It's the night before the christening, about 0300.
I don't know many single parents. One or two, amongst my circle of friends, but I don't know them well. Most of the families I know are settled, stable ones, at least as far as I'm aware. For the last four months, V and I have done pretty much everything together with V. Bathtimes are a dual operation. Like clockwork, she feeds F, I burp her.
Not tonight. It's just me tonight.
It was just me last night too. F has been exemplary, as usual. Eating formula milk without protesting, happily sleeping through between nine and five. Giggling and chuckling on her sheepskin when doing neither of those. So why am I so terrified?
There are moments, like the two a.m. minor disaster last night when I melted a plastic bottle top on to one of the cooker's hobs and flooded the flat with the stench of burning chemicals, that I know wouldn't happen if my wife was here.
I don't have enough hands. Everything must be planned several steps further in advance than I usually bother with. The milk must be made in advance, and then set to warm while I change nappies, otherwise F has to wait on being fed. She gets frustrated then quickly frighteningly furious if that happens. You cannot carry a screaming baby near pans of boiling water. Bathing her singlehanded is really tough, she won't relax and fights against me, trying to struggle free so she can try and drown herself.
Even normally, when I carry F round the flat, parts of my stomach clench when I pass the chairs round the dining room table. They have such solid, angular corners. What if I slipped just here, I think with horror, and she fell just so, bang! That would be it.
Those shuddering parts of my stomach are entirely knotted tonight. If I was a health insurance salesman, I would always call at three in the morning. Kick the worried when they're down, you know. They'd agree to any crazy premium. I'd be rich. Also a bastard.
My parents are here for the weekend, thankfully, as are Godfather B and my excellent friend JM. So all day I've been able to stay relatively calm and relaxed, playing the genial host and gladly allowing them to buy me food or help tidy and clean around F.
When I'm not rushing up to the hospital, that is. The minute I'm on the tram, all the relaxed geniality sloughs off me like snakeskin, revealing the pale, trembly creature beneath. No wonder people give up their seats for me.
Am I striking enough notes of deadly panic yet? Read back over the last two blogs, my wife is strikingly absent from them. She is not here right now. I don't know when she'll be back. Because it's 0300, I have to admit to myself that I don't even know if she will be. How long can I keep up the facade I've managed all day for my guests, if I have to?
Forever?
Okay, that's enough.
Those of you who were there already know how much of a drama queen I'm being. I just like to share the terror a little. V was hospitalised with pneumonia temporarily. Whilst the ward staff happily waived visiting hour restrictions so that F could continue breast-feeding, she couldn't stay on the ward with her mum overnight. Hence my brief burst of single parenting, which has made me several things: -
1. Aware that I could, in a pinch, probably just about manage it, at least for a while
2. Extremely glad I don't have to, to an almost lunatic degree
3. Realise that all those comedy scenes in the Simpsons or Family Guy where the Dad is left to care for the family alone for a few hours and there's instant knee-deep rubbish all through the house, unwashed children in torn clothes and a fridge empty of everything except crumpled beer cans are, in fact, not remotely funny. Instead, they are (in the words of the blurb on the back of the video case of almost every lame sci-fi movie of the eighties) 'a nightmare reality set in the not-too-distant future'
Luckily, three in the morning only comes once a day. The rest of the time, I think I cope pretty well, all things considered. Because really, that's the only option. F needs parenting. I must provide, regardless of circumstance, confidence or ability. Like a harpoon through the chest, that steely truth is what draws me on through these frantic few days.
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