To our considerable disappointment, Max has forgotten how to sleep. For a while there, he knew how to sleep. And now he's forgotten. You can see him thinking about it, trying to remember how he did it. But he's definitely forgotten.
A good friend of ours, Jackie, sent us the book The Happiest Baby on the Block, by a doctor called Harvey Karp. People talk about this book with quiet reverence like it's a book of secret spells, so we were excited to get it.
Karp has some really interesting theories. The most unusual one, to me, is that our ancestors gave birth to babies with smaller heads and carried them for longer than we do; but that evolution gave us larger brains and bigger heads, requiring women to give birth earlier in their pregnancy, before a baby is really ready for the outside world. So they come out at the start of what he calls the fourth trimester, completely unprepared for life. And they're not happy about it.
Lots of babies are fussy and cry a lot during their first three months -- the fourth trimester -- and, once you've fed and changed them, the only way to really calm them is to mimic the womb, because that's where they came from and that's where they really want to be again. This involves lots of swaddling, and rocking, and lots of white noise to calm them.
And so, at 4am this morning, while Emeline swaddled and cooed and rocked and patted a restless Max, I downloaded an album of sounds of the sea, with song titles like Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit, and Ocean Surf in a Hidden Cove. And then, Sounds of a Tropical Rain Forest: with The Dry Season; and, predictably enough, The Rainy Season.
The rain forest tracks were a bit scary: lots of strange birds with screeching calls, against a backdrop of insect noises and water dripping from the wet canopy above.
So I made a playlist on my iTunes instead -- 5 continuous hours of Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit. Then we slept, lying in our floating bed, adrift, almost submerged by the sounds of breakers collapsing on the shore, gulls in the distance, which filled our room. And -- last night at least -- Maxwell Ezra Kemp, a little boy who already has the sound of the sea in his soul, slept.
Tonight, it's back to our briny room, with its kelp-colored curtains, for another voyage into uncharted waters.
A good friend of ours, Jackie, sent us the book The Happiest Baby on the Block, by a doctor called Harvey Karp. People talk about this book with quiet reverence like it's a book of secret spells, so we were excited to get it.
Karp has some really interesting theories. The most unusual one, to me, is that our ancestors gave birth to babies with smaller heads and carried them for longer than we do; but that evolution gave us larger brains and bigger heads, requiring women to give birth earlier in their pregnancy, before a baby is really ready for the outside world. So they come out at the start of what he calls the fourth trimester, completely unprepared for life. And they're not happy about it.
Lots of babies are fussy and cry a lot during their first three months -- the fourth trimester -- and, once you've fed and changed them, the only way to really calm them is to mimic the womb, because that's where they came from and that's where they really want to be again. This involves lots of swaddling, and rocking, and lots of white noise to calm them.
And so, at 4am this morning, while Emeline swaddled and cooed and rocked and patted a restless Max, I downloaded an album of sounds of the sea, with song titles like Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit, and Ocean Surf in a Hidden Cove. And then, Sounds of a Tropical Rain Forest: with The Dry Season; and, predictably enough, The Rainy Season.
The rain forest tracks were a bit scary: lots of strange birds with screeching calls, against a backdrop of insect noises and water dripping from the wet canopy above.
So I made a playlist on my iTunes instead -- 5 continuous hours of Heavy Surf on Rocky Point and Along a Sand Spit. Then we slept, lying in our floating bed, adrift, almost submerged by the sounds of breakers collapsing on the shore, gulls in the distance, which filled our room. And -- last night at least -- Maxwell Ezra Kemp, a little boy who already has the sound of the sea in his soul, slept.
Tonight, it's back to our briny room, with its kelp-colored curtains, for another voyage into uncharted waters.
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