Everyday with my little L is such a gift. That gummy smile of hers has supernatural powers, I swear. It just melts away all my worries and exhaustion, even if only for a moment. Her morning breath is intoxicating too: better than the scent of turkey on thanksgiving or Issey Miyake or sweet grass or a late summer’s bon fire. I’m sure there’s some physiological reason that her scent has such power over me. It’s probably something about preventing cave women from abandoning their babies in the woods to be eaten by saber tooth tigers. Even removing the emotion from it like that, it’s still pretty cool. Just how connected we are with our wee ones.

I remember when my babe was still super fresh I couldn’t leave her alone with anyone other than my partner without experiencing this insane, almost visceral, anxiety. Even 30 minutes could set me off, although logically I knew she was perfectly fine. I had to teach myself to let go of that, bit by bit. I’m still working on it.

In fact, last night was the first time I’ve ever asked my husband to look after L’s bedtime on his own. When he’s home we do bath time altogether, but I have always done the bottle on my own, at least since she started sleeping in her crib around 4 months. Honestly, I think I’ve grown quite attached to the routine. And to be fair, I always top her up with breast milk so it just made sense for me to do it. I think it’s definitely time to have a back up though. We’ve gone out and left her with her Obachan before, but I always put her down first. That, or we’d be back before her bedtime. Anyway, it went just fine of course, although she did wake up early so maybe she still needs that top up for now. Either way, it felt good to let her papa experience the quiet intimacy of bedtime with the peanut. Maybe it’s time to loosen the reigns on a few more things…