I feel like I am just coming up for air.
She’s 3 months old now, my beautiful girl and it has been such an intense time. The pre-birth angst nearly consumed me and post-birth life didn’t get a whole lot easier. I guess I naively, perhaps superstitiously thought that number 3 would be easy. The boys weren’t easy babies so surely it was my turn for a contented one? Surely I deserved it?
Apparently not. Hands-down the worst of the 3 with horrendous colic and farts that could and did clear a room. Throw in some toddler wrestling and a constantly curious 5 year old and it was one hell of a summer. I’ve said, joking with some friends, ‘What were we thinking?’ about having a 3rd child but honestly, adorable and precious as she is there have been more than a few times that I seriously wondered if we had done the right thing. Because I don’t do well on the edge, on the knife edge of sanity, of coping. I can’t sustain living in chaos without knowing for sure that really ‘this too will pass’. I go too quickly to worst-case scenarios and imagine that the problems I face today will be here to stay for a long time.
So this post represents 3 months of thankfulness. Because all I could do in the middle of it was say ‘God help me today’ and then with less attitude and self-pity ‘God help me today. Please’.
And I’m here, in one piece. The baby didn’t get thrown across the room, the boys coped and even got played with occasionally. Her colic is almost gone now, Caleb has gone back to school and my days are starting to have a shape and rhythm to them again. I even cooked a new Jamie Oliver recipe last night so we really must be doing ok.
There is a verse somewhere in the good book that says ‘He gently leads those that have young’. I’m thankful for a God who enters my suffering with me, who answers my crys for help not often with a magic wand but with hands of compassion and mercy and a huge dollop of grace.
