It was only as I neared the delivery room, and the noise grew louder, that I realised those poor bastards would be us. There had been one shift change since I left the previous night, which meant Carla had the support of at least four different midwives with a wealth of experience between them. None of them, it seemed, could shut Amelie up. Upon seeing Carla’s dark eyes, pallid skin, and the mix of both panic and relief upon seeing me, I knew all the advice given, all the warnings that being a new parent is the hardest job in the world, was more than just polite conversation.

Amelie fell asleep at 2pm, a full twenty hours after she was born. With impeccable timing, the grandparents arrived 30 minutes later and woke her up again. After stories were exchanged, more advice given, and multiple pictures taken, they left and I bedded down on the floor for the night. Amelie was still adamant she wanted all the other parents on the ward to count their blessings she was not their child. I found the only way to stop her from crying was to insert my little finger into her mouth. I can say with some confidence that I have fallen asleep in some very strange places in my time, but I had never gone to sleep stood upright with one hand lent against the wall, and my other feeding a newborn.

Leo J Burke once said, "People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one". So, if you’re an expecting parent about to settle down for the night, consider the silence. Remember and savour it, commit it to memory, for there may come a time in the near future when you’ll need reminding that sleep still exists, unbroken, and faultless in its simplicity.