Gothic terrors

Since my baby was born I've become terrified of the paranormal. I've always had a slight fear of the dark, of being alone in the house at night, of weird creaks, of doors that open themselves on windy evenings. At those times Sensible Caroline usually tells Wussy Caroline not to be so illogical, and finds a rational explanation for everything. But Sensible Caroline has lost her nerve lately, giving me chills as I sit breastfeeding in the cold, quiet dark of the house at two in the morning.

Sleep deprivation, cruelly combined with the anxiety of insomnia, allows my strained mind to run off on eerie tangents. My exhausted eyes hallucinate. 

It is a new thing for me even to be awake in the wee hours, let alone sitting topless and trapped in a loungechair, holding a helpless baby, the dearest thing to me in the whole world. I feel vulnerable, yet horribly aware that I am the protector.

I've never really liked the feel of this house, but now wild fantasies run through my mind of how exactly I would respond to the appearance of a phantasm (I plan a tough, "this is MY realm, not yours" type response) and I take the stairs with agonising slowness, in case I get an invisible shove in the back.

Changing Conrad is awful because it is the bathroom I hate most of all: it is icy cold, and there is something nasty going on with our plumbing, so that fetid smells come out of nowhere. My partner T accidentally locked me in there the other night and I nearly lost my mind during the five minutes it took for him to come back and let me out.

Madness, claustrophobia, darkness and foreboding - having a baby can be like living in a Gothic Novel.