What do babies dream about?
NotHeidi is not always sleeping, but he gets his fair share. He has his ways and little by little you start to know his idiosyncracies. Some are fairly universal, he'll cry when he's got air needing to escape, the exit strategy appears to be immaterial in this regard. He cries in a slightly different way to alert anyone who is lactating in the immediate vicinity that he'd like to do business and... somewhat more unusually when he likes to do the other kind of business I find it is best to wait until he's had 3 audible movements unless you want to bear witness to something I assure you you do not. He'll spend the remaining non-sleeping hours curiously contemplating the world for long stretches as he exercises his fingers, arms legs and toes all at the same time in a transcendent dance that captures your entire attention and sucks the time straight out of the universe. It would surely become the next gym craze if you could somehow formalise the movements.
Finally he will sleep for long stretches, usually after a food coma has been induced and the burps taken care of. He will sleep in the bassinet at night and during the day he will variously use the baby bouncer/rocker or the chest of either parent. On the occasions he uses me as a mattress I note various levels of sleep including what I would assume his dream sleep. His eyes are too pudgy (and slightly gunky) when closed to really discern REM but he does the same thing that cats do as they sleep and dream which is to make weird face twitchy movements and periodic jittering of arms and legs.
So the question is... if he's dreaming, what's he dreaming about? His total life experience is less than 2 weeks. His life is a bewildering blur of boobs, people and having his undercarriage cleaned I shudder to think what kind of dream you might contrive from these limited experiences. He's met a few people, and when I say "met" I mean has been held, stroked, cooed at, smiled at and prodded by the kind of people we can afford to associate with. This includes random grannies who spontaneously burst into tears when looking at something so sweet and innocent and the man at Centrelink/Medicare who, when we revealed Centrelink was his first post-homecoming excursion, said "well young man, I hope you won't make a habit of coming here".
You might wonder why you would need a Medicare number when aged barely 1 week but rest assured that bureaucracy does not discriminate based on age. When we went to get his referral ultrasound to check on a condition discovered in-utero we struck 2 problems. One, his name was not on the referral slip because at the time he didn't have a name. Two, we were advised when making the appointment that unless he, not us, had a medicare number we would have to pay the full amount of the service.
To tackle the first problem the referral was re-issued by fax (finally I understand why this technology still exists). The second was a bit trickier. After an initial interchange upon our arrival I felt I might have burned all my bridges. Still, I managed to return when it came to pay and remain cordial enough for the receptionist to offer to look NotHeidi up on "the system". Lo, he was there with Medicare number that was shared for my future use and I did not have to pay $170. Sometimes things work out.
He's been shopping with us and did not pester us for chocolate, chips or soft drinks and on the checkout we had no need for the school sports dockets. I don't know which of those things are more evil but I hope it's not chocolate.
He has also partaken in the greatest of all Aussie pastimes, the Bunnings sausage sizzle. It was for the local Rotary club, they used hotdog buns, which I feel is not traditional, but they were fresh and the sausages were above average so I'd rate it a 7/10 sizzle. Side note - to get a 10/10 I have to really be on board with the charity in question, so a 7 is pretty good.
So if I had to construct a dream from that... maybe stuck in a Bunnings with shelf upon shelf of boobs while hungry for breast milk but unable to buy any because he doesn't have the right card all while being chased by a sonographer. Or maybe stuck in a car with your parents while boring 80's music is playing and all you can see is trees running away from you. As of last night he has the ultimate nightmare of seeing the Sydney FC ladies team losing the grand final. I tried to turn his bouncer away before full time... his football team will have plenty of opportunity to disappoint him in future.
Though am I coddling him by sparing him painful truths? Should I show him the matches from the 2008/09 season?
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