>Yesterday morning, I blearily awoke to the sound of our little girl fussing and crying through the baby monitor. I turned over to my alarm clock to see that it was only 5am! I still have an entire hour before I need to wake up and get everything ready for work. This is so unusual, why is Emma up at 5am? She normally sleeps until at least 6:30. I climbed out of bed, went into her room, and gave her a pacifier. Half asleep I went back to bed and prayed for just a few more minutes, please Jesus, just a few more.
A few minutes later Emma was awake and it was loud and clear. There was no going back to sleep. Well, I did only ask for just a few more minutes. I guess I should have prayed for another hour : ) We got up and began to start the mornings routine.
I gave Emma her milk, and she cried when she finished it. I gave Emma her breakfast, and she fussed through the whole thing. We watched a little bit of cartoons and she was not impressed with the bright cherry images that jumped across the screen. We went into my bedroom so that Emma could play while I got dressed for work, and she cried and wanted to be held the whole time. At one point, I had to just let her cry her crocodile tears because there was no other choice, I had to put on clothes for work…they make me.
We tried playing with her toys together on the floor, and it just wasn’t good enough, the tears ensued. We tried a little more breakfast, and water, and more toys…nope, not having it. I just could not help my littler girl with whatever it was that was making her so upset. Emma doesn’t usually act like this, I don’t understand.
To say that I was feeling overwhelmed and ill-equipped was an understatement. Normally I dread the passing of our morning time together because its our time to hang out and play before I go to work. But on this day, I was ready for it to be time. Maybe going to her babysitters and having a change of scenery will shake whatever it is that is making her like this. I dropped Emma off and she cried when I handed her over. This was the first time in her entire young life that she’s cried when I dropped her off. So sad.
All day at work I just felt like such a bad mom. Why couldn’t I figure out what was wrong with my little girl? Usually I can read her like a book and give her exactly what she needs. Lord, why did you make me a mom? I don’t know what I’m doing! I feel like such a failure!I don’t spend enough time with her to figure her out. I don’t know her enough! These were my thoughts all day long. All I could do was pray that God would give me the wisdom and the knowledge to know how to parent Emma because I knew this was not going to be the only day like this, more were sure to come.
I dreaded the drive home to pick up Emma, because if the evening was anything like the morning…I was going to crawl into a hole and stay there! That evening, Emma was pretty much the same. Finally I decided I was going to figure out whatever it was that was bothering her no matter what it took! The thought that she might be teething came to mind because she was showing a few of the signs, so I opened up that little mouth of hers and forced her to let me check around…all of a sudden I felt this pointy hard thing sticking out of the top right side of her mouth, so I grabbed a flashlight to take a closer look… OOOOOH. Now it makes sense! Emma is teething her molars! Yikes! No wonder she is so upset. I would be crying too! So we immediately got some Tylenol into her and put a little numbing medicine on her gums. It took a while, but after some time, this seemed to help.
Chris and I put Emma to bed that night and started to breath a little easier now that we knew what was wrong with her. She’s actually been acting quite fussing for the last few days and its been tough.
I was unsure of what today was going to hold, but I was so glad to find Emma back to her happy self again this morning. Not a fuss out of her mouth or a tear in sight. It’s crazy how today could be the polar opposite of yesterday. It was an easy, light, fun morning. I’m finding that every day is different in the life of child.
So I guess the moral to this story is that tough days as a mom are going to come and I’m not always going to know how to handle them, but I can rest assured that Jesus is always there to to guide me through it. Stressing about it all day is probably never going to help the situation. God created me to be a mom for a very special reason and I shouldn’t let satan’s harsh thoughts take over my mind so easily.
