2. Tenterhooks

I had a big win last week, but it took me a while before I could enjoy it.

I’ve got a food shopping mission which involves heading across town. It’s ‘my’ day with the baby and it should be easy, but he’s been showing an aversion to the pram and it’s raining heavily so the vinyl cover will be on, which usually makes it worse. I set off, he’s great, he sleeps, I shop, we head home, he wakes, smiles and laughs a bit, sleeps, and only complains a little when we’re one block from home with a cooler bag full of yellowtail, salmon and the best bit: the Mediterranean fatty tuna. A complete success!

And yet the entire time I was gripped by low grade tension. The fear he’ll wake crying and I can’t get him out because of the rain. The prospect of a full meltdown, with the mission abandoned and three quarters of an hour’s screaming all the way home – bad enough on its own but worse if we never even get to fill the shopping bag. When he wakes I frantically smile and laugh and sing some songs. His eyes dropping back into sleep feels like a goal, but not a match-winning one as the tension persists.

It’s not until we’re back, he’s changed and fed, the pram folded, the wet gear drying and the fish is stored that I can finally relax and take my victory lap: “That all went rather well,” I say, as though the entire trip has felt like an easy cruise rather than a slalom through the rapids.

This is life lived on tenterhooks.

I feel the tension when he’s asleep and I’m actually doing something normal like eating, or cooking, or finally reading more than a couple of paragraphs of a book. If it’s a task, I find myself rushing: some subconscious instinct is telling me that a finished but 6/10 dish is better than an unfinished attempt at a 10/10 one, so I cut corners – perhaps not taking reduction of a sauce quite as far as I want, or using onions that are browned only just enough. 

If it’s something pleasurable just a little bit of focus is stolen away, not fully losing yourself in the book, not taking the time to savour each mouthful. Half an eye and half an ear are always somewhere else. Even my sleep has become more fragile. Previously a heavy sleeper, I now wake quickly multiple times a night prompted by a sound or a movement.

Moments spent with attention somewhere other than him feel fragile – like a big floating bubble, they can pop at any moment and in seconds have disappeared without trace.

I recall our first trip to a café when he was three weeks old. It’s a calm, sunny September morning after the schools have gone back. We’re on our way to a clinic appointment when we get a call that it’s been pushed back an hour. He’s asleep in the pram, and so we decide to get some breakfast to kill time. It’s the first time we’ve eaten more than a croissant outside the house. There are a few other tables in the café, some music is playing. This moment – eating food that someone else has made, with cutlery that someone else will wash up – should feel like a real treat. Yet I can’t relax into it and wolf down my breakfast in the expectation he’ll wake at any moment and cry and need to be picked up and maybe whisked outside. I’m finished while my partner has barely started her plate, ready for the wake up, which comes a few minutes later.

We have a baby who likes to be held. He’s a happy baby, healthy and thriving. But he’s only five months old with the limits on self-sufficiency that entails. It’s almost as if he – like us – knows that two parents at home is a rare blessing and he’s determined to make the most of it. He wants to be held when he’s going to sleep. He wants to be held when he’s awake. We have a bouncer chair, a booster turning a kitchen counter stool into a high chair, an inflatable ring, a baby gym and a cot. He spends time in each of these. But not as much time as he spends being held. 

We hear from other parents that their babies were never cuddly, or quickly grew out of it, so we’re not in any hurry to train him out of it. The comfort of a baby sleeping on you is profound. Giving into it is easy. 

But life also requires doing other things: shopping, cooking, eating, housework, staying active and being social. It’s trying to do these when the feeling of being on tenterhooks kicks in. The length of time he’ll be happy in his bouncer before wanting to be held is totally unpredictable. His contentment in the pram veers wildly from super happy to proper purple crying, demanding to be fished out. The sling is always tucked into the pram, and many a trip involves pushing an empty pram with a baby strapped to you.

The tenterhooks feeling makes me walk faster when he’s in the pram and happy, the subconscious urge to get where we’re going quickly while the going is good flooding through my feet. 

It was a couple of months before we next headed out to eat. He’s awake and sitting on me, but fascinated at watching the street outside. We get a little bolder and start to head out more often. Restaurant and menu choices get filtered around what can be eaten one-handed if a baby’s on the other arm. Anything that can be eaten with chopsticks is good. Steak night at a hotel was more of a challenge, with my partner getting in an early practice at cutting food into bite-sized pieces. Hot pot seemed like a great idea when he was asleep, but a loud rendition of happy birthday at the next table woke him up just as boiling pots of spicy Sichuan and mushroom broths arrive at the table. Fortunately it’s a quiet weekday lunchtime and one of the waiting staff offers to take him and he spends a happy 45 minutes being held and cruising round the restaurant as we eat. 

But free childcare at a restaurant is a rare bonus. 

We adapt. We build in time to get him to sleep before a trip. We divide our time more consciously to give each other free rein for tasks that need focus, and for moments of proper downtime without interruption. I’m getting better at menus and dishes that need short bursts of work and can cope with stop-start attention. 

And even though he’s teething the moments of joy with him far outweigh the need for moments without.