Yesterday. Late evening. After four wake-ups in about a 45-minute period, I give up. Put him into my bed and tell him I’ll be up in a bit. He goes right to sleep.
I finish a bit of work I need to do to get ready for a busy day. When I get into bed, I find he has taken it over: I feel something small on my side of the bed and realize it’s a foot. He’s stretched out diagonally right across the middle of the bed.
He looks so comfortable, but I can’t sleep with my face an inch from my bedside table so I gently reposition him. He wakes up briefly and says, “Hi, Mummy” in the sort of way that I know he’s not really awake and won’t remember this in the morning. He settles down into sleep again.
With more room now, I settle in to my usual going-to-sleep position: half on my side, half on my stomach with one leg bent. I feel my knee bump something warm. I can see the dark shape of his body a little way away so use the light from my BlackBerry to see how he’s lying that I could have bumped into him again.
It’s like looking in a mirror: he’s lying exactly the same way, facing me. Half on his side, half on his stomach, one knee up.
I struggle at times to find how we fit together – mother and child. But in this quiet, dark room I see it. In small, perhaps insignificant ways he’s a reflection of me.
