Everybody needs a Saffron.

It's half past ten and I've just returned from what I can only describe as a long day in the office. Waiting outside the front door, I strained my ears, hoping to make out the sound of pitter patter on the floor. But it is quite late and there wasn't a squealing sweaty baby waiting for me behind the door tonight, nor even the familiar voices of James P. Sullivan, Mike Wazowski, Randall or Elmo.

Making a beeline for the bedroom, I climbed into bed next to her and for a good ten minutes or so, there I stayed, nose pressed up against her sweaty temples, inhaling as much of her as I physically could. Anyone who's had the good fortune of sniffing the Sleeping Beauty will understand what I shall attempt to describe next.

The first breath you draw tickles as you realise how all at once she smells like custard, brown sauce and talcum powder. Not the best mix of scents under any other circumstances but here, just the perfect calibration of sweet, sour and mild.
The familiarity of the second sniff has a real and physical effect on your body; shoulders relax, frowns fade.
With the third sniff troubles melt away; it doesn't matter that you haven't had enough sleep or if your hair is dirty, if the flat is a mess and you're behind in your correspondence, nor even if a colleague didn't copy you in an important email or if you've had to do someone else's work.
By the time you take your fourth, you find yourself thinking hey this is where I belong, wouldn't it be nice to be able to do this all day every day.
Sniff five and you start taking quicker breaths thinking you could really get used to this.
Six, seven, eight and you're gone. Hooked. Then you just keep sniffing faster and faster until your chest almost hurts but you can't stop yourself. At least I can't. (But then I have obsessive tendencies so I can't speak for everyone. The last - and first - time I was as addicted as this was in the early hours of 12 June 2003, in a labour ward suffering at the hands of a hardened nurse who categorically refused my pleas for epidural and fobbed me off with 'air and gas'. As weeks of breathing classes went out the window, I just clamped the revolting rubber mask to my face and breathed in non-stop. I don't even remember breathing out. I must have, but I don't remember. I just remember stabs of pain alternating with the room spinning and finally vomiting. But that's another story for another time.)
Nine, ten and life is good. You just know you must be the luckiest girl in the world.

So even though what would have really helped tonight was a "big hug" and a few "sayangs" from the minx or even the odd "my mummy!"* as she runs up to wrap her little chubby arms around my legs, the sniffs have worked their magic and should sort me out until the morning where I know a "morning mummy" and a contented smile await me.

Please don't miscontrue this as an open invitation for everyone to plant their noses on Saffron the next time you see her. You can try, but you'll have to fight me for it.

*One night a couple of weeks ago as I was picking out a dress for her in her room, Saffy ran up, threw her sweet arms around me and exclaimed proudly "MY mummy!" Needless to say I was taken aback and crushing her with the weight of my reciprocal cuddle I immediately thought then, as I have often before, how I would go through labour 30 times over for this moment - any moment - with her. (With some help from epidural of course. None of that nasty "air and gas" for me, thank you very much.)