I'm so tired. It was just one night, but I'm so tired.
And that damn pacifier.
I'm sitting here at the coffee table, sipping on honeyed caffeine and looking across at my baby girl in a swing, praying she'll go back to sleep. I'm weeping. Head in my hands and feeling like a failure.
I stayed up with her for two hours last night, so tired and frustrated that she can't put herself back to sleep without her pacifier. Most nights there's no problem and she only wakes up once to eat. But some nights it's every 40 minutes for 3 hours or more, and I want to take a butcher knife to that damn pacifier. I want to hit myself every time she cries for it because I taught her to use it in the first place.
So she cries on and off for 2 hours while I "pick up/put down" and shush-pat til the room spins and I'm utterly exhausted on a chair next to her crib. No more pacifier, I tell myself. She will learn to stay asleep. No backing down this time.
The real kicker? Sometimes she'd be calm enough to pause for a few minutes and look up at me and smile. The nerve!
I hate that damn pacifier.
Finally she falls asleep and I return to our room and curl up in a ball. Again. Because I did this about 30 minutes prior, telling Jamie that "I can't do this any more." But I did.
When she woke at 5 am to eat I thought she'd go back to sleep, but no - she needed that damn pacifier. And this time I give it to her because I'm too tired to think. So much for her learning to stay asleep without it.
She wakes up at 7 am smiling and happy, because she's just that kind of person.
I, on the other hand, am begrudgingly take her into our room to nurse her, and she takes one side and then promptly starts biting down. I pull her off several times and she smiles at me again, and I get more frustrated.
I turn my back to her, trying to find comfort in a fetal position. It doesn't work. I have a headache. I tell myself I'm over this.
And then I remember, as the Holy Spirit whispers to me: "This is how you are to Jesus sometimes. You bite and cry, and most of the time you don't understand why you're doing it. But it hurts him, just like she hurts you."
And that verse comes up in my head. Isaiah 49:15. "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you."
Oh, the love of Jesus! The love of our God. How extremely humbling.
And I know Penny doesn't know what she's doing. She's just confused and frustrated and tired, just like her mama. And I love her so much.
But the Lord loves us both, even more than I can fathom. His love never fails. His mercies are new every morning. And His patience never ends. He's the perfect example for this weary child.
