15/03/2026
While I nurse you to sleep...
I...rest. For the first time today, I am still. I am not lifting, carrying, holding, bending, reaching, stretching, scrubbing, wiping, hauling, or lugging. Here in this dark room I lie beside you and allow my body and mind to come to stillness after the chaos of our day. You suck, and tug, you fiddle, and fuss...and slowly come to stillness too, until we both are still, and both are resting...I wait, momentarily, and then, I slowly slide away and leave you sleeping.
While I nurse you to sleep...
I...take stock. I turn over in my mind, the contents of the fridge, the washing on the floor, the money in the bank. I count up the years I’ve had so far and the years I might have left. I work out how old I will be when you are the age I am now - thirty seven - seventy two. I hope I make it. I count the eggs you already have in your body and those I have in mine and I wonder at the people they may become. I think about the person I was before I met you, the life I led, the things I’ve gained and the things I’ve lost, I count them all. I plan the contents of my other daughter’s lunchbox.
While I nurse you to sleep...
I...make plans. In my mind I blog, facebook, tweet, reply to emails, get in touch with long lost friends. I make a list of all I have to do. I decide to spend less time on facebook. I stare at a blank screen. I write my novel, and receive the first edition in the post, it is wrapped in brown paper and looks crisp and fresh. I get a nomination, and pick out a beautiful dress. I wonder what to cook for dinner. I think of you, when you are old enough to judge, and wonder what you will think of me. How will you describe me to your friends? How will you define me? I plan - to be a better mother, to play less and get more organised, to organise less and play more, to be the same mother I am already, to improve myself, to accept myself.
While I nurse you to sleep...
I...time travel. I visit long forgotton places and people I have known and loved. I run through school corridors in a kilt and read great authors for the first time and cross bridges on foot over several big city rivers. I spiral forwards into the future, imagining myself in various guises: rich, poor, old, broken, delighted. I spin back again into the past and revisit pivotal moments and say all the right things and make all the right choices. I realise that if I change one dot you might not be here, slowly falling asleep in my arms, and decide that all my choices were the right choices even the wrong ones if only because they led me to this moment, to your existence.
While I nurse you to sleep...
I...feel frustrated. I think of all the other things I could be doing with this hour. I watch every evening of my thirties melting away into a sea of nursing, nursing, nursing to sleep. Tiny teeth grate against my skin and I wish I could be somewhere else, anywhere, but here. I think of friends who tell me that their baby sleeps all night and I decide that I am mad or weird and wish I could be normal and ‘put my baby down with a bottle’ at seven pm and shut the door...and get dressed up, and go out dancing. You claw at me, and ask for more, and I try to hold my breath, hold my nerve, hold my patience. I hold you.
While I nurse you to sleep...
I...notice. Here, with all the lights switched off, I have time to see. I see how I am, how I was, how I will be, the darkness exposes me. I notice my thoughts, my plans, my dreams, from the trivial to the grand, and all the spaces in between. I notice who I am, with all my brilliant faults, lying beside you, a person fresh, not yet fully formed. I notice you...I feel the softness of your hair against my chest, I place my hand on your belly that distends like a puppy’s, I hear your breath, rise and fall, and slow and slow, I struggle to comprehend the hugeness of my importance to you, and feel your sigh of satisfaction, and picture myself, like an oak tree next to an acorn, like an umbrella over a frog, like a leaf with a dangling raindrop, in this moment...while I nurse you to sleep.
Words: Milli Hill https://millihill.substack.com/
Artwork credit: Anna Appleby
