By TMoM Team Member Suzy Fielders
Time is a crazy, uncontrollable, and hard to understand concept. No matter how old I get it always seems to allude me. But time has also brought me the gift of patience and wisdom.
At 23, I became a single mom. Those difficult days and more difficult nights, time always felt very long. It seemed like my daughter would never go to sleep or stay asleep. Or it felt that those hard baby and toddler days would last forever. Of course, they didn’t last, as here I am today with a 16-year-old who just got her driver’s license.
Soon after I turned 39-years-old, I had my second daughter. This time I knew better on those weary newborn days. I knew there would be light at the end of the hazy tunnel of no sleep – even when it felt like there wasn’t. The nights certainly felt long but I felt better equipped to conquer them. However, I still questioned it occasionally.
Days before I turned 40-years-old, I had my third daughter. Yes, we have Irish twins and that is a blog on its own! But now I feel I truly know the essence of time. Instead of thinking about how tired I am or wondering if I’ll ever get sleep again, I am just grateful for this brief time I have with my babies. I know now the reality is what seems like an eternity of no sleep, bottles, and diapers really is a mere blink of the eye. After all I look at my teenage daughter and regularly think she was just a baby like these others with what feels like yesterday.
So, as I sit here at 1 am with a stiff neck from sitting up most of the night and heavy eyes from the lack of sleep, I forget the exhaustion and am grateful to enjoy these few moments of sweet babies. That’s the biggest benefit of having a teenager and babies at the same time, I can see very clearly how elusive time really is.
New moms or simply frustrated moms of babies and toddlers, I know first-hand (three times over) how hard and tiring those days are. But there is no truer piece of advice then this… enjoy those moments because they go by too fast. It never feels like it at the time, but it sure does once your no longer little baby is basically grown. Therefore, take a deep breath and look into your sweet baby’s eyes or watch them sleep, and drink in that precious moment of time before it’s gone. Don’t let time be a thief… steal back those moments!
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