it is 4am

It is 4am.

I am awake.

I just put in a load of laundry

I just put away the clean dishes

I just put in dirty dishes

I just fed our newborn baby

I will most likely not go back to sleep until after 6am. Why?

In the big mistake that I spill my "dirty laundry" or just use the blog as a place to vent there are plenty of reasons why I will not return to my warm soft bed until 6am.

I am stressed out. I am exhausted emotionally and mentally. I don't need to go in to detail about the reasons that I am so stressed out that a simple pile of laundry on the living room floor did me in. And why staying up to do laundry is a better bet for me mentally then resting my pretty little head.

Being a mommy is hard and sheesh I have been a mommy for a little over 2 weeks. I anticipated life changing, I anticipated a lack of sleep (not this much though) and I anticipated a good learning curve.

I did not anticipate breastfeeding to be such an "art" or for grunts and coos in the middle of night force me to sleep with one eye open half the time. I did not anticipate having to wake every 2 hours to make a bottle or freak out when we see bubbles in her mouth and run around the house at 3am looking for a blue bulb to remove said bubbles.

Lesson learned: being a mommy does not = being a babysitter. There is way to much involved. Too much love, too much care, too much concern. I never worried about anything so much. And even though my husband tries to ease my worry every day its unavoidable to me. I never imagined I would care so much.

A friend of mine said something really wise the other day in an email. She said that we are so selfish that it is hard to get used to being a mom because you are no longer thinking of yourself all the time, you have to put your child first. Even at 2 am and at 4am and at 6am when you would much rather sleep than be a zombie standing in front of the formula and the bottle.

I am praying that the Lord will help me be less selfish. That I can put our daughter first so that in the middle of the night or when it is inconvenient to me or just plain hard that I am not so concerned about me. That HE will give me the love or the strength or the wisdom to push through whatever it is so that I am not absorbed in me.

"Tomorrow" is another day. I am so thankful that I receive new mercies every morning and that His grace is sufficient for me. There is no way that I can be a good mother unless I realize that I can do NOTHING on my own. Not even the help of my amazing and kind husband will get me through the roughest of days (nights). The Lord is enough - Its just up to me to depend on Him and not try to do it on my own.