Putting the baby to bed

I still don’t know how I did it but as I made a tiptoed retreat from the side of Meredith’s cot, I managed to catch my elbow on the headboard. Crash: Meredith awake and crying.

As far as following parenting advice goes, we have followed some zealously, ignored some and with the rest wondered what species of baby they were raising. In terms of sleep, we have probably done almost all of the things that are warned against for fear of getting your baby into bad habits: cuddling, feeding, rocking, bringing them into bed, walking them…

Meredith’s eyes were open as she was passed to me at birth. She has remained wakeful and alert since. Getting her to sleep during the day has been a recurrent challenge of the past six months. And while neither fireworks, dogs barking, rubbish lorries, nor children playing seem to wake her, put your cutlery too loudly into the drawer and her eyes snap open upstairs. After watching her eyes droop millimetre by millimetre it’s frustrating to be sent straight back to the beginning to start the process again.

Having finished the final corrections on Wild Rose, I have persuaded myself to read through the manuscript one last time. I want to pick up any more errors I can spot, see that some additions I made make sense and just check one last time that it’s in a good state to publish. Going back to the beginning again is hard work. It means another long stretch of scrutiny for the manuscript. If I still read with my finger on the page, it would be worn thin by now. I am also impatient to get the EBook conversion process started and the novel onto the virtual shelves.

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