“Mom, I don’t get this problem. I need your help.”
“Mom, does the ‘Y’ at the end of this word make the ‘EE’ sound like ‘happy,’ or the ‘I’ sound like ‘cry?’
“Mom, I can’t find my (fill in the blank).”
“Mom!”
“MOM!”
“MOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!”
And then the baby screamed for an hour.
It was one of “those” days. You know what I’m talking about. The kind of day that doesn’t contain enough coffee to make life not feel like a freight train crashing around on a Tilt-a-Whirl. Like you’re being squished and pressed in from all sides, and also on top and from the ground up.
It was a day that came after a night that was too short, and several times interrupted by a baby with a bird mouth who couldn’t find her sleeping groove, and so eating was her go-to coping mechanism.
And so many cries for “Mom.”
As the day drew to a close, I found myself dragging through each motion. With daddy out of town, it all falls on me. Gymnastics, soccer, meals, homework. On a good day, I can rock our schedule with gusty flair, but on a fatigued day, I move a bit like an elephant in quick sand.
I slogged my way through the showers and the late night studies of multiplication tables, my eyelids so heavy that Tia finally looked at me with deep concern.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Your eyes look weird.”
We’re working on tact with that one…
As I warmed up the baby’s bottle, while quizzing Tia on her math, and listening to Sloan tell me about the new book he was reading, Landon tugged on my shirt.
“Mom?” he asked, eyes all big and hopeful.
“Just a minute, buddy.”
“But…Mom?” He pulled on my shirt again.
“Hang on, babe. I’m listening to Sloan right now. Tia what’s 8×4?”
He leaned against my side and waited for a brief moment before tapping my arm again. I sighed and look down. “What, Landon?!” I was exasperated. He could tell.
He motioned me down so he could whisper in my ear. “I love you,” he said softly, then he smiled wide, thin lips stretched across soft cheeks.
You can’t have him, friends. He’s all mine.
With a lighter heart, I finally got all four (four!) kids settled into bed, and I stood in the middle of my kitchen for a few moments, relishing the stillness and quiet that is rather elusive in our home these days. I felt almost giddy at the thought of my own warm bed waiting for me, and I began preparations to make my way to it.
“Mom?”
I turned to see Tia standing in her doorway. She came padding out and tossed me an impish grin. “I need to get a drink,” she said.
I sighed. “Okay, but be quick, alright?” I was exasperated. She could tell.
“Okay,” she said, then halted. “But I also want to tell you about the rainbow.” She looked at me, her eyes so big they made her look like a Disney princess. How could I say no? I nodded my head reluctantly.
“Did you know that the first color in a rainbow is red, but you can’t see it because just above it is blue, and the red and the blue blend together, and that makes the first stripe look purple? Isn’t that so cool?” Her smile was so wide, and her eyes so delighted to share this information with me that, once again, I felt my fatigue roll off my back like the droplets of water that streak across the windshield.
To all the exhausted, overwhelmed, stretched-too-thin moms out there, I raise my glass to you. We’re fighting the good fight, heels dug in, determined to enjoy this ride called motherhood. We’re told to cherish each moment, but the moments all blend together into chunks of time that feel like they’re just.too.much.
But like the red and the blue of a rainbow, those blended together moments actually make something new and beautiful. They make motherhood.
We’re doing this, friends. We’re living this mothering journey, and it isn’t really glamorous, and perhaps we get exasperated more than we should, but at the end of the day we know we’re loved, and we learn really cool things about rainbows.
So we tuck those brief moments deep in our hearts, and they become the fuel to get us through the next day, and the next night, and the one after that, until we find ourselves on the other side of this journey. I understand why older women tell us to cherish this time.
They know that on the other side of mothering young children, we miss the magic in a rainbow.
watched slept through a gymnastics practice, and two soccer games.
I went to a friend’s house for dinner,
and to church.
Then I attended my first tea party, after which I sunbathed slept in the shade by the pool at my grandmother’s condo.
This is me, silently praying they don’t dunk me in that ice water again…
PEOPLE!
I’m exhausted.
