In the early morning hours, long before even a rooster would think of waking, your cry rouses me, and I go to you quickly. I just can’t stand to hear you calling for me, and no matter how deeply I dream, when you call out, I wake.
I pull you from your crib, and your cries ease immediately as I draw your warm, tiny body to my chest. Despite my weariness, when I hug you tightly like this it just feels good, and sleep doesn’t seem to matter. Until it does.
We rock, and you fall back asleep easily, but I know better than to put you down. Not yet. And so we rock, and we rock, and I doze off too. Stiff-necked, and upright I try to drift back off, and I pray as we rock. My mind drifts in all directions, but it’s always pulled back towards the bed. After all, chair sleep just isn’t the same.
The warm bed, it calls to me, and I heft you up as I stand. You stir, you frown, and I consider taking you to bed with me. Yes, perfect. We’ll both sleep then.
I want to sleep with you, to hold you in the crook of my arm, your comforting body next to mine. I want to sleep with you baby, but I can’t. Or rather you can’t. And neither of us get any rest.
You toss, you turn. Flip, flop, like a worm in hot ash, and I wonder confused how your dear dad sleeps so soundly as you pounce back and forth.
So back to the chair we go. Just to get you back to sleep. Asleep enough to sleep on your own. I hold you close, we rock, and as I look at your angelic face I know you don’t feel well, but even Momma needs to sleep sometime.
Off to the crib we go. I creep slowly, desperate not to wake you, and I pray not to knock your noggin on a door frame in the darkness and my weariness.
Again you cry, and I wonder, is she hurting? I volley back and forth in my mind whether I would be medicating you, or medicating for myself. So we could both sleep.
I stand guard over the baby monitor trying to let you fall asleep on your own. To cry it out. But I never make it very long. The sound of your tears, the longing I hear there draws me back to you.
Two hours, and still we rock, and I doze upright, and I wonder if we shall ever sleep again. I rock, I kiss your forehead, and I pray for you. For me. For sleep. Do mommies sleep?
An hour later I lay in my bed, and you lay in yours. I watch the lights on the baby monitor, and even as I drift to sleep I think I hear your cries. I pry my eyes open, and my ears too, but I sigh in relief at the silence. And we both sleep. We both finally sleep.
Denise says
Wow.. I could place myself in that rocker with one of my children years ago. Well-written and beautiful. And yet, somehow, those years really do pass quickly and then we yearn, once again, for them. Because the next step of parenthood , letting go and cutting the apron strings, isn’t any easier. The love of a mother is forever.
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
I’ll never stop savoring these moments. No matter how exhausted I am.
Denise says
I totally agree with you Brie…. I love being a mom and being responsible for shaping little people into wonderful people of great moral character.
brieann.rn@gmail.com says
Yes.
Denise says
🙂
ashley p says
I love this. I could have written every single word myself. Last night, for the first time in his entire 13 months of life my youngest son slept through the night. Not once did he wake up & cry for me. I’m sure I will have more opportunities to sleep in the rocking chair or wonder again how in the world such a small person can occupy so much of a queen size bed. I’m sure when that time comes I will long for peaceful sleep. But when I woke up this morning, I felt just a tinge of sadness. Because he didn’t need me last night.