Nighttime Feedings

I'm up late these days. Funny how a baby will do that to you. Normally, I'm too groggy to comprehend the time, but there's one time during the night that I look for. The 4-5 am feeding is my favorite time of the night...or morning, whichever way you look at it. I stumble out the recliner in the front room, arrange the "boppy" pillow around my waist, situate my semi-conscious daughter, and then I watch and listen. I stare out the window above my stairwell. When I first arrive, all is dark. Some nights I can vaguely make out a tree branch, others not at all. But I'll watch and incrementally I'll start to see the night shift, almost like a person rolling over in her sleep. The black grows into blue, and when that happens, I close my eyes so I can hear it. Our downstairs neighbors are Muslim. They either come from India or Pakistan, I'm not sure which. But anywhere between the four and five o'clock hour, the father starts the call to prayer. The straight tones echo through up the stairwell and into the still apartment. And I just listen and rock to the rhythm. It lifts my sleep-deprived soul. I don't particularly enjoy getting up at all hours of the night, but I find that I look forward to this feeding time. So thank you downstairs neighbors, for making this transition just a little bit easier. 

Additionally, my little daughter consciously smiled at me for the first time the other morning. The corners of her mouth curled upward and it flopped open in a beautifully toothless grin. It lasted for about five seconds and I think they may have been the happiest of my life.