This month, I’m linking up with The Nester for this 31 Day series as I survive the newborn haze of sleepless nights, endless nursing, and squeezing in life in twenty minute increments throughout the day. If you want to receive the posts directly in your email inbox, just leave your email address in the box on the sidebar, and subscribe so you don’t miss a post!
I’ll share photos every day, some of them good, and some of them mediocre, because baby leaves me little time to worry about taking and editing the perfect photos.
I’ll also be sharing my daughter’s thoughts, as dictated to me telepathically while she nurses, because she has informed me that she is a mind ninja, and I am merely her portal to the outside world.
It’s probably too early for me to attempt to put into writing the events of the day of Annika’s birth, but while it all still feels so fresh, I’m going to give it a try.
In some ways, I wish we had better documented the day, but a part of me is content to keep those moments a sacred memory. This birth was different in a lot of ways from my other children’s, and I’m glad. The fourth child deserves a unique story, doesn’t she?
My first three children were all born in the hospital. I’ve always chosen to give birth naturally, not because I’m strong or brave, but because I’m scared of needles and the epidural literally sends me into spasms of fear just thinking about it. I’m that annoying girl who gets dizzy every time she gets her blood drawn. Nurses love me.
I also have always had the benefit of having very, very quick labors. My longest labor before Annika was 5 hours. Apparently I was made to birth babies.
This time around we decided to give birth at a birth center with the assistance of a midwife. Since moving to Florida, I haven’t found an OB that I like, and because I’d never needed much medical assistance anyway, this route just made sense to us.
It was such a unique experience to give birth in the birth center. Lee and I were really left alone for most of the labor, which allowed me space to work through the pain on my own time and in my own way. I liked this freedom, and the atmosphere was so quiet and peaceful and serene that I almost felt like we were in a fancy hotel room.
And the fact that we got to go home just four hours after she was born was such a blessing. As we drove home that evening, Lee looked at me and said, “I’ve had rounds of golf that lasted longer than that!”
Around 1:00 am the night before she was born, my contractions started. They were manageable, and not really all that painful, but they were strong enough to keep me up. I also felt almost certain that my water had broken, so I spent much of that night preparing myself to welcome our baby soon. Because labor has gone so quickly for me in the past, I was given strict instructions not to wait too long before calling the birth center.
No one wanted to see me deliver this kid on the side of the road.
Around 5:00, I decided that the contractions, though still not very painful, were regular enough to warrant a phone call. We were told to meet at the birth center at 7:00, so we called my mom, woke the kids, and told them that they’d have a baby sister by the end of the day.
That was so much fun. It was awesome to see their excitement as it only fueled our own.
Fast forward three hours, and we returned home from the birth center…without a baby. I was in tears, frustrated and embarrassed that after doing this three times before, my body seemed to be completely unresponsive to labor this time around. I wasn’t dilated, my contractions had slowed considerably, my water actually had not broken, and the baby was not laying in an optimal position, which was probably the cause of the hold up. Her head wasn’t centered, so she wasn’t moving down like she needed to.
This was so different from anything I’d ever experienced and it threw me off a little. So I went to bed and took a nap, still hoping that we could ramp things back up later.
When the kids got home from school they were naturally disappointed that I hadn’t had the baby, but while they played around me, I felt the contractions kick back up and, true to form, they started to come fast. This time I knew it was for real, and we rushed back to the birth center, arriving even before the on-call midwife.
I was 5 cm dilated at that point, and things happened very quick. Within two hours, it was go-time, and after only six minutes of intense pushing (because my labors happen so quickly, I often describe them as violent. I go from nothing to BABY in a flash, and the pain goes from a 4 on the pain scale to a 52 in seconds), Annika made her debut.
At 4:32, the midwife laid Annika Rachel on my chest I had the same intense feeling that I had with all my kids:
I knew her.
Her face was so familiar to me, and not just because she looks exactly like Tia did at birth, but because it’s as though she has always been here. I think God does that on purpose. He leaves this tiny impression of our children on our hearts long before giving them to us so that when we finally hold them, it just feels perfectly right.
I feel like I’ve known this little girl all my life.
