3:20am
These nights don’t feel like they used to when he was smaller and younger. I used to embrace them, find joy in them even a lot of the time. Even when we’d have to come to the living room and play a bit in the wee hours, I’d feel a stillness emerge in the cracks of my sleepiness. I’d feel the tender sweetness of being there for him. In those days, my inner voice was strong and loud and my light was bright. I shone from the inside out with newfound knowing and intuition – an intuition I was hardly ever able to trust until I became a mother. I could feel how fleeting the moments were, and there was an energy even in my exhaustion.
Now, on nights like tonight, I search for those feelings. I’m worn down, washed upon by so many waves over time – the steady ones lapping against my shores and the tsunamis, leaving wreckage and trauma I’ve yet to sort through. There’s more internal pleading and praying – for rest, for quiet, begging him to sleep in my mind. Time has eroded my energy. The pandemic has dimmed my light. My voice is shakier and harder to hear; I’m thinking more than listening, more than watching.
I come back to me, to the beauty of this moment in time when I sense his little, warm hand resting on my chest; he’s tired and nursing and trying to find comfort and stillness. He wants to sleep and looks up at me with deep, dark eyes. I will his eyes to close. He’s hardly ever still – this motivated, emerging toddler who wants to jump and run all day, and feeling his weight and warmth is such a gift, one that feels more fleeting than ever. And yet, it’s harder for me now to feel that and live in that space that came so easily before. The anxiety that I felt subside for the first time in so many years has crept back in with the isolation and disorientation of the pandemic. I grasp more, want more, distract more. I guess I also thought it would feel differently by now, and the sleep interruption is getting harder.
I love sleeping beside him. I love being here in the middle of the night to calm his body and mind; when I’m connected to myself (which I am now from writing this all out), I come back to that – the beauty in the difficulty, rising to the challenge of co-regulating with a small human. I yearn to be regulated enough for him to lean on, my system strong enough for his to waver, the rock to his waves. Am I enough? Is the work I’ve done enough? Ever-evolving, of course, but has it reached a good enough spot to root down, to be the foundation? Ah, middle of the night musings.
It feels good to write, to get it out. I always feel better when I do, more like me. My voice gets louder inside as I see it on the page. I strengthen it by sharing it.
Now to try to rest. His foot rests against my leg, and I hear his breath steady. I hope my warmth is of comfort to him, and he can rest easy now. I’ll steady my breath with his and try to rest myself.
Image of my street the night Jonah was born by Kaitlin Coghill, our birth doula
