At first, mum and poet Hollie felt weird and shy talking to her baby in public.
She would have days where she felt lonely and frustrated.
But her silent chats were helping with her baby's development all along.
I've never spent all day talking to someone who never says anything back.
They say 'you should talk to your baby'.
I tried. I felt like a twat.
I've never spent all day talking to someone who never says anything back.
I remember the first day pushing her pram around the street.
It felt awkward, like playing at mum.
She just stared at me silent, cried a lot.
I wondered if I was doing it wrong
With strangers around, I felt shyer again
I'm not used to playing peekaboo on a packed city bus.
Looking back, I'm sure no one was bothered.
At the time, I felt the whole world staring at us.
And she smiled back.
First time I burst into tears.
She started grinning at jokes, I cried more.
Still, on days when it's just you and a baby, you can get quite lonely frustrated, quite bored.
I wish I'd been told, the first day we met, how much you needed those word.
How our eyes interlocked were triggering hers, sparking new synapses.
Every split second, each copied movement and peekaboo sound was training her brain at an astonishing speed for the ridiculous beautiful chats we have now.
I wish I'd known then what a genius she was, as I stared at her face, as I pushed her along.
