I’ve heard parents say newborns are too all-consuming, but I adored how absorbing they are. Those early weeks were a retreat from normal life, a time to stop the clocks and focus on a job no one else in the world could do, and that would be gold in the bank for my baby’s future. I was experiencing my children from a unique viewpoint. They were unfolding before me, changing exponentially from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour. It was more than my favourite time, it was the privilege of a lifetime, and it was the time on which everything else in my relationship with my daughters was going to be built.