I Don’t Know If I Can Do This

I don’t remember the last time that I went to bed and slept straight through the night. It seems like a LONG DISTANT MEMORY. You know those memories that are so distant you can barely remember them? That’s the kind I’m referring to. My newborn hasn’t slept in a week and my three year old has had a cough the last three nights so this mama is drained. I remember waking up at one point two nights ago with my newborn screaming every hour and thinking that I wanted to cry something terribly but I was too tired to even shed one single tear. 

As I sat here drinking my fourth cup of coffee so that I could muster up the drive to clean my house I stumbled on some old videos of my first and second born when they were just as little as my sweet Belle. Those moments caught on camera I don’t remember. Time seems to have vanished into thin air and I can’t fathom how I almost have a four year old or that I have three little human beings that are mine. I’m thankful for technology because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to recall how little and precious each of my babies were. When I think about how fast time has flown by I know that I’m going to blink and my babies wont be babies anymore.

The hard part about motherhood isn’t the sleeplessness, or the days that drag on while your “threenager” and your two year old battle it out and the newborn is crying for your attention.

The hard part about motherhood is that our everyday feels like slow motion but our years feel like they are on fast forward.

I don’t remember my firstborns first words or when my second born took his first steps and that breaks my heart. So even though I may not remember how it felt today when my three month old rolled over for the first time I’m going to cherish this moment and I’m going to love my babies a little extra today because one day I’m going to look back and wish with everything inside of me that I could remember. Remember how it feels to have little hands that need me to hold them in the middle of the night, how it feels to have a crying baby immediately stop crying because I picked them up, and how it feels to hear a tiny human say “I wuv oo mama“.

I think I finally understand what people mean when they say to me that I’m going to miss this one day. They aren’t saying that I’m going to miss the sleepless nights, or the days that seem to drag on forever. They are saying that I’m going to miss having my babies wanting me to hold them and having babies that need their mama. One day they aren’t going to need me anymore and that’s going to be harder than any sleepless night that I’ve had to endure. So if you are feeling like me today mama, (so tired that you don’t know if you can do this) just look at those little faces and  love them in this moment, right here and right now, in the middle of all of the chaos because I promise you,“One day you’re going to miss this!”.