5 days in the life of FIAMMETTA ROCCO

MONDAY: Five weeks ago, I became a mother for the first time. Tosca weighed 6lb 12oz. She lay uncurling herself on my tummy, her black hair so different from my red head. She is mine, I thought, and already quite herself. I wiped her clean with my hand, feeling triumphant and so vulnerable. "You'll never stop being in love," my great aunt said. "And you'll never stop worrying." How right she's been.

My mother had her own precautions. A born-again Christian church in Arkansas called End-Time Handmaidens is a strange place for a French woman to end up, but she's taken to America with a vengeance. As I grunted my way through childbirth, she dialled up her friends, the Prayer Warriors. By conference call, they prayed to the Lord for the safe arrival of this child. Half- touched, half-amused, I am still not quite sure what to make of this. My mother has no such uncertainties. Her only worry is her half-believing child.

TUESDAY: Tosca wakes at 3am. My husband is dead to the world, but I spring out of bed. I hold her against my shoulder, staring out of the window in to the dark night. I wonder about the other mothers who are rocking their babies, and feel a strong kinship with them.

5.30am: hungry again. As she sucks, I open Blake Morrison's sad memoir, As If, about the murder of the Liverpool toddler James Bulger. Feel terrible for all three mothers involved. What did they do to deserve this? I remember a terrible dream while I was pregnant, of my baby being borne away on a river of blood by a faceless man in a white coat. Now she's actually here, it's during the waking hours that my unconscious invades. Will it be the man who knocks on the door mid-morning who'll do her in? The car riding the pavement? The pond in the garden?

Will God protect her? The God my mother's so sure of? He didn't protect Jamie Bulger, did he. Or his mother.

WEDNESDAY: Go to my first baby massage class. I've never taken this much time off, and relish playing during the day. Regular massage boosts the immune system, they say, and stimulates development. So it's not just play; it's good for her. Makes me feel virtuous.

Tosca and I go out more and more. I carry her in a long strip of cloth tied across my front like an African mama. People are so friendly, especially other mothers. They stop to ask her name, peering inside her carrying cloth to look at her downy cheeks.

Tosca sleeps through the night for the first time. Maybe it's the massage. We should sleep well, too. Instead we wake up every two hours. "Do you think she's all right," asks my husband. I lean over her crib to see if she's still breathing. I walk to the door and turn back to listen, believing somehow that only my presence by her bedside will keep her alive.

THURSDAY: To the baby clinic. Tosca weighs 10lb 11oz. No wonder she can't get into her new-born stretch-suits any more. The doctor gives us 10 out of 10 for child care. He probably says that to everyone, but I walk home feeling 10 feet tall.

We celebrate Tosca's "grown-upness" by taking her to the British Film Institute to hear Michael Cockerell's brilliant talk on the 20th-century "torture chamber" about politicians and the television camera. Catch a cab on Waterloo bridge. I trip as I get into it. Instantly, in my mind, I see the baby's head crashing on to the pavement. She sleeps through it all, but it serves me right for being smug. Back home, she cries until she falls asleep. Perhaps my anxiety is catching.

FRIDAY: Tosca smiles - really smiles - for the first time. Animal behaviourists believe there is an evolutionary need for babies to learn to smile so early. It wins over their parents, and ensures they'll go on feeding the child and not chuck her in the river when she cries. Two smiles before breakfast at 6am. If that's bribery and corruption, I'm all for it.

Write all day. Tosca sleeps under my desk. I rock her with my toe while I'm typing and feel that life is getting back to normal. Late in the evening my mother rings. I've never known this, but for nearly 40 years she has saved my christening dress for when I have a baby of my own. Feel a rush of love and gratitude. Then she adds that baptism is no guarantee of salvation and godparents are useless unless they're born-again Christians. I grind my teeth.

To console myself, I walk into Tosca's room. In the dark I lean over her little sleeping body. She is so much bigger than she was five weeks ago. Already, I feel bittersweet pain at my child growing up.