It’s only temporary

A couple of months ago, I just had my baby. I’ll admit, there have been many difficult moments where she would wake up several times in a night for a feeding or a diaper change or just wanted to be carried in the earlier weeks. Some people would tell me these moments are “beautiful” and I say they are lying to me because it was tough and frustrating. Plus it must be nice to hire a postpartum doula and recruit other help. Then there’s other people who tell me it gets better, but they never quite elaborate it.

I agree, it does get better. It’s not because I got better at waking up frequently through the night. In fact, nowadays, she wakes up only once in middle of the night on most nights. It gets better because the frustrations I had in the infancy of parenthood were were gone; I realized these feelings were only temporary. I wish I told myself before she was born that my frustration and sleepless nights will pass — it’s not going to be forever. Of course interacting with her when she’s awake in the daytime and helping her relax towards the later hours (or when she indicates she’s tired) did not happen on its own — we worked to make it happen.

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #127: Precious Moments