In search of solitude

This is posted 3 years later made up from my notes hurriedly scribbled in the dark, as these thoughts came crashing into my quiet midnight mind. I was supposed to be recording facts about feeding, times, settling and sleep. Instead it records a mother's intimate love affair with her baby.

I write as our tiny one, and my special joy, feeds perhaps for one of the last times from me in the quiet of the evening when all else are asleep. She is playing with my hair, her free and roaming arm sways in the imagined breeze as she suckles. She has started eating solid food, and with gusto, so I fear she won't need me for much longer. It will be a relief but also a sadness... my last baby.

She has bright blue eyes so in contrast to mine, that drink in the room and my face but is distracted by my pen wobbling around on the table, her nightlight twinkles and throws its luminescence around our embrace.

It is my favourite time of day, alone and quiet, yet warm and together, the perfect human symbiosis, mother and child, intimate, beautiful, precious... Good night my darling, sleep tight I say to her, safe in the knowledge that my warm milk fills her tummy with comfort and contentment. I linger, not wanting to break the spell, and cuddle her for longer than she needs. As she sleeps I ponder...

I think it's odd that I crave solitude, especially after lifetime in search of place and time to call hearth and home, chasing an imagined fairytale of romance, love and family warmth.

I do now have that and it's magical and warm and safe, but also frightening, overwhelming and exhausting... who knew that creating the fairytale required work, and lots of it... there was no mention in my childhood cinderella stories.

It's not just the daily routine, the emotional strain placed on me by small children, I struggle personally with excessive noise and movement and a lack of control, a lack of stillness. I need to find my solitude, its what I know how to do, it's how I grew up. Not sad and lonely, but often alone, quiet and contemplative, as an only child I was able to be in control of my environment. I socialised well for the most part after working hard to cast off the paralysing shyness of my early years. But I was always able to retreat, re-group and digest. But as familiar as I am with solitude, as an adult I searched for the family fairytale particularly as my childhood family seperated and broke apart. My friends replaced family and knew my innermost fears and hopes.

This little baby in my arms, the very special second baby, the sibling for my first baby that I never had in my own childhood, will never know how uniquely special she is to me and how she has changed our little family forever, the sibling relationship so longed for by me, is now playing out... the snatching, the not-so gentle cuddles have started, soon to be replaced by poking, pushing, hitting and "she said... she did... she took...". So familiar to my husband, the baby of 3 boys, our little girls are quiet and all adored, his fears are for the future, the teen years! For me, it is all new and I relish their developing kinship fraught with love and irritation. But through this growing family storm I need to find my quiet, to recentre and remain centred when so much is demanded of me physically, mentally and emotionally...

And so, my special little one has provided me an opportunity to be quiet and contemplative, to hug and to hold her while I reflect on today's victories and tomorrow's challenges... She stirs and looks at me and grins milkily... "Goodnight my angel" I whisper, "see you in the morning before the rest of them get up".