Time for an update. After the last entry we had three clear nights without a peep out of Bridget from the moment we put her down to sleep. We had just decided that it was all because she'd been getting too hot at night, when the wailing started up again yesterday evening. I went in this time, since Mike was in the bath, and settled her back down - or so I thought. Within a minute she was screaming again, and continued to do so until Mike visited her ten minutes later. He did much the same as I had done, left her, and the crying stopped entirely after about 30 seconds. What does he have that I don't? Not that I'm complaining about having to leave this job to him if it works. The only problem is that she doesn't seem to be going along the standard path with her waking/crying routine. Doesn't a three-day break rather disrupt the conditioning that we're trying to introduce?

Bridget has reached that stage when she can't stay still and, as the old folks used to say, has ants in her pants. Unfortunately, this is even true when her pants are off. It's getting quite impossible to change her nappy because, as soon as she's put down, she rolls straight over and can only be kept on her back (howling the while) with at least one parental hand firmly on her tummy. This isn't exactly easy when changing a nappy alone. Does anybody have any useful tips?

A strange thing, today. The proofs for a book arrived - not the Rowan Williams book, this is the one on Hans Frei that grew out of my thesis - and I glanced through the first few pages. And saw the acknowledgements page. With no mention of Bridget.

There's nothing strange in that: I finished the book several months before Bridget was born, and it is only the slow grinding of publishers' wheels that means I have not seen the proofs until several months into her life.

But I spent some moments thinking: this can't be right. I must have acknowledged Bridget, surely! Where's it gone? How could I have forgotten?

Life without Bridget. I know I must have lived like that. Mustn't I? Once?

I suppose it has simply slipped my mind.

Well, we can't really report on whether we're making progress with the crying, because last night didn't work out quite the same. As has happened a couple of times now, Bridget started screaming fairly soon after being put down for the night. Mike went in and made sure she wasn't caught up in her bedclothes or too desperately hot (it's been pretty warm down here the last few days), then tucked her in again and said 'Goodnight'. The wailing died down to whimpering very briefly while he was with her, but started up again as soon as he had gone out of the room. However, within another minute or so Bridget was quiet and remained so for the whole of the night! We clearly have a Daddy with a magic touch, so I'm quite happy to hand over responsibility for this part of Bridget's upbringing.

Bridget, who normally sleeps a twelve-hour night come what may, has been waking up in the night a bit recently, so we have started on a programme of 'controlled crying'. It sounds simple in the books: leave the baby crying for five minutes; go in and comfort her in her cot without getting her up; once the crying has reduced to whimpering, leave; leave it longer before going back in next time. But in the cold, dark hours in the middle of last night, it seemed far more complex. For a start, there were all those stray thoughts: 'What if she's in pain?' 'What if she's tangled herself in her sheets?' 'What if she's suffocating herself?' 'What if, what if, what if...?'. Then there was the irregularity of the crying: Bridget cried for five minutes, then quietened down, then started up two minutes later for three minutes, then quietened down, then... Do you count from when she last started crying, or from the beginning of the whole pattern? Is she quietening herself, and should we let her learn to do that - or should we give in to the tight ache in our chests and go and rescue her? Eventually, I did go in (after twenty minutes of crying in total, although only about one minute since the last silence); I tucked her up again (she had wriggled free of her sheets and blankets), stroked her hair and cheek, and made soothing noises for about a minute. Crying shrank to whimpering. I left quietly - and whimpering immediately gave way to renewed yelling. But it only went on for about twenty seconds, and then stopped. And Bridget slept solidly for the remaining seven hours of her night. Magic.

Sorry for continued delays. Looks like our computer might be dead rather than amnesiac, and we're investigating the purchase of a new one. Meanwhile, we continue trogging along with our prehistoric machine with its slow modem - and don't get round to updating the blog so often. Normal services will be resumed after considerable expenditure...