In the middle of the night

In the middle of the night, Alice wakes me ever so gently. She has a habit of doing these little coughs when she's stirring, closely followed by the sounds of her stretching and flexing her little limbs about, and then, after a few more minutes, I hear the suggestive smacking of her lips that signal she is hungry. She is such a helpful little baby. She tries very hard to communicate with us and she is very good at letting us know what it is she wants. Or perhaps we are very good at interpreting her signals. A bit of both, no doubt. We are very patient with each other, all of us. We take our time because we know how precious, how irreplaceable time spent with Alice is. I gaze at her so long sometimes that I think I can see her growing. I've become a bit obsessive about trying to commit every inch of her, every minute spent in her company, to my mind. In case she disappears, of course. I still half-expect her to be gone when I wake up in the mornings. I don't know how I'll ever sleep without her in my room.

She is a good sleeper, my baby. She has been from the day she was born. Admittedly, she slept so well those early weeks because she was jaundiced and lethargic (I didn't know that at the time, though), but even though she is thriving now and drinking herself silly with milk she is still a pretty settled sleeper. She's beginning to stretch out her feeds to the four-hour mark, although this seems to happen more frequently during the day than during the night time. I don't dare complain about how hard it is to get up at 1am or 4am on these cold. wintry Melbourne nights, however. I can't think of a better reason to find myself cold and weary than my dear baby's comfort and satisfaction. It's much easier to be on the couch in the middle of the night feeding my snuggly, warm Alice than it is to be sitting there aching, longing, grieving for her brother, as I have for so many nights since he died.

Though Alice is here safely with me in the post-midnight hours, that feeling that the darkness is time for mourning must still be etched in my mind. I find the night time makes me feel very sad, still, though I'm holding my heart's greatest wish in my arms. It's too quiet. Or it's too lonely. Or it's too something I can't quite put my finger on. Sometimes I just want to wake Les up and have him sit with me just to share the moment. I contemplate turning on the TV but that kind of noise feels like an assault at that time of the morning. I'm thinking of setting up the radio in the living room so I can just listen to some soft, comforting voices - a podcast from the BBC or something like that.

I sit with Alice at 1am and try to stay present with her, sharing those special moments of quiet time with her. But my mind does wander. It wanders to Max - of course it does. The place where I usually sit to feed her directly faces the shelf where his photo sits, where I display the little book I wrote about him, where his name is spelled out in wooden letters. I like that he is there with us but it hurts so much every night, all over again, that he is not there with us, really. The middle of the night is not the time to be contemplating the meaning of life and death but there I go anyway. If Max had lived Alice would not be here. But I can't imagine Alice not existing, so does that mean I'm glad Max died? It always comes back to 'why' - why did it happen this way? Why can't they both be here with me? Why was I given this insurmountable cross to bear?

The love I have for my children is overwhelming but it is stretched across a divide - the divide between the living and the dead. I feel like I am back at the beginning of this journey again, finding a way to navigate through the most complex mix of emotions. I'm trying to let Alice be my guide. She is a healer, of that I am sure. I wonder if she knows what a balm to my heart she is. She does not fix the part of it that broke when Max died. That is not her job. That break cannot be mended. But she warms and expands all of its other chambers of feeling in a way I could not previously have imagined, and in those moments, alongside the sadness, I just overflow with love for her. She is sweetness. She is warmth. She is love. She's the best reason I've had to be up past midnight in a very long time.