Dear Gypsy

Gypsy Rey Casey,

As I’m writing this your mother is sitting on the couch feeding you a bottle of formula milk. Mozart is playing in the background. You were so frantic when hungry, as though you hadn’t eaten in days, yet it was less than an hour since your last bottle. You would be fine, smiling and gurgling, then POW! flailing your arms and legs about, sticking your fists in your mouth, throwing your head around so much we were worried it would fly off and bounce across the carpet. Then, when you’d consumed your fill, you’d be milk drunk. Head flopping. Eyelids drooping. An expression like a boxer who’d taken too many to the temple. We’d hold you in our arms and burp you and a look of profound bliss would come across your face. A sigh of relief from the both of us. We would gently put you down in your Moses basket so you could doze in complete contentedness. It is thirty-three minutes past nine in the evening on the second of January, 2020. You are exactly thirteen days and three hours old.

Your first three days were spent in the hospital with your mum. I was there most of the time too. Obviously. Your first night, knackered from being born, you slept like an angel. The next two nights were quite contrary to this. On the third night I wanted your mum to get some much needed sleep and you would not sleep in the uncomfortable hospital crib so I stayed until five thirty the next morning with you in my arms so you and mum could both get some sleep. That long sentence is as exhausting as it was trying not to fall asleep myself with you in my arms because I was terrified that then I would drop you.

The hospital was awful. It was so hot that you were always uncomfortable. I sat at night shirtless to save myself from stinking. But you were only there for three days because when they said they wanted the two of you to stay for two more days your mum said, “Hell to the no!” ans they checked you out then and there.

As soon as we got home you settled down immediately. A wave of Zen-like Buddha-ness descended on you like an angel’s veil drifting lazily from Heaven (if I may mix my theologismsisms).

It lasted a few hours at best.

While my mum said she kept my brother and me inside for six weeks after we were born, you were out and about in the first three days. After we left the hospital we stopped at Nanny’s work where a whole load of people cooed at you through the backseat window of the car. We didn’t want any contact because of the germs that might be on their tunics. On Christmas Eve we were at Nanny Sue’s and then on Christmas day we went off to your grandad’s and then back to Nanny Sue’s where cousins Lydia and Ollie, aunt Ali and uncle Paul, auntie Cheryl and uncle Chris, Nanny Sue and of course mummy and daddy all spent Christmas together. On New Year’s Eve mummy and daddy stayed home and watched scary movies - ‘It’ chapters 1 and 2 - and then went to bed.

The first week or so we noticed you had a white tongue. We laughed because we thought it was from the milk you’d been guzzling, but then I mentioned that it looked the same as when a resident in work has oral thrush. It was oral thrush, so we had to get some medicine to clear it up.

Your first shot was a BCG which they don’t do in the UK anymore but because your dad is from South Africa you had to have one - just in case an uncle or someone comes over with tuberculosis or smallpox or possibly Ebola. You were so brave; you hardly cried at all. The next shot mummy took you too and you cried like mad because mummy was crying too. Daddy took you to the next few. The BCG shot got infected and mummy noticed green goo coming out of it, so we took you to the doctor and you got an antibiotic. A few weeks later you needed an antibiotic for an ear infection. But through all of it you were constantly smiling as though nothing was ever wrong. You were always so happy.

Anyway, I'm rambling on a bit, and you’re only going to be reading this in probably sixteen years time. There are going to be so many more memories.

Lots of love,

Your Daddy.