Thoughts on sleepless nights
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010
One thing became crystal clear to me today in regards to the newborn/infant stages of our little girls life.
This will all be a beautiful memory one day. Just as my pregnancy is now. Just as the delivery is now. Just as her first week is now. Just as her first month is now. Life moves on, with or without you. You don’t stay in a moment. Good or bad. You move along. Looking back along the way, over your shoulder… watching your life as you choose to remember it. If you are able to hold onto that thought in any moment… it becomes sweeter. More poignant. More precious. Everything is more precious when you realize how impermanent it really is.
I jokingly wrote to a seasoned momma Crystal “I’m hoping this newborn-no sleep thing doesn’t last forever, and that the crazy tiredness will eventually be a memory!?!!! (if it is not so, please lie to me and tell me a full nights sleep is somewhere in my future!!!!!)”
She wrote something that touched me so sweetly, she said “Don’t sweat it, it will come, and then you too, will have the precious memories of the sun rising while your sweet bundle finally crashes, hands relaxed, breathing even and bottom lip moving rhythmically while she still nurses in her dreams. The times when you forget how tired or frustrated you are and revel in the magic.
Enjoy, Erin, and remember you aren’t necessarily missing out by not having that perfect sleeper of a baby.”
It got me. In 2 months, a year, ten years… I will remember this time in our lives, as Crystal does and miss it. Likely miss it more than I know how to control. When Maisie starts to walk, when she is dressing herself, or when she no longer wants to cuddle with me. I’ll remember when I used to rock her to sleep in the middle of the night with her swaddled up tightly in my arms, kissing her perfect little face over and over. We’ve all heard it a million times, especially with kids. “It goes so fast”. I know this. I am all “live in the moment” but, I wasn’t really. I mean, I was living in ‘moments’… mainly good ones, but not all of them. Today I tried to consciously live in all of them.
I’m grateful that I’ve had this awakening now… and not regretfully in five years, wondering where all the time has all gone. I’ll likely have moments, hours, days, where I forget… but hopefully I’ll be able to soak it all along the way (and thankfully I’ll have a little help from countless photographs as well).
Here are two of my favorites of our little girl over the past few weeks.
