By Camille Farah

The first time it happens, I don't realize anything's wrong.

Mia goes down for her morning nap and I sit on the couch to finally drink my cold coffee, and then I'm gone. Not asleep. Gone. Like someone hit a switch and I ceased to exist in this version of reality.

When I come back, thirty minutes have passed and my coffee is still in my hand, still cold. The baby monitor shows Mia sleeping peacefully.

But I've lived an entire day.

Not experienced. Lived. I was there. Mia was three and we were at a playground and she said "Mama, push me higher" in this voice I've never heard because she can't talk yet. She had a scrape on her knee from falling off a tricycle that morning. She was wearing shoes I haven't bought yet.

It felt real.

I tell myself it was just a vivid dream. Sleep deprivation does weird things. I've been running on five hours of sleep a night for months. This is normal. This is fine.

The next day during her afternoon nap, I black out again.

This time she's four. We're making pancakes and she's standing on a stool I don't own, telling me about her best friend Hannah who I've never met. She gets frustrated trying to crack an egg and I handle it with patience I don't currently possess.

I wake up when Mia wakes up. Thirty minutes gone. Thirty minutes where I was fully living a future that felt like a memory.

I grab my journal. Because I'm either losing my mind or something impossible is happening, and either way I need to take notes.

Nap one: Age three, playground
Nap two: Age four, kitchen

They're chronological. Each nap advances exactly one year. I'm watching her grow up in thirty minute increments while we both nap.

Nap three: Age five, first day of kindergarten where she cries and I cry in the parking lot
Nap four: Age six, learning to read and sounding out words with this concentrated face that melts my heart

My husband sees me writing in my journal. Self-care, he thinks to himself. “That's great, babe.”

I don't tell him I'm witnessing our daughter's future in my sleep. That I know from nap three she'll have a terrible first day at kindergarten and the school will call me to come pick her up an hour after dropping her off. That in nap four I fumbled the death conversation she'll have with me after a character dies in the book we are reading. 

I try to engineer longer naps. Blackout curtains. White noise machines. The perfect temperature. Not for Mia but for myself. I need to see more, so I can plan accordingly.

I'm obsessed.

Nap five: Age seven, she loses her first tooth biting into an apple
Nap six: Age eight, her best friend Hannah transfers to a different school
Nap seven: Age nine, the piano recital
Nap eight: Age ten, she asks why I seem sad lately

That one shakes me. Ten-year-old Mia asking if I'm okay, and future-me lying and saying everything's fine when it's clearly not.

I realize I'm watching myself become someone I don't recognize. Someone who's there but not present. Someone who's seen too much future to fully inhabit the now.

Mia's twelve months old and her sleep is consolidating. Some days she only naps once.

Nap nine: Age eleven, middle school orientation where she doesn't want me to walk her in
Nap ten: Age twelve, her first period and I'm somehow completely unprepared

The pediatrician says it's normal for babies to drop to one nap around twelve months, but I need more. 

Nap eleven: Age thirteen, her first dance where she looks so grown up I want to cry

We're at the grocery store and Mia falls asleep in the stroller. Just conks out between the produce and the dairy aisle.

I feel the pull immediately. That invitation to black out, to travel forward, to live another day while she naps.

But I'm standing. In public. Holding a cart.

I can't go. And I'm furious about it.

My husband asks if we need yogurt and I snap at him. "I don't know, do we? Figure it out yourself."

He stops. Stares at me. "What's going on with you?"

And I just... break.

Right there. Next to the string cheese.

I tell him everything. About the blackouts, the days I've lived while our daughter napped. How I can't stop even though I know it's wrong. How I just got angry because our baby fell asleep in the wrong location and I'm missing a future that doesn't even exist yet.

He's quiet for a long time.

"You're here, right?" he finally says. "Like, with us? Now?"

I don't know how to answer that.

The next day, Mia goes down for what I know will be her only nap that day. I sit on the couch and I feel it starting. That pull. That invitation to fast-forward through another year.

But I stay.

I don't know how. Maybe it's willpower. Maybe the spell is breaking. Maybe I'm just too tired to travel anymore.

I stay awake. Present. In the now.

And it's excruciating.

Because present-Mia is just a baby. She can't tell me about her day or ask me about mine. She just eats and poops and occasionally smiles. There's no meaningful conversation. No shared jokes. No evidence that I'm doing any of this right.

But she's here. Actually here. Not a dream or a preview or a promise.

Just her. Right now. A year old and drooling in her sleep.

She wakes up after twenty minutes. A shorter nap than usual.

The following day, I’m convinced that one more nap can’t hurt. So when I feel the pull, I let myself go.

Nap twelve: Age fourteen, and she barely speaks to me

When I wake up, I'm crying. Because I've seen enough. I know how this story goes now. I’ll become the parent who can't enjoy the present because I’m always thinking about the future. And I’ll push her away by trying to make her life conform to my plans.

I'm starting to panic. 

Not because of the naps. Because of what I'm doing. What I've been doing.

I've been so busy focusing on her future that I'm missing her present. Real Mia, twelve month old Mia, is learning to walk and I keep zoning out because I'm thinking about the version of her that won't exist for years. 

That night, I trash the journal. 

Over the next couple of weeks I resist the pull during naps. It’s hard to stop peaking into the future but I focus on the baby in front of me.

Mia's thirteen months old now. Still napping once a day. Every time she goes down, I feel that pull. That invitation to skip ahead, to see what's coming, to see how the story unfolds.

Most days I resist it. Some days I can’t help it.

But when I travel forward now, I'm looking for different things. Not what she'll become, but what I need to remember to be. The moments where future-me is actually present. The times I'm not just physically there but actually showing up.

Nap eighteen: Age twenty, and she's telling me about her first heartbreak and I'm actually listening 

I wake up and I realize this version of me has figured out how to live in the moment without being distracted by worries of the future.

Maybe that's the real gift. Not seeing her future, but seeing what kind of mother I need to become.

I’m determined to be locked into the present with everyone else. No fast-forward. No sneak peek. Just one day at a time with no idea what's coming.

But it terrifies me.

Not losing the naps. Losing control or the illusion of control, that the nap time previews can help me prevent every mistake, anticipate every need, and create the perfect future for her because I've already seen what happens.

Yesterday, Mia took a nap and I stayed awake the entire time. Just sat there. Breathing. Being. Waiting.

When Mia woke up. I went to get her and she smiled at me like I'm her whole world.

She won't always smile at me like this. I know that now. I've seen the years where she rolls her eyes, where she pulls away, where she needs me to be smaller so she can be bigger.

But right now, I'm everything to her.

And maybe instead of mourning what's coming, I should just be here for what is.

Just me and her. Growing up together. One day at a time.