While She Sleeps

The moments I never want to forget, even when it feels like I might drown.

I just want to note here that we always sleep in the C position and follow safe co-sleeping guidelines. This picture was taken during the day and my husband was watching us both for safety.

Amidst the dark sky lit only by the night moon, I am awake. It is my role as the mother. I hear her stirring, then the simple cries as her body knows that mine will soon be intertwined. I roll down to the small twin mattress my husband dutifully carried into our bedroom when I told him I was ready for a little space, but not too much space.

I reach for some milk in the mini-fridge my husband also dutifully bought for me when he realized this midnight milk thing wasn’t going away anytime soon. It’s the only comfort that will lull her back to sleep quickly and effectively, and I listen to her click her tongue as she sips it down. For thirteen months, it was my own breast milk that I extracted by machine so I could still feed her myself, even if I couldn’t figure out how to nurse.

Now, it’s watered-down soy milk. Probably not the same, but it does the job.

I’ve tried to night wean her more times than I can count, but the screams she elicits as I take away what matters most to her is excruciating. I know she’s too old to still be drinking milk multiple times at night. I know she “should” be sleeping through the night by now. But I can only go by instinct, and my instincts say to hold her close and tight and figure out a way to support her without adding unnecessary wounds to her short amount of life experience.

So, I lie to the pediatrician and tell her she sleeps.

But I keep waking up with her, I keep laying next to her, and I keep supporting her fully.

Because here’s the thing; I know it’s not going to last forever. I know that we are going to figure this out and she is going to either one day stop drinking the milk or I will magically find a way to wean her from it. I know that one day she will want her own space, her own bed, her own room, and I will mourn this sweet space of time where she was all mine and I was all hers.

I know that when I am tired and frustrated, and all I want is to sleep but I hear her rustling and needing me, that I wish I could roll over and ignore it. But I am instead choosing to be in the moment with her, as she navigates through her emotions and her life, and knows that without a doubt I will be by her side when she needs me. Not even when she needs me, but when she just wants her mama.

I am a mother. This is what I do. No matter the amount of times I want to pull my hair out and cry into my pillow, I choose to lean into the uncomfortable.

We think when we become mothers that the initiation lies in the birth. But the birth is only the introduction. It’s the cosmic force teaching you that you can do hard things. You can do nearly impossible things. So that when you encounter hard over and over again as you raise your babies, you know without a doubt that you will survive even when it feels like you can’t go another day.

I don’t view my decision to not sleep train as martyrdom. I choose it as humanity. For me, it is less uncomfortable to go two years without sleeping through the night than it is knowing that all she’s doing is signaling for my support. When Maverick was 9 months old, a friend said to me, “Well, you’ll never get her out of your bed now. Babies are manipulative, if you let them be.”

And I wholeheartedly disagree. Babies are born with lungs to breathe, limbs to move, and mouths to speak. Their language is crying, and it’s our journey as their caregivers to understand what they are trying to say.

We are entrusted with the most magical, all-encompassing, deeply profound journey of creating, growing, and raising human beings. It is our tiny sliver of insight into the divine of the Universe. The heaven on Earth.

It is my mission not to rush it, but to embrace it. Even in the hard moments. Even when it feels impossible because I know that I am doing the most sacred work of all.

So I’ll pat her back, and sing a lullaby, and hope that one day she will be able to fall back asleep with only my touch. But I won’t rush it, I will let it flow. And I will hold her close, so she knows I’m always there, while she sleeps.