His kindness in my day-to-day

It’s all still hazy. Sleep deprivation kind of makes life that way.

Mothering a newborn (and, I assume, mothering a child of any age) requires continual re-adjustment. Just when I think, “Okay, I’ve got this down,” he changes it up on me.

I have to remind myself to breathe sometimes. I almost hold my breath, stressing myself out – listening for him to start crying after I lay him down, waiting for his eyes to close while I’m rocking him, hoping he won’t wake up in the library.

I’m loving staying home with him. We’ve been getting in a somewhat-good routine, loosely based on Babywise but without really “crying it out” or scheduling – just following the eat/wake/sleep pattern as much as possible, and also using the 2.5-3-hr. feeding time as a general guideline. That’s helped him learn the difference between night and day.

Now at 3 weeks, though, he’s starting to change things up on me – waking more during the night, not taking full feedings during the day, and becoming quite a bit of work to get to sleep. So today I’m keeping a log of everything he’s doing, and trying to get him on a little more of a schedule, and lay him down to sleep when he’s drowsy but still awake. (While still remaining flexible, responsive to his hunger cues, and not being controlling or militant about it. Whew.) Still, he’s proving a lot more responsive than when I tried the same thing a couple of weeks ago. He’s much more ready to put himself to sleep now.

When she came down to visit after Christian was born, my mom brought me a copy of devotionals from Susannah Spurgeon (yes, Charles Spurgeon’s wife). They have been an immense encouragement to me over the past few weeks, often being exactly what I needed to hear that day. There are only a couple dozen of them; I wish she had written hundreds! Here are a few excerpts that have been meaningful to me:

“It is not my poor, cold, half-hearted love that is to satisfy and comfort me; but Your love, great, and full, and free, and eternal as Yourself! Surely, I had known this before, Lord; but I had shut myself up in unbelief till, in Your sweet mercy, You spoke the word that released me from my chains, opened my prison doors, and let me out into the sunshine of true peace in believing.”

“Lord, my soul flings itself on this glorious fact, this saving truth, as a drowning man seizes upon a life-belt thrown to him in the surging sea! If you do not love me and lift me, I must perish for ever. But there is no question of sinking when Jesus saves, no fear of losing life when He loves… Now, all the day long, my heart shall sing over the safety and blessedness of being freely loved, instead of fretting about the sad lack of my poor love to You.”

“God’s negatives and affirmatives are like great rocks jutting out from the insecure and shifting sands of all earthly experiences.”

-Free Grace and Dying Love: Morning Devotions by Susannah Spurgeon