Almost nightly, Justin explodes out of a deep sleep to frantic ‘I’ve crushed/lost/dropped the child’ delusions.

He turns the light on, turns the bed upside down, bashes around the room like a trapped moth.

Whereizze? Whassat? No! Whereizze? Stop! No!

It’s okay, I say. He’s in his crib, he’s safe.

What? He says, unconvinced. What?

The cogs turn and he comes to, realizes he's fallen for it again. Crib? Safe. Oh. Then back into bed. Sorry. Inside of thirty seconds, he is snoring. I spend the next hour tossing and turning, cursing his inherited ability to fall asleep like.. a baby.

We take turns. I used to do it, back in the breastfeeding days. I’d wake, panic-stricken, convinced I’d forgotten him, suffocated him, rolled over onto him. I’d reach for the nearest body and try desperately to pull it towards me, thinking I was saving the baby from tumbling onto the floor. But it wasn’t the baby: it was Justin. Oh. Sorry.

We take turns. Ridiculing each others’ anxiety, diffusing it like a boggart. Someone has to do it.