So it's been a minute since I've sat down to write, and the reason for that is deeply humbling.
I went from being the mum whose baby would sleep for two hours at naptime and twelve glorious hours at night… to having a tiny tyrant who wants to party all the time. All the time. The audacity.
Hello, Mr No Naps.
Now my baby is on the move, and he's getting more and more of my "doesn't know how to sit still" personality, and less of his dad's "so chill he's practically horizontal" vibes.
He's busy. He's curious. He has places to be and furniture to pull himself up on and absolutely no interest in lying down while the world is out there being so excruciatingly interesting. Naps? For the weak, apparently. Sleeping through the night? A distant, beautiful memory I speak of fondly.
My mum says it's my karma. (Thanks, Mum. Love you.)
The mental whiplash of it all.
The hardest part of having a baby that has radically changed his sleep schedule isn't even the lost sleep. It's the mental whiplash of constantly trying to figure out what's wrong and how to help him.
Is he teething? Definitely. Is he comfortable? Who knows. Does he hate his cot? Probably. Is he too hot, too cold, too full, too hungry, overtired, undertired, going through a leap, a growth spurt, or just plain over it? Your guess is as good as mine.
You become a full-time detective working a case with no clues and a client who can only communicate through crying, laughing and throwing food all over the place. You try one thing, it works for a night, you think you've cracked it, and then it never works again. It's exhausting in a way nobody warns you about, not the physical tiredness, but the mental load of endlessly solving a puzzle that keeps changing the answer.
Two messages for today.
I've got two things I want to share, one for the mums whose babies aren't sleeping, and one for the mums whose babies are.
If your baby isn't sleeping: you are AMAZING. A freaking wonder woman. A goddess incarnate. You are doing the hard, invisible, bone-deep work, and you have actual superpowers running through your veins. Running on broken sleep and still showing up, still loving, still going? That's not small. That's heroic. I see you, and I'm right there in the trenches with you.
If your baby is sleeping through the night: don't get too smug or too comfortable like I did. Because you never know when this blissful little window will close, and when it does, it will slap you clean across the face. Enjoy it, soak it up, but hold it loosely. (I say this with so much love and only a tiny bit of bitterness, because I simultaneously pray this never happens to you while also being so humbled because I thought I had the perfect sleeping baby.)
What I actually want you to take from this.
Here's the real message underneath the jokes: everything is temporary.
Motherhood is like the ocean. Some days are hard and rough, and the waves crash down on you like rocks, relentless, knocking the breath out of you, leaving you gasping.
And other days are calm and gentle and clear as crystal, the kind of day you want to bottle and keep forever.
But here's the thing about the ocean… it never stays the same for long.
The rough seas always settle eventually.
And the glassy calm will always, at some point, churn back up again.
Neither one lasts.
Which means when you're in the crashing-waves season, like I am right now with my little night owl, you can hold onto the fact that it will pass like it always does. And when you're in the crystal-clear calm, you get to be grateful for it, enjoy it, and not take it for granted because you know deep down it's a gift, not a given. We’re all on our own baby’s timeline. Which is a sobering reality when I’ve spent my life doing what I want, when I want to.
To help me have a sense of calm through the storm, I'm currently re-reading my favourite book in the world, A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas, to get ready to read her brand new release that is casually waiting on my nightstand. And there's a line in it I'm carrying with me right now:
"I am the rock against which the surf crashes."
Because amongst the chaos, I am his rock. His stable source, his grounding force. And if there's one thing I've learned through the hard times, through IVF, through years of grief and trauma, it's that it's who we choose to be in the face of the chaos that matters. So I choose to drink my coffee, laugh at this crazy little baby exploring the world, and trust that this too shall pass.
Which end of the ocean are you in right now, crashing waves or crystal calm? Come tell me over on Instagram, I'll be over here negotiating with Mr No Naps, drinking coffee and trying my best to stay sane. 🤍
