I have always thought that Salvador Dali perfectly captured the essence of motherhood in this work.
"The Persistence of Memory"
Melted clocks. Insignificant time. No method to the madness of day or night. No telling if it's sunrise or sunset.
The perfect summation of my first year as a mother.
I'm sure everyone goes through a transition period when they become a mom. Almost like you have to go through the stages of grief as you mourn your previous life of selfishness and freedom. I have never felt any kind of regret or burden at being a mom, but I have had those thoughts of reminiscence...
"I miss just running into the grocery store for one thing"
"I miss laying around on the couch on Sunday after church"
"I don't even remember what it was like to go to the bathroom without interruption"
"It'd be really nice to eat a meal without someone on my lap"
And I only have one child right now, I can't imagine the plethora of "This was so much easier when I only had one" thoughts that go on in lots of mother's heads. I know I'm in for another awakening in a few weeks.
The hardest part for me was the fact that AM and PM no longer mean anything, nor do the days of the week. What, my toddler didn't get the memo that it's Saturday and we sleep in? And day and night are interchangeable. Especially in the beginning, you're just as likely to be doing the same thing at 3 in the morning as you are at 3 in the afternoon. {Not sleeping though, I assure you.}
For the first 8 months or so, we struggled a lot with Mason's sleep. A lot. First we were challenged with nursing and then he had food allergies and then he just liked to wake up I guess. I could feel myself getting progressively frazzled as the lack of sleep compounded. I was forgetful, stressed, exhausted. I had no energy to exercise and no time to eat a decent meal. Austin was working weird hours at eBay so I also felt lonely a lot. I had an amazing support system in my sister and my friends. But there's no companionship that you turn to as you are woken up every 3 hours all night every night.
I prayed {harder than I ever have} for patience and for the ability to feel rested on whatever sleep I could get. I always felt sustained and capable of getting through, and was always reassured that this was my job right now. And I always felt that calming feeling of love, just knowing how much I loved this baby. More than I thought I was capable of loving anything. But I never really got that awe inspiring, life changing revelation that I knew would get me through the rest of my mothering years.
Until Mason was 7 months old and we had just moved to Idaho.
One night {or morning?} he was awake for what felt like the millionth time. I was rocking him in his room and just feeling totally drained. I could feel the last 7 months bearing down on me and feeling lost. What was I doing wrong? Why did other moms have babies who slept? Was there something seriously wrong with Mason? And feeling like a horrible mother as I felt resentful and frustrated and finally started to just feel angry. I said an exasperated prayer that was more like me shouting in my head "COME ON, ENOUGH ALREADY!" {I'm sure Heavenly Father appreciated the lecture from me}.
Instead of just feeling calmed, I felt completely overwhelmed with the most powerful sense of gratitude and privilege. It was one of those moments when time stopped and heaven opened just for me.
I was reminded of how many women long to hear the cries of a baby in the middle of the night. How they would give up every full night of sleep they've ever had if they could only have a child.
I thought of women who have lost children, because of passing away or just growing up. How they must wish for those nights of holding their tiny child, and would do it all night long if they could.
And I felt overwhelmed with the knowledge that I was privileged to be there with this tiny little person, losing sleep, to fulfill the most divine calling I could have been given--being a mother. I felt myself filled with that heart breaking kind of love, the kind that I felt when I met Mason for the first time--at 2 in the morning. And ever since then, the times that I have felt this love are usually in the middle of the night. When the whole world is still and quiet, and I slow down enough to receive this kind of outpouring from heaven.
After the Sandy Hook tragedy and then spending Christmas in Newtown withe my parents, I have carried this feeling with me constantly, like I know so many parents have. Realizing that I cannot take for granted even one moment that I have with this child. That it's okay to focus a little less on making him independent and a little more on just letting him be little. That when he asks "Again" after every book we read and every song we sing, it's okay to indulge him. Dishes can wait and who vacuums these days anyway?
The other night I was reading a talk from October LDS General Conference and read this story from Elder Richard G. Scott:
“One night our little son Richard, who had a heart problem, awoke crying. … Normally my wife always got up to take care of a crying baby, but this time I said, ‘I’ll take care of him.’
“Because of his problem, when he began to cry, his little heart would pound very rapidly. He would throw up and soil the bed clothing. That night I held him very close to try to calm his racing heart and stop his crying as I changed his clothes and put on new bedsheets. I held him until he went to sleep. I didn’t know then that just a few months later he would pass away. I will always remember holding him in my arms in the middle of that night.”
It reduced me to sobbing so hard that Austin woke up and said "Are you okay?" After the heartache of losing his child, Elder Scott looked back lovingly on the time that he was able to be up with him in the night. I consider myself blessed to have spent so many nights with my sweet little one.
Now that life is settled and Mason sleeps through the night, I find myself wishing sometimes for him to wake up. And he still obliges me once in a while. Last week he woke up from what must have been a nightmare and he was really worked up and wouldn't calm down. I let him lay in our bed because I'm pregnant and too tired to rock him for very long. As he was drifting off he looked up at me, put his little hand onto my cheek, and fell asleep. How wonderful to feel so loved by someone so perfect and pure.
As baby girl joins our family it's hard to imagine having enough love left in my heart that already feels like it will burst. But I know that's one of the most beautiful gifts we have been given as mothers, our capacity for love. To love rowdy, grumpy, tantrum throwing, messy, night waking little monsters. And know that there is nothing in the world we'd rather be doing.
I say this as I'm watching Mason dump his entire bowl of Cheerios onto the living room floor and then run over them with his bike.
Ahh...the persistence of motherhood.
