Because You’re Not Alone In This Journey
I am tired.
Not the “fed up” kind, but the “I’m on my sixth cup of coffee” kind of tired (and if six cups seems obnoxious, please don’t judge me).
I attribute my being tired lately to balancing a new job with spending as much time as possible with my family, amongst other responsibilities. A recent post from the blog of Rachel Marie Martin called Finding The Joy has been floating among my Facebook friends this week, in which Martin pens an on-line letter to “The Tired Mom”. She writes about sleeping with her 4-year-old, and waking up more tired than she was going to bed the night before, but pushing forward with all of the Mom Duties that she’s presented with for the day. It’s an encouraging piece to inspire and salute all of us Moms to remember even when we’re physically tired, we are not alone in this brave parenting journey to raise independent, well-adjusted kiddos.
Martin is right: Motherhood is a brave journey. But, it’s a passage each of us Moms must discover ourselves, no matter where we are in our parenting journey.
We celebrated my oldest daughter’s 9th birthday last Friday with a fun get together with a few of her closest BFFs. Every year during her birthday, I look at this brown eyed beauty, that my husband and I helped create, with amazement. I spend 27 hours in labor with her (yes, not exaggerating), then finally delivered her by emergency C-section. We weren’t able to hold her until an hour after her birth while doctors monitored her breathing, due to the umbilical cord being wrapped so tightly around her neck she was losing oxygen during labor.
I was tired.
My new baby and I just went through 27 long, agonizing hours of exertion in bringing her into the world. My husband – whose hair now resembled Don King’s after a Mike Tyson fight – was pushed to the stress-limit watching a 27-hour marathon of anxiety. Our nerves were shot. We were tired. But now, we had to wait. Wait for any indication our baby was okay. Anything. Reassurance from our doctor? A nurse? A notice from the overhead loud speaker? A flashing neon “OKAY” light, like a hotel vacancy sign?
The memory of seeing my new baby wheeled into my hospital room and staring into her eyes for the first time will be etched forever in my heart. You can see how exhausted I look in this photo. Someone truly should have been standing beside me to catch this baby, should my fatigued arms give out.
But just as Martin’s blog post from earlier stated, even on those tired days, being a Mom simply means being tired. That lesson came early in my parenting journey: the first day. I’m confident – looking at every Mom’s picture with their new born babies – every Mom agrees.
Make no mistake: not every day is a picturesque-perfect-family-day at the Lautzenhiser House. There have been days I was so tired that I turned on Disney Jr., and took a 10-minute cat nap on the couch (I probably owe Sophia the First oodles of babysitting money). Or I resorted to microwave popcorn for dinner, which kids LOVE by the way. Or I’ve licked my thumb and rubbed off dirt from my 5-year-old’s face, rather than draw her a bath.
I am tired.
We are all in this (sometimes) exhausting Mothering Journey together. Instead of judging each other on how each of us have our own style of raising the next generation, I encourage you to look beyond the surface, the casual, “Hello. I’m fine,” conversations, and lift up your fellow tired Moms. As Plato once said, “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
My battle just happens to be a lack of sleep. And time. Just like you.