In her first month on Earth, we took 1,233 photos of my daughter. Pictures of her yawning or smiling, pictures of her propped on the couch beside the poor dog. Pictures of her staring pensively off into the middle distance, her hand on her chin. But mostly, we took pictures of her sleeping. One of these photos accidentally captured my experience of new parenthood so perfectly that I laughed when I first saw it months later. It shows her at two days old, swaddled and sleeping in her bassinet. We had finally removed the little hat they?d put on her at the hospital, but only after extensive googling. It was mid-June, and the temperature that day had hit 30 C. But aren?t babies supposed to wear one more layer than us" I must have still been worried about it because if you look closely, you can see me through the mesh side of the bassinet in the background of the photo. I?m curled on the bed, staring at the baby with a look of fierce concentration, as though she?ll disappear if I look away. My partner, Marc, and I had prepared for months for our daughter?s arrival. We took the prenatal classes, hired a doula and bought (and read the introductions to) all the books: The Happiest Baby on the Block, What to Expect the First Year, The Baby Book, Canada’s Baby Care Book, The Baby Whisperer, The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, The Wonder Weeks. A month before our due date, we attended a terrifying CPR course where the instructor kept yelling, ?Too late! The baby?s brain-dead!...