I was crashing; not making sense of anything anymore. I was seriously forgetting what day of the week it was (And in turn missing play “dates” I had set up). Names and places were just out of my mind’s reach. I almost fell asleep right on the cart waiting in line at the Sam’s pharmacy check-out. And then last night was a battle between my son and I.
I had woken my soundly sleeping son for a dream feed. And he didn’t want me. I couldn’t calm him down. He howled in frustration. And I howled, hands in my head because I felt I had “done the wrong thing.” So my tears ultimately won out because I couldn’t soothe him nor myself. I knew I had put this fatigue and stress on my body myself.
I joke about how tired I am, but seriously, I have never been so tired in my life.
The deep, underlying reality is summed up in three bad words: fear, worry, and guilt.
Anytime my son cries for milk, I jump out of bed, eyes still closed, pulling at my shirt to feed him.
And do you know why I jump?
I fear my body will stop producing milk if I’m not feeding my son around the clock, and the next challenge will be trying to teach my son how to drink from a bottle. When my son cries in the night, I worry he is actually hungry because my irrational, sleep-deprived self thinks, can a 5-month-old really be expected to go 12 hours at night without eating??
I feel guilty that my son will be affected by how well I respond to him (because of the wonderful world of googling…sarcasm), so I fear that if I don’t respond to my son immediately when he wakes at night, this will affect his social and emotional behavior. I feel guilty that when my son cries at night, my husband is being kept up as well, and I’m the only one who can make my son stop crying (because I can feed him).
And it becomes this vicious cycle of fear, worry, guilt.
Fear, worry, guilt. FEAR, WORRY, GUILT. These bad words taking control of my mind and crowding out all of my rational thought processing.
SO when I woke up this morning with the joy COMPLETELY depleted from my soul, I shook my head sadly and thought, “You have let the enemy win…again.” And I even felt guilty for THAT!!
But, you know what? It’s this mind game that the enemy plays with me. I try to come up for air, but he pushes me down again and holds me there just long enough, my resolve becoming weaker and weaker, until he wins. He really is doing a number on me, and I am playing right into his hands by thinking that I have to do this whole “mom” thing alone.
Two thoughts
1) During WWII, U.S. Army General George Patton wrote to his troops:
“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”
And Patrick Mckeown, a philosopher, continues to explain,
“endurance is relative to how well the body is prepared, and the onset of fatigue occurs when the body is pushed beyond the limits of preparation.”
My body is meant to birth a child, feed a child, comfort a child, do all the things for a child, but without sleep, my body is “pushed beyond the limits of preparation.” Ultimately, my body wasn’t prepared for this. Tired? Yes. Complete exhaustion to the point of hopelessness? A thousand times no.
2) Heather MacFadyen from the Don’t Mom Alone podcast spoke at a MomLife event at Buckhead church. Her message rang loud and clear (and I am summarizing majorly), but I don’t need to be a mom alone. I have a major support group that I need to lean into…hard. I don’t need to do just joke about my tiredness, I need to reach out and allow others to help me. And so, my first “step” will be allowing my husband to love me, and to take our son for the night while I try and get a full 8 hours.
Bottom Line
Your title might be “mom,” but you will fail if you think you have to be EVERYTHING for your son or daughter. And this is coming from the most loving, truthful place in my heart, as well as a blaring reminder for me. I need to learn that there are PEOPLE who want to HELP me. And there is NO SHAME in that mom game.
Update as of 9.21.2019
After writing this post originally on 9/14/19, and coming to terms with how exhausted I was, I reached out to family and friends to talk with me and give me wise counsel. God also reached out to me in the form of my son’s birth song on the radio.
I told myself, for one night, and one night only, I was going to let my son whine and fuss while I got some sleep. And the next day and night I would be ready for him, on-demand, if you will. And you know what? He whined and fussed that first night….and that was it. He’s been sleeping through the night ever since I reached out in exhaustion. My son knew he could do it, I just had to step back and allow him to do it.
