A Letter To My Son In A Discouraging Season Of Motherhood

My sweet boy,

When I wrote this letter to you before you were born, I was praying over the impact your arrival would have on my body.  I was exhausted from being pregnant, nervous about the physical effects of labor and those sleep-deprived newborn weeks, and I promised to love you even when my body was broken and hurting.

But what I couldn’t predict – what I didn’t know then – was how much being your mom would stretch and challenge my heart.

You might not know this yet, but your mama has quite the Type-A personality.  I love to plan and organize and control and I love when I can look at my life and see that everything is exactly the way it “should” be.  Even though I know it’s not right, sometimes I measure how I’m doing at this whole “living my life” business by how well I’m checking things off my to-do list. I love order and predictability and routine and have eaten the same bowl of cereal every morning since I was 8 years old.

And son, you are doing everything you can to break me of that.

I think a part of me felt like if I planned your schedule enough and did everything by the book (or books) I could control how you ate and slept and grew.  I’ll give it to you, you’ve always done pretty darn great with sleeping at night and you eat like a champ (even if it was every two hours for the first 5-6 months of your life).  But napping and any sleeping past 5 AM? Oh man, you’ve decided to put me through the WRINGER with that one.

The last three months have felt like a continual cycle of frustration, controlling and managing, hope, slight improvement, and then disappointment.  You’ve struggled with early wakeups and short naps for quite some time now, meaning my sweet smiley boy wakes with red eyes and pitiful cries, exhausted but not knowing how to connect those sleep cycles and get the rest he needs.  I’ve tried everything I can think of to get you to sleep better, but nothing seems to work.  And my sweet boy, it is so, so discouraging.

I desperately want you to be able to get the rest you need, not only for you, but also so I can have more than 30 minutes of alone time every few hours.  My heart is tired of trying to squeeze anything I want to do for me (like….shower?) in those 34 minutes while you’re napping.  My introvert self longs for an hour to sit and have a quiet time without watching the baby monitor waiting for you to jolt awake with an exhausted cry.

When everything I’ve tried to get you to sleep has failed, my heart goes to even scarier places than control – it goes to feelings of failure and shame.  I feel like there’s something I could do to make you sleep better but I can’t figure it out so you keep on being exhausted.  I feel like I’m failing you, like I’m not the mom you deserve, and the shame that comes with that feeling is overwhelming and exhausting.

These last few weeks, God has been using you to stretch me and remind me where my real value comes from.  He has used your early wake-ups to remind me that true rest comes from Him and your constantly changing naps to remind me that I am not in control, as desperately as I want to be.

He has used your sweet smile when I pick you up from the crib to remind me that His grace is never-ending, that His love is bigger than my failures and my insecurities.

He has used your desperate need of my body, my closeness, and my nourishment to remind me how dependent I am on Him, how utterly incapable I am of living life without Him.

And maybe most importantly, He’s used your sweet giggles to remind me that even in the dark and discouraging seasons, there is so much to be joyful about.

I know that everything in childhood (and parenting) is a phase, that eventually you will grow out of this and sleep past 5 AM or take a nap longer than 30 minutes.  I see glimpses of you growing and maturing, even if it sometimes feels like one step forward ten steps back.  So as hard as it is, I’m going to do my best to open my hands and let go of this need for control.

I’m going to trust that even if you won’t sleep like I want you to and I’m worried you’re too tired, God still holds you in His hands, and just like He grew you from a tiny seed in my belly to the sweet little boy you are today, He will take care of you.

I’m learning to trust that God gave you to me for a reason, that even when I feel small and insecure I am exactly that mama you need, today and tomorrow and all the days of your life.

Mothering you is hard in the best of ways, my sweet boy.  You stretch me, grow me, and show me that my heart is capable of a depth of love I never knew before I held you in my arms for the first time.  I love you more than the moon and the stars and there’s nothing you could ever do to change that.

All my loving and lots of belly kisses,

Your mama