Frequently these mornings my wife and I find ourselves lying in bed and listening to the dawn chorus. No, I don't mean the one involving birds, which is broadcast annually by the excellent Mooney Goes Wild programme on RTE Radio. I mean the one in our bedroom.
It typically starts between 5 and 6 a.m. when the first stirrings are heard in the undergrowth of the cradle at the end of the bed. The six-month-old male baby is waking to the new day; and the sound of the wicker basket creaking under him as his little limbs stretch is immediately answered by the traditional cry of the female adult: "Oh, no! It can't be morning, already". There follows a short period of silence, as the baby realises that something is wrong - something barely perceptible. Then there is a slightly more urgent creaking of the basket, as the realisation grows that the problem is a serious one and located somewhere in his stomach area; and finally, the baby makes the mental breakthrough, thinking: "Oh my God, I know what it is! I'm starving!" At which point his distinctive high-pitched call of "Waaaaahhhhh!" alerts the female adult, and a number of other houses on the street, to the emergency.
Ordinarily, thanks to breast-feeding (and excuse me for preaching about the benefits of breast milk, but study after study has shown than breast-fed babies are more likely to grow up having happy, well-adjusted fathers), the adult male can roll over at this point and drift back to sleep.
Unfortunately, the male baby has appalling table manners, and tends to go at his food like a hog in a turnip patch. That's when he's only ordinarily hungry. When he's really hungry, it's like mealtime on the Discovery Channel, as the usual noises are accompanied by violent thrashing of the limbs, as if he's fighting off invisible competitors, or attempting to stop the breast escaping.
Eventually, the noise subsides; but a return to sleep can also sometimes be interrupted by after-meal noises. Even at six months, the child belches almost as loudly as his father (am I sounding a bit threatened here?). And anyway, as often as not by now, the cry of the male baby is being echoed by the familiar high-pitched wail of the room's other major species, the 22-month-old female baby, as she signals that it is time to leave her nightly nesting ground, the cot.
If the female baby succeeds in joining the male baby in the feeding area, there often ensues a territorial battle, in which the former attempts to reassert her dominance by ruses such as accidentally-on-purpose sitting on the male baby's head. This is answered by a cry of "WAAAAAAHHHH!" from the latter, which is the same as the waking-up call, only this time with capital letters.
And when the female baby has reasserted herself sufficiently, another noise may be heard in the bedroom: a low, thudding sound as she nudges her father's head with a hardback book she would like him to read to her even though it's only 7 a.m. for God's sake. At this point, the adult male will typically attempt to mimic the behaviour of the ostrich, burying his head under the pillow.
AS the foregoing implies, both the babies still sleep in our bedroom. I know many people would not tolerate such an arrangement, arguing that it adds to the difficulties of the parent while discouraging independence in the child. Some adopt a very strict approach to the issue, with babies moved out to separate rooms after the first few weeks and then gradually introduced to the private rental sector.
Experts are divided on what is best for the children. But on the plus side, our Roisin does now spend most nights in her cot - which is an advance on a year ago when, as I then wrote, the interests of a quiet life meant she was allowed to sleep in the parental bed.
Unfortunately, the cot is immediately adjacent to the bed. And having them so closely together is a bit like having Cuba next door to the US. Every chance she gets, and often in the middle of the night, Roisin attempts to flee the repressive regime of her sleeping quarters - in effect a life behind bars - for the land of opportunity that lies so tantalisingly close by.
We try to impose rules, like all parents. There's a formal asylum application process, for example, in which cot residents are required to grip the bars and bawl loudly; at which point one of the parents will process the case by means of walking the applicant around the room for a while and then, unless she meets the criterion of still being awake, gently repatriating her.
As with Cubans in the US, however, her chances of asylum are greatly improved if she can set foot on the territory of the bed. And she's getting better at this. The other night I woke at 4 a.m. to see her leg appear over the side of the cot, and before I could stop her, she had hit land, evading security and making for the safety of her mother's side of the bed.
On occasions like this, or when all hell breaks loose in the mornings, it's often easier as a male parent to let the child into bed in your place and take yourself off to the next room. And in fact, there's sometimes a guilty pleasure as you settle down again in the calm of the spare bed. But as often as not you can't get back to sleep anyway, with the noise of the damn birds singing.
Frank McNally can be contacted at fmcnally@irish-times.ie
