Just before midnight-0200
Mother feeds, changes nappy, bathes sticky eye and tries to persuade baby to sleep, then washes feeding bottles, dumps body into travel cot next to comatose dad, before getting some sleep herself.
0500-0700
Dad woken not by a bang, but a whimper. Retrieves teat from sterilizer and warms feed. Retrieves noisy red thing from travel cot (no need for a full-size cot yet!), and inserts bottle into large noisy orifice. Much milk-hoovering and sucking, with breaks for hiccoughs, spluttering, back-rubbing and burping, whingeing, and facial contortions. Baby is also quite active (and shows particular dexterity and unexpected forcefulness in pulling Daddy’s beard).
After an hour or so of these diversions, Dad applies chloramphenicol to the re-gummed eye and changes her nappy. Baby takes to developing useful skills such as wriggling, admiring any available light source, and impersonating Cruella de Ville, albeit without the cigarette holder. At about 06.30, she is ready to revisit her bottle (so is Dad, but suspects that Cruella is too young to be accused of driving a man to drink). She continues to hoover, while polishing skills such as directing traffic and regurgitation. A little before 07.00, Dad returns her to the travel cot and prepares the used bottle for sterilization: cold rinse, brush with detergent, re-rinse, rub teat with salt, and re-re-rinse. This hardly seems to leave much for the sterilizer to do, but he drops the bits into the Clean Machine anyway, then clears up and crawls into bed (waking Mum in the process)…
07.05-08.30
Everyone is asleep. The postman always rings twice, but Mum manages to get down in time to pick up a Congratulations card and some larger size cardigans with at least a quarter of a second to spare.
09.45-11.45
Cruella stirs and gurgles. Mum abandons her lie-in and makes up a feed, puts out the rubbish, and inserts bottle into appropriate orifice – Cruella’s, of course - and settles down for a long feed ‘n’ change. At around 11.00, Dad manages to scrape together a minimal breakfast. Things have moved on since Xmas, when Topsy turved ubiquitously and Xmas brunch was a boiled egg at around 3.00 in the afternoon. At 11.15, the first of today’s visitor shift arrives: as she’s several years further along the childrearing curve than our parental hero and heroine, she and Mum settle down to a gossip and share tips and baby data.
Meanwhile, Dad embarks upon the long ritual of revitalizing the sterilizers. How can a few pounds of humanity and less than three weeks of life generate so many processes, requiring so many labour-saving devices? How did (and does) the pre-technological revolution world survive without such devices? How does such a bitty, finicky process get to be described as labour-saving? And how come the process is so different for different sterilizers?
Midday
Cruella demands an extra-curricular feed. After 20 minutes of sucking (Cruella’s), Dad boils some water for feeds and leaves it to cool. Mum comes off phone and persuades Helen to do the ironing while she washes her hair with the water Dad just boiled for rinsing bottles. Dad sighs, redoes from start, and prepares (hopefully) 24-hours-worth of feeds. Then, now that everyone else has got into the idea of feeding, he and Helen prepare some lunch, while Mum starts the washing.
2.00
Lunch is served…
2.15
Mum prepares next feed.
2.30
Helen can't take any more chaos and goes home. Mum goes to bank in the hope that there’s still some money there, while Dad finishes feed and changes nappy.
3.50
Mum can't postpone returning home any longer. Essential phone calls. Relaxation, including some dozing. Conversation.
5.00
Mum starts cooking while Dad makes up camomile tea-tingeed water for Cruella.
6.00-ish
Tea-ish…
6.30
Prepare feed.
7.00-8.15
Mum on feeding and changing duties. Dad goes to Tesco. 2nd visitor arrives at 7.15.
8.45
Dad takes over longest feed in living history while Mum returns breast-pump to NCT, as Cruella clearly prefers formula.
9.20
Mum is back. Boiled (and cooled!) water for Cruella, more interesting beverages for the rest of the assembly. Washing cleared.
10.40
Washing up. Guest departs, tactfully managing not to look too eager to be away.
11.00
Top-up of pre-prepared feeds.
11.30.
Mum writes out birth announcements, which Dad is expected to print out at work. Everyone loves a Mac…
11.55
Mum pours Dad another scotch and retires.
12.10
Cruella has finally had enough entertainment for now and goes to sleep. Peace and dozing for about two hours, when she's due another feed. Possibly Dad will also take the opportunity to learn new skills, such as dealing with an urgent memo and administering a feed simultaneously. While looking forward to a relatively relaxing return to full-time work.