So Max is doing really well, feeding, pooping, sleeping, crying. Everything a baby should. Parents still proud and both sets of Grandparents, prouder. I thought that I'd be sort of settling down to a revelation equilibrium at this stage, yet he does something truely astonishing every five minutes or so.
His first awake proper smile in response to us, a full bodied laugh in his sleep and interested glances at high contrast pictures. These are just a few of his most magnificent achievements. We have noted his consistent rise in weight using the Wii and he even has his own little Mii complete with babygro. So full steam ahead!
What I wanted to mention today is the night time dream world that I now inhabit. Max feeds well up until about midnight and then has between three and four hours sleep. This means he wakes up with a full nappy and an empty stomach at about four AM. I obviously can't feed him, so my job is to change him and try at least a little bit to keep Ciara company while she is feeing him. The interruption to sleep I can handle, up I get, dodge the pee and ruturn a clean child to his mother for a night-time snack. I dutifully write down the start time of the feed and contribute a few comforting and supportive words. Ciara has also been roused from sleep and neither of us are the most conversational at that time. So we sit in the low light and Max feeds. I do not have an eager pair of gums latched on to one of my nipples, sucking literally for dear life, so I fade, fade, fade and eventually sleep. Then I have a little dream, then I wake up, then I fade and half dream and then wake, then ....
This quick change between sleeping, half sleeping and waking makes for the ideal environment for a good dose of hallucinations. Colours spiral, images flash, there are abductors just outside the door. There are spiders waiting to eat my wife and son, levying me to take the rap. There are pages and pages of documentation to fill out to get soup from the shops. The apartment has grown and has two levels with a snake pit under the stairs and a mezzanine floor with a cocktail lounge. These are all perfectly good dreams, they are standard enough fair. The mixing of awake concerns with sleepy exaggeration. But that is what they are and what they should stay. Unfortunately these days they are spilling over into reality. I walk with fear from the bedroom, waiting for the four storey drop from the door onto spikes. I spout complete drivel to Ciara like "we need to get a grow pot for the baby" or "I'm going to get the Facebook".
None of this has become a problem yet. I am still functioning, I haven't changed Max's nappy and wrapped him in tin-foil or anything, but it's only a matter of time. On the other hand I could get used to all of this and the hallucinations will stop. That'd would be a little bit of a pity. I know I would be more useful to my family and less likely to attack imaginary intruders with the fire extinguisher, but it would be a pity. Some people would pay really good money to some very dodgy characters for the same experience. I have it for free. The whole trip, the 'doors of perception', 'the whole of the moon', 'the path to enlightenment' or the 'long dark tea-time of the soul'. Sure I could become a transcendental guru. But Max doesn't need a hippy daddy.
I have a limit though. If any of my students make an appearance, I'm going to have to reconsider! I have enough of them during the day.
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