How close is close? It’s sleeping with a spine pressed against yours. It’s someone else filling your bladder, dictating what you eat, deciding when you should sleep. Carrying a baby will redefine how close you are to another person; not only because of the daily experience of bonding you have with your unborn child, but also because you will share many things that were not in your wedding vows: backache, swollen ankles and haemorrhoids. Close is him being down the business end when you are crowning (and lets not even think about the rest.)
Close is accepting a small mewling creature gnawing your nipples to shreds, leaving permanent marks on skin that will never shrink back and confusing your formerly-reasoned thinking to the point where you have no idea which way is up.
Close is also lying all night on an array of small sharp objects disguised as toys- which you never quite got round to picking up before bedtime- because that same small mewling infant is now a toddler with a temperature. Close is holding their burning body under the shower to clean off the vomit that covered you both at dawn. Close is lying next to them as they finally, after being dosed to the eyeballs, after reading their most favourite story a dozen times, close their eyes. Close is watching the flickering eyelashes of REM sleep as you whisper “I love you” and creep downstairs to tidy up the detritus of the day and put yet another load of laundry on.
The last picture is amazing and I love the story – laughing but also crying at the way you describe “close”.
Aww so adorable x
Thanks Susan. She is often adorable when asleep 😀
what a beuatiful post!!
Oh those eye lashes, so delicate and beautiful.
Mollyxxx
These gorgeous photos are a lovely compliment to a beautifully written post.
What a peaceful angel
Thank you all for such lovely comments. She was pretty ill, but so beautiful I needed to capture it. Much better now though!
Gorgeous post, so true. Beautiful photos too.
I love this post. Beautifully written. It’s hard to encapsulate the closeness in words sometimes but you’ve done a pretty amazing job.
Such a beautiful post and gorgeous photos to go with it
Gorgeous photos. I especially love the last one.
Awwww- very sweet. I do love a sleeping child 🙂
What a wonderful post, lovely photos.