Respire

There's a startling unevenness to infant breathing.  I know because I've watched an infant breathe, an activity that bears a not insignificant resemblance to watching paint dry, only five hundred times more fraught.  Yes, you understand that, barring disaster, the infant will keep breathing, and yet each breath, every compact or elongated or misshapen bundling of inhale with exhale, seems like an event.

It's a trick any fiction writer would envy.

I'd forgotten the unevenness, if I noticed it the first time around.  Some breaths are panting and shallow, others slow and stertorous; some are rhythmic, some are not.  There are phlegmy gasps, odd vocalizations, terrifying moments of stridor and, worse, silent hitches, during which your own breath claws its way back into your throat.

Breath evens out over time. Or you watch less.  I can't remember which.