24/12

So little one, you’ve decided it is time to come in to the world.

You are so very welcome.

We’ve both done so well to hang on together in our dance for this long, but it is, it seems, time to say hello.

The doctors said that they would bring you in to the world on December 21. Which is the winter solstice and a birth day you would have shared with Frank Zappa, Jane Fonda and Masaccio.

But you have other plans. Waters have gone. Tomorrow, November 24 it will be. Charles Darwin published the Origin Species, Anna Sewell published Black Beauty, Apollo 12 returned from space, Scott Joplin was born. Not bad company.

I have such a strong sense of you already. I know you. I feel, although I do not know, that you are a wee boy. I felt that our slip of a wink who sailed away in a lantern last year was a girl. But let’s see.

Whoever you are, we will be here, ready and waiting for you to join us. Today your dada and I saw your lungs getting ready to breathe, heard your heart thundering away. You were resting with your arm across your face, leaving it until tomorrow for the full big reveal. You’ll be a little on the small side, what with your eagerness to join us. So you’ll go with your dad and the doctors to settle you in to the world. But my heart will be with you and also, I’ll send milk. And I’ll come and see you the minute I can.

Until tomorrow little one x