When I was a teenager, I dreamed of running away. The intensity of life and all the upwelling of heavy emotions had me constantly infatuated with the idea of "Somewhere else... Anywhere else!" Over the last few days met that place and rolled around and around in thoughts of escaping.

I breathed heavy, twisted my mind in knots, and fantasized about all the places my daughter and I would run to, as though there was no pandemic and the stories in my head about Nyaniso not wanting to be by my side were true. This past week he was away at work again and it was the longest I was with her solo. It brought the biggest emotional upheaval I have experienced in years.

It's hard to describe the intuitive intensity of keeping my own flesh and blood alive. When tiredness kicks in, the relenting obsession in my body becomes all-consuming and I've found it hard to fathom a selfish life where my own needs are met fully and my desire to do the best by her isn't in total overdrive.

We've started to find a rhythm. She sleeps through the night. Wakes to feed in the morning before we sleep for a couple of hours more. We then wake, and as the day goes by, we make sure three key rituals are met.

The first, no-nappy time on her change mat. Her bare baby bottom breathes and her legs kick-kick. She looks around the room and gives me a little mama time to eat, or stretch, or pump breast milk. No-nappy time is over the moment she lets me know it is. We're always on her time, never the clock's time. I mostly catch her little fussy grunts before they become cries and on we go...

The second, hammock time. Mama bought us an ocean blue family hammock when she was in Mexico recently and gave it to me in Germany as a gift. I sit on the front edge, throw the back edge over my head, and hook my feet in to create a hammock-canopy over us. I lay back into it, as though chilling in the tunnel of a crashing wave. The little one lays on my belly and we swing, both looking up at the blue above. Sometimes we rock in silence, other times I listen to an audiobook or podcast. She gurgles and then naps, then wakes again with fussy grunts to let me know it's time to go inside.

The third, bath time. Together we climb in and she kicks about happy. Each day she has splashed in water, getting more and more comfortable with each swim. She's getting too big for the bath now though. At least, too big to kick about the way she once did. Yesterday she pushed the edge of the bath so hard with her foot that her head slipped under the water. I held her startled body close and chuckled as she figured out what had happened. To think, once upon a time she was the size of a poppy-seed inside of me, and here she is now, a fast-growing super-strong water giant.

Between our rituals, we pace around the house looking at this and that, here and there. She's started to really look at the world and see it. We play music and sing songs, dance and gurgle at each other. My daughter pouts, eyes bulging as she concentrates on standing, her legs getting chunkier by the day. She suckles and sleeps, recharges her batteries for the next bout of mama play. I rarely nap when she does. I become more tired. I become more alert. I become more susceptible to the many voices in my mind that each come with their own tales, what-ifs, and interpretations of the world.

And there's no end to it. No stopping. It goes on and on. We smile and we smile and we smile and my stamina for smiling is tested. We dance and dance and dance and my dance endurance is assessed. We live and we love, tumble into it all, together, and I wonder how much more of this wonderful life I can take. How much more can I care? How much love can my heart bear without breaking?

Among it all, I think "Daily Dzedze" - how many days have passed since I wrote another "daily" excerpt? How many days since I wrote at all? Maybe we should call it the "Often Dzedze" or the "Sometimes Dzedze" or the "When-We-Can Dzedze" but none of those have quite the same ring.

On I go. Breathing in the sacred moments. I revel in the breath of friends' visits and Mr Dzedze's return home. Our daughter is currently snuggled up to his chest and I'm absent-mindedly staring at the screen, wondering if these words are at all coherent or of any value to you, reading.

Oh, the joys of all life brings. Oh, the intensity of the ups and the downs. Oh, the incoherence of existing. Hi, my name is Yana, I'm a mother now, utterly in love with my daughter... And I'm tired.