‘My hair remains unwashed, stranded forever in a lopsided mum bun’

In the year my son is born, we measure our days in increments of three hours. Days become night, and the hours roll one into another, as we enter a stark new world where time loses all sense of meaning. It is an abrupt transition and begins almost at once in the blurry hours after birth when I find myself marooned in a hospital bed with a catheter in place and a tiny newborn beside...