I love visit A Wide Line. Her blog is wonderful place. It is beautiful to look at and wonderful to read. Her son Quinn is so cute! I love to read what he is learning and doing. His mom’s thoughts and ideas are inspiring.
I’m so honored to be here at JDaniel4’s Mom, one of my favorite blogs. Isn’t JDaniel4’s Mom just lovely? I love her series on pausing life for a moment, and I was thrilled when she asked me to participate.
Being fully present in the moment is a challenge for me. I’m the type of person who constantly charges full speed ahead toward the future – planning, preparing, paving my path. When I’m not paving, I’m usually wrapped up in knots worrying about the future – losing sleep, losing my hair and losing the days.
The concept of slowing down and savoring the moment never really occurred to me until I got pregnant for my son, Quinn. The pregnancy flew by, and for the first time in my life, I wanted nothing more than to slow time down so I could keep my baby close and safe just a little longer.
Quinn is now seven months old, and we’ve taken approximately 3,789 photos of him. A few weeks ago, I was looking through our photos, and I came across a picture.
According to the date on the photograph, Quinn was about four weeks old, and I have no recollection of the photo being taken. This realization felt like a punch in the stomach. How can I not remember this? How many other holes are there in my memory?
I began looking through all the photos more closely, and I came across several from Quinn’s early months that revealed more holes. While I remember the actual photographs being taken – the three of us together on Easter, Quinn and I on Mother’s Day, Quinn in his giraffe jammies – I can’t remember anything else about the events. I know we went to my Hub’s aunt and uncle’s house for Easter dinner, but I can’t recall anything specific about the day, other than our picture being taken. Aren’t photographs supposed bring back memories?
I spent the first months of Quinn’s life in a sleep deprived, post-partum depressed, “I-don’t-know-if-I-can-do-this” anxiety-filled haze. The fog has finally lifted, but the guilt for having been engulfed in it at all eats away at me. I look at my seven month old son, who is now more than twice the size of the wee baby in the photograph, and I want all that time back. Now his legs hang down far past my waist, and he has a hard time finding a cushy spot for his head on my shoulder. He rarely falls asleep on me anymore, and when he does, he twists and squirms, struggling to find a comfortable position. He’s no longer a little baby. He looks and act more and more like a little boy every day.
I do have many beautiful memories of Quinn as a tiny baby, but I know that some are forever lost in that fog. And that makes me sad. But I figure I have two options. I can feel bad for myself, wishing for the impossible – to get those moments back. Or I can make an effort to be more mindful in my parenting and be fully present in my moments with Quinn from now on so I don’t create new holes.
After I became a stay at home mom, I wrote a post that included a poem by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton entitled “Song for a Fifth Child.” My favorite line is the last one:
Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
But children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby. Babies don’t keep.
These words are server as a reminder for me to pause and enjoy this fleeting time with my baby. The world can keep spinning and life will keep moving, but in the center of all the whirling and chaos are small moments I can capture and just be still – just Quinn, my husband and me.
This past Saturday, on our last day of vacation in Hawaii, I was putting Quinn down for a nap, and he fell asleep on my shoulder for the first time in so long. My first instinct was to put him down. I had so much to do – I had to pack, wash a couple loads of laundry, take a shower…. But then I realized that’s part of why his first few months of life are a blur to me. So I quieted the urgent voice in my head and slowly sat back down on the bed. As I laid my head on the pillow to take a nap with my baby son, I thought, “This is exactly what I should be doing.” Two hours later we both woke up refreshed and happy, and that nap was the best part of our vacation.
Please take a moment and visit A Wide Line.
When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I try my hardest to practice mindfulness. Following my breath, paying attention to the moment (whether good or bad), and really making an effort to participate in life helps things slow down and give me a sense of calm.
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