The Golden Days

I’ve written here about the difficult times when it feels like nothing’s going right and that your baby just doesn’t want to know. It’s trying, exhausting and can make you despair, wondering why you did it all. But every moment of those dark days is offset and outweighed by the golden ones, the tiny but incredible flickers and hints of something profound and rewarding. This blogpost is about them.

It’s the moment that your baby looks you directly in the eye and smiles a smile of the purest, unbridled joy, because they’re still too young to have learned to disguise their true feelings and because they recognise you , your face, as belonging to someone they love. A smile like this can melt the hardest of hearts, cause you to forget the stresses and tensions of a busy work day, and even inspire you to laugh and forget the fact that minutes earlier that smiling face was screaming and vomiting on you.

It’s the dawning realisation that you get to introduce this person to all of their “firsts” in life: the first time they have a bath or a swim; the first time they meet a dog; the first time they listen to the Beatles or experience The Hobbit. While they’re this young and still unable to run off to their bedroom and play Minecraft, you can inflict on them all of your favourite records, books, films and places because they’ll just enjoy you speaking and playing with them. You can’t remember any of your own “firsts” but you’ll remember the ones you did with your kid forever.

It’s the pride and love you’ll feel when you look over at your partner who’s somehow found the energy (and lyrics) to sing nursery rhymes and songs to your baby at 8pm after a long day and realise that you made this tiny thing together and you’re doing pretty well at it. In my case, it was witnessing the bond between Maddy and Ted that made me well up with emotion and love – it was beyond anything I could achieve (after all, he didn’t live in my belly for nine months) but after seeing everything she went through to get to this point, I was overcome with admiration that she’s adapted to this new set of circumstances and challenges and made such a fantastic job of it.

It’s charting each new development as they happen – the first laugh, the first roll onto his belly, the first hints of conversation and interaction. God, even the first time he slowly and deliberately eased my glasses off my face and then casually threw them aside. Every one of these things feels huge and significant, and makes every repetitive task and chore feel worth it: you’re not doing this in a vacuum. They’re hints of things to come: imagine when he can speak! Or walk! They’re little previews of your future together and remind you why you’re doing this all over again.

It’s the moment you realise that this isn’t your baby alone – he has a family and friends, just like you do, and they’re all excited to share their love with him. When your own parents hold your child and you see all the generations represented, you’ll feel powerfully grateful for what they did for you (now you’ve experienced just a smidgeon of it yourself), and you’ll love to see how happy he’ll make them just by existing – grandparenting is just parenting with all the difficult bits cut out (hopefully). Or if you’re not lucky enough to have this kind of family, then your friends – you’ll find them wanting to hold your baby and talk to him and suddenly you’ll feel fiercely proud of his development (or his outfit), even if he was driving you up the wall half an hour before they arrived.

It’s the feeling you get when you’re at your desk at work and then pick up your phone and see the wallpaper of your kid being cute and you get that rush of endorphins that’s enough to get you through that lunchtime meeting with the external suppliers and the Brand team. It’s when you wake up after a (comparatively) good night’s sleep and see your baby looking back at you from the crib, waiting for you to play with them.

It’s when you realise being a parent is hard but that it makes the mundane profound, makes you feel a bit like you’re low-level drunk at all times, gives you fresh appreciation of almost everything you took for granted before. It’s worth it, all of it.