But then, in the last month of my pregnancy I had a recurring dream, and since then I think I’ve made some sense of that clue. I dreamt that my daughter was born, and that I fell asleep before feeding her. I slept for 18 hours, waking suddenly to the realisation that she hadn’t been fed since she was born. But when I looked for her, I couldn’t find her. And I didn’t know how to feed her – I hadn’t bothered to do the work, and she had come early, and… I had so many excuses. I found her in the fridge, wrapped in kitchen towel, sucking the oil off a piece of fried onion. I grabbed her and tried to feed her, but, again, I didn’t know how. She was ice cold and her mouth was too small and my hands too clumsy. Finally, I ran to the bathroom and found a dropper under the sink. I squatted there, on the tiles, squeezing 2% milk one drop at a time into her little mouth, trying to warm her against my body. In my dream, I was an ungainly version of myself: hysterical, still huge and lumbering, balancing atop my haunches as I struggled to restore this small life that had suffered because of my selfishness.