Having a baby is hard. It really is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my entire life. Seriously. Labor was a tea party compared to the first few weeks of sleepless frustrating messy unpredictable days and nights. And while it is slowly getting better, I feel like relief is never going to arrive.
Don't get me wrong, I am so excited to have a child. I often find myself wondering what his first words will be, who will be his first crush (not until he is 40), what sports or instruments he will play, and where he will go to college. BUT those moments seem like eternity away and way to close all at the same time.
For now we are still working on getting Mason to fall asleep on his own and let me tell you. Ugh. I never knew one baby had that much of an ability to cry. And that I had the ability to cry this much either. I am seriously surprised we have not flooded the house yet, or at least the nursery.
Baby-Wise is the system that we are following and so far it has been great to get Mason on a feeding schedule, that way I can tell when he is hungry or if he is crying for another reason. Now we are onto establishing a good sleep routine and teaching the little guy to be able to fall asleep on his own, very important if mommy and daddy ever want to get a good night sleep again. The downside is listening to him cry. And cry. And cry.
We check on him about every ten minutes to make sure he is not too hot or cold, is still in a clean diaper, and to make sure he is not hungry (he gets hungrier when going through a growth spurt). Basically he calms down when we walk in the room and as soon as we leave he cries like there is no tomorrow. And then I cry like there is no tomorrow. And Jake sits with me until I am no longer in tears.
This is supposedly only supposed to last a few days until he grasps the habit of falling asleep on his own but a few days?! This mommy is not sure she can handle that. Thank goodness for my husband who reassures me about every 4 minutes that I am not a bad mother and crying just for the sake of crying is not harming our little one.
I have found that one amazing side affect of this stage of life is that my prayer life has improved immensely. I find myself unable to plan or control 98% of the things going on - which I am fairly used to doing - but now I have to rely on not only my husband more but we together have to rely on God. I probably pray about 20 times a day just asking for the ability to just make it through the day.
My favorite part is that at the end of the day, the last thing Jake and I do is pray over our son. We crawl into bed, after putting Mason to sleep at 10 (a time which he does not cry, hooray), and we hold hands and pray for our little boy. It has been one of the most encouraging parts of my day and I would not give that up for the world.
With all of our friends, our family, and God, Jake and I know we have an amazing support system in raising Mason to be a young man of God. But - it is always nice to have a few extra prayers thrown our way so keep us in your thoughts (keep all new parents in your thoughts), we would really appreciate any help we can get - especially the prayer kind!
Mama Mia out.
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