This morning one of my fellow mama friends put on her facebook that she wanted to know if it was "normal" for her babe to be waking up tons during the middle of the night and I piped in on my opinion and read through the rest of the advice and thoughts mamas were dishing out. I have to say this really got me thinking....
I'm sure, if you've read my posts in the past few years you know that Riley is a little less than a, how should I put it, "perfect sleeper".
I struggled and battled and hated my overtired self and yada yada yada....I asked people ALLLLLLLL the time what to do. I got every answer and pretty much tried everything to just get him to sleep. But this morning as I was laying down my relatively good sleeper for her morning nap, I realized that its not really in the moments that are easy to be a parent that I learned to rely more on Jesus, but in the moments when I simply just didn't have enough to give on my own strength. Maybe all those nights when I was begging Jesus to make Riley sleep better, I should have been begging for help, that despite my exhaustion, I wanted to glorify God in my actions and reactions to my son's sleeping. Grace woke up every 2 hours last night. Why? I have NO idea, she can't tell me why. But through my guinea pig first born, I've learned 3 things.
-I can speculate why they are doing or not doing the things I want them to and act accordingly
-I can pray for wisdom and direction
-I can rely on the Lord, that even when I make the wrong decision, he is still sovereign
I am not a "cry-it-out" mother and I will never be one, I just don't have the conviction in my heart. Do I think its wrong? Not completely. I co-sleeping when they want to, I swaddle, I don't swaddle, I rock to sleep, I lay them down to sleep, I hold them while they sleep and sometimes I nurse to sleep, I just never really do the same thing over and over....there simply is no real recipe to getting your baby to sleep because they're all so, so different.
I know that when I'm exhausted at 2 am its hard to be ok with my baby waking up, or my almost 3 year old for that matter. But it happens and maybe a little more often than I would like, but I know that in those moments of being so tired that I can only open one eye, it has liberated me to be the mother I want to be if I approach it with a moment to moment basis. If she sleeps for 12 hours straight, awesome. If he wakes up 3 times and tells us about his Nativity at 2 am {which he did last night} then so be it, he's dreaming of Jesus.
I wish when I asked about sleeping through the night that someone would have said, just ride the waves Aubrey, when you set standards and expectations, you're already letting yourself down. Am I miss smiley, happy when Grace wakes for the 13th time in a night, no. But I have been able to just power through on a prayer and not freak out and beg, and wonder what I could be doing wrong now?!
Sleep is sleep, it comes and it goes.
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