I digress. The gist of the article was that when new mothers "complain" of lack of sleep, other people say "Cherish this time, because someday you'll miss this," as though a sleepless new mother should not only embrace her lack of sleep, but further, should understand that someday, she will miss getting up every 2 hours or so to have a small, manic being wiggle and refuse to be soothed by anything that takes less than just-enough-time-to-have-a-hard-time-going-back-to-sleep to do.
No. My answer to that is no. No one in the entire human existence thinks, "Yes, I love waking up all night, then pretending to function normally the next day as though I slept 8 hours (let's be honest, I'd settle for 6), and doing it again day in and day out." No one does that.
But the post goes on to say that what we mothers begin to miss is the closeness. The dependency that very nearly suffocates us in the early days, but kills us to leave at the same time. The snuggles, the look that baby only gives to you (not to grandma, or daddy, or in our case, the dog). The mommy. The only person in the world with whom baby shared a literal, physical connection. We are special in our babies' experiences.
This is what we will miss. This is what I realized today that I will miss. Last night was hard. The husband was sick as a dog, and woke me up (which, honestly, he wouldn't do unless he really needed help). The baby was still sleeping. As soon as Husband was cared for, the baby woke up. She has a mysterious sense of when I've just nodded off. So I got her cared for and went to bed. And she did what she rarely does, which was to wake again at 5am. I "get" to sleep until 6 most mornings. 6:30 when I'm lucky. So I have a choice at 5am: Feed her and hope she goes back to sleep, then try to sleep another 20 minutes before my alarm, or just get up.
This morning, I gambled, and did something different. Husband was sleeping on the couch in case his sickness was contagious. So I went in, picked up Olivia, and did something I haven't done... maybe ever. I've always been focused on making sure she is accustomed to sleeping in her own bed (something I don't regret, by the way). But I couldn't do it today. Maybe because I was dead tired. Maybe because I wanted more than 20 minutes of sleep. Maybe because I'm a teacher, and it's mid-May. I picked up my baby and carried her into my bed.
I'm no longer afraid that I will somehow manage to crush her in my "sleep." We are well established in our "sleep nursing" skills. We laid there, my baby and me, and she nursed and fell back asleep, she on the still flabby flap of the inside of my arm, me on my exceedingly comfortable pillow. And we actually overslept. I think she would have continued sleeping had my alarm not gone off.
But there was a split second there where I opened my eyes before she opened hers. And I saw my sleeping baby, snuggled against me. Peaceful. Content. And I thought, this is what I will miss. The sleepless nights? No, I could do the whole baby thing minus the sleepless nights any time. But the connection, the complete dependency coupled with the look of joy that accompanies my arrival into the room whether it's been 10 minutes or 10 hours. This I will miss.
Someday my baby girl will not be a baby anymore. Someday she'll wake up, and snuggling with me in the mornings won't be what she wants to do anymore. Someday she'll have her own morning routine, and I won't be part of it. And all of that will be normal, and healthy. But for now, I'll try my hardest to cherish the moments like I had this morning (confession: and this afternoon, when I let her nap on my chest like she did as a newborn).
