This morning I tried to feed Evelyn. After deciding she didn’t really want any milk, she lay there across my chest, smiling at me with her tongue out, showcasing its twitching and shaking. It’s times like these I wish I had magic video camera eyes. Then I can play these scenes for her Paediatrician, and he can see what I see.
Yesterday I spent an hour trying to video her tongue, while she spent the time trying to grab my face, eat the camera, kick me, or shout. None of these things make videoing a fine tremor easy and I can’t say with any great certainty that I managed it.
I Googled, afterwards, because it’s what you do in this world of instant information. You Google.
Then I stopped Googling, because there is nothing I can find that suggests a tongue tremor in a baby is a good thing. Sure, maybe if she was a perfectly healthy baby and it was our only symptom I wouldn’t worry, but gross motor delays, seizures AND a tongue tremor?
Step away from the Google-machine Veronica. You don’t need to know this stuff yet.
—
I am pacing the floor with Evelyn, because she’s vaguely grumpy and I have things to do that don’t involve her shouting at me. In one hand she has a square of toast, which she waves around like a trophy. I guess it is a trophy, of sorts, considering she stole it from me.
I sway and she smiles at me, before shoving the toast in my mouth, not happy until I nibble a corner off.
“Your turn,” I say, chewing my tiny bit of pre-slobbered toast. She grins and shoves half of it in her own mouth.
My heart sings, because while she missed my mouth three times and her mouth twice, the behaviour right there is age appropriate. She’s showing lovely signs of cognitive normality and it makes me happy every time I see something I don’t have to worry about.
Later, she practices her new skill by sticking a well gummed rusk up my nose, in my eye and finally in my mouth. Her hand-arm control isn’t great, but she knows what she wants to do, and she wants to share.
Happiness is sharing sticky food bits.
—
Amy is sick. So sick that when I suggest she goes back to bed she does so wordlessly, without a fight. Later, she sobs into my arms because despite panadol, this virus she has is miserable and has already knocked me down a few days previously.
I rub her back and Evelyn, who is in bed with us leans forwards to stroke her face and pull her hair, looking worried.
As a distraction, we start reading Harry Potter, something I’d been putting off because I hate reading aloud. We snuggle in and her sobs diminish as she listens to my voice. Four pages in, she is ready for sleep and so I leave her, tucked up with her kitten, her bedroom dark and quiet.
She sleeps for an hour, this child of mine who hasn’t napped since she was nineteen months old, and emerges briefly for water before bursting into tears again.
I tuck her into my bed and I read more, because that’s what you do when your child is unwell. You do things you hate because it helps them feel better. Evelyn kicks in her cot, listening to my voice and I must admit, sick or not, it’s nice being snuggled with my girls on either side of me.
I can forget what I read on Google and my fears for this baby, as we immerse ourselves into the world of Harry Potter.
It’s enough, right now.
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