In the past nine months, in my own life, two things have happened.
The first is that I've had a baby. A daughter whose gummy smile and fine, unruly hair elicits something in me that I didn't know was there.
The second, which sounds a little silly, and is something I'm sure a lot of people are able to discover without experiencing parenthood, is that I've realised time is finite.
It's not like I didn't logically know this. Of course, I did. Every now and then, in the early hours of the morning, I'd get a pang of anxiety about my own mortality and the time I had wasted, was wasting, that I'd never get back.
Watch: The things you should say 'no' to. Post continues after video.
But there's something about watching a human who didn't exist before, who didn't smile and then one day did, who needed only milk and then discovered the sweetness of yoghurt, and now hungrily face-plants into bowls of oats and pasta and meatballs, that makes you notice that time is passing. That your newborn and your five-month-old aren't here anymore, that your baby won't always be a baby, that you can't do everything you've ever wished to do. That you have to choose.
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