Cloud

Quite a tough week, that.

V has been back in hospital again, still not really over whatever it is that's been making her out of breath, so I've once more donned the mantle of Solo Dad. It's a rubbish mantle, mostly made of pukey blankets and poop stains. No less heroic for all that, I like to think.

It was almost as though we were being punished for having an optimistic moment in the last post. Cheerful future? Blue skies and flowers? Not on my watch, quoth fate. How dare you find a silver lining. Back to endless anxiety and sleepless nights forthwith. And have some work stress thrown in for good measure, go on. See how you cope with a few random voice jobs at short notice, get your babysitting timetable organised round that.

It didn't seem like V's been away a week. I vaguely remember moments of 3 a.m. panic. Or, as Freja is now weaning on to bottles of formula, some of the memorably vast dumps she's taken. Those have stuck in my mind, particularly the one she did on my lap which blossomed through her clothes like a horrible experiment in mustard yellow tie-dying.

There was also a fun moment being trained how to operate an oxygen machine in Swedish, for potential home use. It hasn't proved necessary in the end, which is good. I understood most of what was said, and could read up in a manual afterwards to clear up any ambiguity. As ever, I couldn't help but wonder how many times I'd missed important words like 'not' or 'don't', and got an entirely false sense of what the hell I was supposed to do.

The feeling of confused alarm that being briefed on something important in a foreign language generates was well worth it, though. I got to see the nurse try to mime 'bug zapper'. You can't go near them, or anything that sparks, as the lingering aura of oxygen trapped in your hair and clothes might cause you to ignite spectacularly, rather like the bugs they're supposed to catch. I wonder who discovered that first time around?

Otherwise it was one long round of filling, emptying and boiling bottles, sleeping when F did or tiptoeing out of the room after laying her in her cot to catch up on emails. V's family were amazing again, popping round to see how I was or taking F for walks or full days out. I feel a little dazed, as though I've just come back from holiday to discover I still live in the same old place.

V is home for the weekend, and arrived with some celebratory sushi. I thought F had been coping with complete and remarkable calm all through the week, possibly even not really understanding what was going on. But she was so pleased to see her mum home that I now suspect she's got the same ability I have to appear calm under pressure. I'm not actually calm under pressure, I hasten to add, I just start thinking very slowly. This gives an impression of unshakeable hard-headedness. It's fairly worthless as impressions go, you just need to press me for an actual decision on anything and it all goes to pot.

They're both curled up next door, asleep on the bed and catching up on a week of lost hugging. I now realise I'd stopped breathing properly at some point in the last seven days, because I've just started doing it normally again.