Why Parents Really Get Tired

As a general rule, I'd say that I'm a pretty emotionally courageous person. For example, I just found my diaries from childhood where I describe things like bone marrow aspirations and Congestive Heart Failure. Survived that.  Interspersed between the hospital stays and chemo are stories of my upbringing in a religious cult. Managed to get out of that with a sense of humor intact, even after a nervous breakdown in Thailand.  Rebounded from a quarter life crisis, an abortion, a miscarriage, living below the poverty line for years, and ended up meeting the love of my life on a 500 mile pilgrimage across Spain.  

This gamut of life experiences has put me through my emotional paces and made me a more resilient human. There's not a whole lot that phases me or takes me for a ride.

Until I became mother to Espen Camino Eld-Mathis.

Now I realize that babies cry because they are communicating various things.  I'm hungry. Tired. Frustrated. Lonely. Angry.  What they don't tell you is that the volume and intensity of your baby's cry draws its energy directly from the life force that makes your own heart beat.

I can set my baby down for his nap, knowing that he has been hugged, read to, changed, rocked, fed, and entertained as much as he would tolerate, and STILL, when he opens his mouth and WAILS,  I can literally feel my energy levels revving up to fill the gap. Why? Because I may have given and done EVERYTHING I can think of to do and spent every last emotional penny trying to procure a satisfied baby customer, but none of that matters when The Cry That Pierced His Mother's Heart issues its demands.

Tired mom? Doesn't matter. Baby. Must. Be. Loved.  Even if I am doing dishes in the kitchen, resolved to let him work out his frustrations so he can learn to put himself to sleep, I am still beaming him every particle of love and comfort the universe has to offer around his crib and into his little baby heart.

I may have had my moments of doubt as to the possibility of remote healing before becoming a mother, but now, I am firmly convinced that energy can be exchanged between parties physically separated by space. All I have to do is go into another room when Espen cries, and I can feel the transfer occurring.

This to say, I stand before you all, humbled, an emotional titan no more.  Espen has shown me how very fragile and fluid I really am. I thank him for this revelation even as I drag myself about at the end of the day emotionally exhausted yet ready to do it all again the next day.  I thank him because as much as it stretches and pains me to love so inevitably, it makes the greens so much greener and the days brighter than I ever imagined possible.