We are one week in, and things are going relatively smoothly. I forgot how much work newborns are, which has been an adjustment. But other than feeling like I can’t get anything done, things are moving right along. She could not be more loved or cherished by her brothers and sister. To be sure, she is a blessed little girl.
I will hold tight to the memories of September 22, 2014 for the rest of my life, filing them away in my heart next to the births of my other three children. What a privilege it is to be the mother of these four spectacular little humans. I am truly in awe of this calling placed before me.
I kept on swimming, friends. Right into labor and delivery. Our daughter, Annika Rachel, was born yesterday at 4:32. The labor was a different one for me. But that’s another story for another time. Right now I’ll just share a few pictures. They aren’t great pictures, mind you. I haven’t had the wherewithal to try and create perfect photos just yet.
But that day’s coming because I have a closet full of RIDICULOUS hair bows waiting for this child.
Thanks for all the encouragement after my last post. I survived pregnancy! I’m not pregnant anymore.
Once upon a time, early mornings were the fuel to my creative soul. In college, you would rarely find me pulling all-nighters. The only time I did that was if there was a certain amount of fun to be had that made sleep seem an unnecessary task.
And by fun, I mean stupidity, because freedom combined with zero parental supervision made things like visiting the David Koresh compound at 1:00 am and allowing myself to be escorted around by a man claiming to be a journalist who knew where underground passages were still hidden, and showed us bullet holes in the sides of vans SEEMED LIKE AN EXCELLENT IDEA!
Only a handful of times did I pull an all-nighter to accomplish school work. Even then, I knew that when the sun went down at night, so did my brain. (Again, see the aforementioned stupidity that ruled many of my college late nights).
I was the girl who got up in the early hours of the morning, before the sun rose, and tiptoed into the library to study, or write a paper, or to simply read a book. The stillness of the mornings stimulated my mind, and gave me the fuel I needed to get through my daily classes. By my senior year of college, I was well into my English Professional Writing degree, which meant that I had at least one or two papers due every single day.
Most of those words were typed before the sun peeked above the horizon.
Even then, I knew how I worked best. It’s not much different for me today, though I admit that dragging myself from bed in the early mornings is harder than it once was. In college, I had the benefit of knowing I could lay around in the afternoons. Now I know that from 2:00-9:00, I will need to be on my game. I can’t afford to be exhausted.
But I do know when I am my creative best, and when the situation dictates that I tap into that inner creativity, I push myself out of the warm cocoon of my bed while the rest of the world sleeps.
There are so many different ways in which we creatives can tap into the best parts of ourselves. That’s the beauty of living life as a creative:
We don’t have to fit a mold.
As creatives we have an immense amount of freedom to live life as we were designed, each with a unique set of gifts that cannot be molded into a boxed set of rules. Some work better at night, whittling away the slumbering hours behind desks, easels, and sewing machine. Some, like me, feel the ideas most vivid in the mornings, after just enough sleep has given the brain a chance to rejuvenate.
Some creatives work best to music, while others need absolute silence. Some need a structured environment, others need the hustle and bustle of a coffee shop or book store.
The life of a creative cannot be dictated by too much structure, because once life feels predictable, the creative juices quit flowing.
There is one thing, however, that will stifle and kill any creative spirit. This one thing is insidious in nature, often creeping in when we don’t even expect it.
The death of creativity lies firmly in comparison.
When you begin to compare your gift to her gift, your structured way of working to hers, you will very slowly choke out your own creativity. You are unique.Your method of working is unique. Your talent is unique. Don’t give in to the beast of comparison that whispers softly, “You’re not good enough. Her talent is bigger. Her platform is better. Her skill is more beautiful. Her method of working is more productive.”
As soon as you start ingesting these lies, your creativity will fade.
The creative life cannot be cut into cookie-cutter shapes. It is beautiful because it is unique. Embrace your creativity, and your method for working. Don’t fall prey to the cruelty of comparison. If it means you have to stay away from Pinterest, from blogs, from certain groups or activities, do so. You are uniquely creative, and your gifts are yours alone.
Guard them and share them in the way that lets you uniquely shine.
