i do not take a photograph

i lie in bed. i am twisted onto my side trying to ignore the pain in my groin and lower back. the baby, who requires my presence in all her endeavours, sleeps pressed into my chest with a hand over her face. i am supposed to be watching her for signs of an allergic reaction like i do every day.

i do not take a photograph.

i go to the vets with my cat to have her put to sleep. she is old and sick. i am done with the concept of pet ownership.

we go into a room filled with medical equipment. the vet injects her with a sedative and leaves to give us 'time'.

we have had 15 years of time.

she vomits up the sad handful of turkey we fed her in a half hearted gesture of love. plastic wrapped sandwich meat instead of the care and attention that now goes into the baby.

i can't follow you around with a tea spoon trying to get you to eat anymore because i have a new needy creature to feed.

we take our 'time'. it's sad. the baby pings the top of the carrier with a fat little finger. the vet comes back. we proceed to kill the cat. she makes atypical noises for a cat being humanely killed so angus, the vet surmises she must have been quite 'sicky'.

she was. i did not take pictures.

cat killed we are given more 'time'.

we wrap her in a blue towel and as she lies there on the table, old and frail and dead i think 'what a good photograph this would be'.

but i did not bring a camera so i do not take a photograph.

we drive 4 hours each way to glasgow to have the baby tested for allergies. everything gives her hives.

a series of angry dots and biro matches up both her arms, raising hives where there is a reaction.

cashew. eggs. and sesame.

as a woman we have never met before holds her forearm and pierces her skin with a needle repeatedly the baby looks at me with a bewildered expression of shock and betrayal and wails.

i do not take a picture.

i do not take a picture of all the things i have lost.

sleep. weight. patience. soy sauce. glutinated bread. hummus. the ability to go anywhere alone. hours of my day to contact naps. the ability to experience pleasure with my nipples. milk, cheese, egg. the belief i am capable of good parenting. time. alcohol. marijuana. caffeine. hydration. personal space.

my camera batteries.

respect for other people. hope. an interest in what anyone else thinks.

peanut butter.

i stand at the sink cleaning the babies bowl with the separate sponge we use to avoid cross contamination and i contemplate the nature of drudgery.

before now i lived a life punctuated by actuations. i walked ten feet. i lifted my camera. i looked into the view finder and made adjustments. aperture. shutter speed. iso. focus. framing. i took four pictures. maybe 5. or 6. or 7. maybe a 100.

or a billion.

i walked another ten feet. i repeated this process.

i returned home. i processed my images. developed, scanned, uploaded. i wheeled through them.

i hated them. i edited them. shadows. highlights. exposure. blacks. whites. crop. contrast. despair.

i repeated this process. a decade of repetition. of dissatisfaction. of taking. from others. from nature. from things i was not welcome to but felt owed. these things. mine.

i took pictures. i was not happy.

now i put my nipples in someone's mouth and stay like that for hours at a time. i contort myself into a twisted shape of a woman and stay as still as possible. i try to remember to enjoy it. she wont be this size forever. i am unlikely to have another.

this feeling of being taken from. a thing removed from my body. love. sustenance. motivation. will. myself.

i repeat this process.

several times a day.

after her first nap of the day i feed a tiny human a equally tiny amount of a food that might kill her. i try to distract her for two hours so i can watch for the signs of an ige reaction. hives. swelling. coughing, death.

touch and feel books. cuddles. inclined kneeling play to improve arm strength and encourage crawling. laughing. smiling. singing. dancing. dummies. whining. crying. eye rubbing and yawning. inspecting each red mark that might appear on her face with the torch on my phone.

does that look like a hive? or a contact rash? is it going away? should i give her an antihistamine? where did i put the epi pens. why is the light in here so bad? i knew it was bad when we bought the house and i thought this will not be good for photography but i can live with it but now i never take pictures and this is just hopeless…

i repeat this action every day. 3 days for each food.

today it was banana. tomorrow it might be blackberry. or coconut. i gave her coconut yesterday and she got a rash but she also had parsnip so was it coconut or parsnip i don't know and that's another 4 hours to figure it out.

monday it may be fish or quinoa.

i wonder about breast feeding until she is 47.

i cook and feed her lunch every day. mashes of the foods she can eat in a slightly different combination. sweet potato sticks. courgette and pea. corn. corn and carrot. corn and carrot and sweet potato. courgette and apple. chicken. mince. pear. pear and apple. peach. buckwheat. rice and oats. the results of 3 months of swallowing my fear and saying open wide.

of saying clever girl. of asking is that good? of pretending to eat from a spoon i can't put in my mouth because i'm thinking you ate wheat it's in your mouth if it gets on the spoon and she reacts that's another 3 days of trialling every food in the bowl again i cannot take another 3 days of this.

i cannot take another 3 days of anything.

i obviously do not take pictures.