The Way We Feel

Chapter 14

Lila stared up at me for a moment before her face scrunched up, and she started crying again.

"Okay," I said, patting her back again and trying not to panic as I ran through a mental list of things I could do to calm her.

I didn't want to play with her. She'd been up for a while now and we'd already done a lot of playing as well as tummy time, so she should be plenty tired. Even if we hadn't done all of that, this crying was a sure indication that she was. And I'd changed her nappy before putting her down before, so that wasn't it. But she hadn't taken the whole bottle of Mads' milk earlier. So, I thought, maybe that would help.

I murmured to her some more as I headed for the fridge, opened it, and reached in for the bottle. But my words weren't helping anything, it seemed.

"Okay, little one, let's have some more milk, shall we?"

I walked back to the den, heading straight for the rocking chair in the corner, and prayed this would work. I shifted her in my arms as I sat and tilted the bottle toward her lips as she continued to wail. Her little face was as red as her gummy mouth, but she was looking right up at me.

"Please have some more," I whispered, feeling slightly helpless and more than scared that this wouldn't be what she wanted.

These days, feedings were taking longer than usual. Lila didn't seem to want as much milk in one go as she used to—but it was a bit worrying because it seemed the only reason she didn't take as much was because she was easily distracted by other things. It was like the world around us was coming to life for her now, and she was noticing it for the first time.

Sounds from the television, the beep of the dryer when a load of laundry was done, the clanging of pots and pans at dinner time...

The ringing of a phone.

On one hand, it was wonderful. Amazing to watch her notice and register all these new things. But on the other hand, it was much harder to keep her on her usual schedule, and that included feeding her. She just didn't seem to want as much as she used to, but only because she had other things to occupy her attention.

Which reminded me that Mads had told me to turn on the sound machine when I was going to put her down. Which I'd forgotten to do before, and hadn't done now either. I stared at it where it sat across the room, taunting me with the promise of help. Pressing my lips together, I focused on getting the bottle into Lila's mouth for the moment. I could worry about how to get the sound machine on in a minute.

"There we go," I said when she took it, her cries mellowing into whimpers once more, her watery eyes opening a little as this familiar sensation required focus. And then she started sucking. "That's it," I murmured, feeling proud of her and relieved all at once. "That's it, my girl."

She stared up at me as she drank, and in my relief, I remembered that I was sitting in the rocking chair, and began rocking back and forth, hoping the comfort of her mother's milk paired with the gentle movement would lull her back to sleep.

But at the same time, I was content to stare into her eyes as long as she could keep them open. It was in these moments where she was looking up at me that I realized just how much I missed her every day. When I realized just how big a deal all this was.

I was this little girl's father. She was a little piece of me—the biggest piece of me. The biggest piece of Mads, too. And she knew nothing more of the world than her mother and me. She was learning slowly, day by day, but we were still her entire world. And she was ours.

The responsibility of that always hit me in these quiet moments between us. It was enormous, this responsibility, and it always twisted my stomach a little to think of all the ways things could go wrong. Not just now, but in the future, too. How things would change. How her world would become bigger than just me and her mother. How it would be forced to accept the negative of the world around us. And I hated it. I hated even considering that things might hurt her. But every time my thoughts took that turn, I forced myself to reroute them. Drag them away from all the negative, and look at the beautiful little face staring up at me like I was the sun of her universe.