Freedom *lost and found.

You sleep tummy down, knees tucked up as if preparing to bunny hop.

Releasing deep-sleep snuffles and sighs, your little bottom beneath your dinosaur adorned duvet and red dinosaur pyjamas, seems to rise and fall with every breath.

“Rrrarrrr. Rrrarrr! You cry every night at bedtime. Stomping across the landing with your small, claw-styled fingers raised high above your head like make-believe talons. “Rrrrarrr!”.

I often watch you sleep, my son. I wonder what you dream about. Tractors and cars, perhaps. Trains and airplanes. Honey on hot buttered toast. Breakfast of eggy bread. Peppa Pig and the thrill of the next door to open on your Christmas advent calendar.

“Peppa! Door!” are your first words every December morning when you greet me standing at the head of your cot. Your big toothy grin and laughing eyes. You can’t wait a second longer for every new day to begin.

Since you arrived, just two short years ago, that mid-November morning nothing is the same.

Gone the late nights. Sunday hangovers. Gone the morning lie ins with your Dad, tea in hand with nothing in particular to get up for - besides sausage sandwiches followed by an afternoon snooze. Too bodies, curled up, uninterrupted.

Gone my toned tummy and perky boobs. Coiffed hair-dried hair and dry clean only jumpers. Sleep undisturbed.

The long hot baths. The lightness of childless foreign travel. Long leisurely lunches. High street shopping. A tidy house. Chairs not caked in crusted Weetabix. No painted handprints on whitewashed walls.

Gone the days with no sense of time or duty. Lost gardening days. Unplanned travel adventures escaping January gloom. Midnight writing. Music played so loud the walls shook. Time to waft and roam. Wherever. Whenever. All the time in the world.

Gone the time and inclination to gaze so intently at my own naval.

Freedom lost. But freedom found.

You stir in slumber. A little murmur. A word non decipherable.

Crouched here on the carpet besides your cot, surrounded by the treasures of your toddlerhood. You sleep nestled among a growing family of furry animals; a floppy eared rabbit, a tiger, and a polar bear are your current favourites.

Three multicoloured hand painted (by you!) tractors adorn one wall. You were so proud to find them hanging there. “Tractor, tractor!” you squealed in delight. The sun and moon covered window blind keeps any glimmer of light from interrupting your precious sleep – a mother’s obsession!

Bringing you into this world gave me the gift of limitless horizons my darling brown eyed boy. You opened my heart and my eyes.

My love, I gladly surrender all the freedoms of my life before for one glimpse of that toothy grin. For the feel of your hand clutching mine. For the touch of your hair; those gold-tipped brown defiant curls.

The smell of you, when tiredness kicks in at the days end and you surrender to lying in my arms, glued to YouTube videos of the moon or rockets taking off from Cape Canaveral. “More! More!” you shout, as if every time is the first time.

For that squeal of excitement at the Christmas tree lights. Every day anew.

The shout of “Mummy” when I collect you from nursery. The long running jump into my arms. Your head on my shoulder. The scream of laughter when Daddy blows raspberries on your tummy.

You have taught me a different type of love. Selfless. Endless. Extrinsic. Without ego. Here lies a new freedom.

You have showed me that I have no control over almost everything that life throws at us. But that every day is a new beginning. A new limitless adventure. And everything is brand new.

My heart is in yours now. And your eyes are in your father’s eyes. Our own small world of freedom.

ENDS