“It is pretty wonderful, this life cycle. I always found it interesting, how food is made and seeds grow and sunshine and rain become nutrition and we can eat and poo and seeds grow and so on. But now my body is taking that and making a whole new product and there is another little human being joining in my loop of life. I can’t get my head round it all. This brilliant earth. My brilliant digestive system.

Baby, I can’t tell you what a pleasure it is to feed you
Feet up in a dim-lit room, nothing but life between us
Milky silent gulping, face a blissful rest
Tiny fingers tapping on the spaces by my chest
Bellies beat together, slowly in and out
Heartbeats storm through tiny chest, tinted lips and mouth
As I sit and wait, I gaze again at our cherry blossom tree
As light to leaf to the air we breathe, now that system flows through me
And as I gaze upon your face, pressed upon me
I see the cycle,
Our food recycled,
As you gulp down sunshine energy”

– Hollie McNish, from her wonderful book Nobody Told Me – Poetry and parenthood