It is 3 am. I have been up for the last 70 minutes with pain in my lower belly area keeping me from going back to sleep. I got up and took a couple of Tylenol about 50 minutes ago. I was hoping this would help and I could go back to sleep. Obviously that didn't work so well.
Maybe I will turn on Little Bear. That show always makes me sleepy. Noble likes that show and will sit on my lap through almost 15 minutes of it. It is a sweet time of day for me because I get some sleepy cuddle time with him, even if it is only for 15 minutes.
"30 days. I can do it right? 30 days." This is what I say to myself and the girls tonight as I soaked my aches in the bath. "Tell me I can do it girls. 30 days." They are good cheerleaders. They tell me I have come so far and I can totally do it. Then they sit with me on my bed after I get out of the bath and lotion my legs and feet and scratch and "massage" my back while I read to them.
There is great love in the room. Even my 5 year old can feel it. In a break from reading we talk about how we can feel Camille with us at times like this. Lauren notes how she can feel it Camille right then because of how loving we are all being to each other. We all feel it. And even through my physical pain, I know that this is the reason I suffer - so that I may have more of the sweetness of such experiences with my children.
Our first mother Eve knew there would be pain involved when she partook of that forbidden fruit. But she chose to suffer so that she could also know the sweet pleasure of posterity. And so motherhood is an eternal balance between the sublimest of pleasures and the severest of pains.
