Newborn Life: How Rocking a Cradle Rocked My World

By Leslie Ann Jones

I just put my daughter down for a nap and tiptoed out of her room. If I’m lucky, she’ll stay asleep long enough for me to finish writing this article. If not, well, writing the article—impending deadline or not—will have to wait.

Welcome to my new life. I spend my days repeating a never-ending, three-hour cycle of feeding Micah, changing her diaper, playing with her, and putting her down for a nap. I’ve never been a slave to the clock, but these days I watch it carefully, calculating just how much I can get done in as little time as possible.

In all seriousness, becoming a mother has changed my life for the better. Even though my life is drastically different than it was just seven weeks ago, I wouldn’t go back to my life pre-Micah for anything in the world. She is that precious.

But just because she’s precious doesn’t mean that it’s been easy. No matter how many friends tried to warn me about the difficulty of the first days at home, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of what my life had become.

“It’s not the late-night feedings that are the hardest—it’s the days that drag on forever when my little girl refuses to lay her head down and go to sleep. Those days are hard. I’m still overwhelmed by the thought of being responsible for another human being. When did I grow up enough to become a parent? Does that make me old? Will I ever feel like I have everything together? The thought of doing anything besides making it through the day is hard for me to imagine” (October 1, 2009: two weeks old).

I lived in survival mode for the first few weeks. I didn’t read my Bible or even pray very much. The responsibility laid upon my shoulders overwhelmed me, and even though I cherished looking into Micah’s big blue eyes and rocking her to sleep, I feared that becoming a mother would make me forget my identity.

“Everyone says that it gets easier after the first two months, and I pray that it’s the truth. I knew that it would be difficult, but I didn’t know how it felt to be unable to do anything other than hold a baby all day long. I have always said that I didn’t want to lose my identity when I had kids, but now that I have a child, it’s easy for me to see how quickly I could become ‘Micah’s Mommy’ and nothing else. I want to be a good mother, but I still want to be me, and I’ve been unable to do that so far” (October 7, 2009: three weeks).

I won’t lie. It was hard. I knew that being Micah’s mommy was a special task that God had chosen to give to me and me alone. He didn’t ask any other woman in the whole world to be her mother. He asked me, and the weight of that task weighed heavily upon me.

“Micah’s been entrusted to us, and it’s our job to protect her and love her and raise her to walk in the ways of the Lord. It’s hard for me to imagine her as anything but a teeny, tiny baby, but already she’s changing so fast. She’s my child. She lived inside of me for nine months. And now that I can hold her and love her and rock her, it’s hard to believe that she’s really real—that she’s really my daughter—that I’m really her mother. Life with Micah is getting easier. We’re getting there. Slowly. But we’re getting there” (October 9, 2009: three weeks).

At one month old, Micah began sleeping five to six hours straight at night, and life immediately became better. I quit looking back at the way life used to be and started getting accustomed to the way life is now.

“After 27 years of looking out for myself, it’s a strange feeling to be responsible for someone else. Sometimes when I look at her, I’m overwhelmed by a flood of emotions that I can’t articulate. I remember what life was like before she arrived, but I can’t imagine going back there. This is the new normal, and it’s not nearly as foreign as it used to be. Thank God for this grace: that it gets easier as the days go by, that becoming a mother is a forgiving process, and that when Micah looks into my eyes it’s all worth it” (October 18, 2009: one month).

I still pray for God to help me adjust. I still pray for Him to make me into the mother that I cannot be without His help. I still ask Him to forgive me for choosing to check my email instead of reading my Bible when I have a free minute. But I also sit down to pray more frequently. I’ve begun studying Scripture again, and I can see the light at the end of this two-month-long tunnel.

When Micah passed the six-week mark, I looked back at just how far we had come since she came home from the hospital. “Even though we still have good days and bad days, the good moments far outweigh the bad. This morning when I finished feeding Micah, I wrapped her up in a hug and held her close for as long as she let me. I love this little girl, and I’m so grateful that God has entrusted her to our care. I want to be a good mother not just for her sake, but because God saw fit to give me this job. She’ll only be under my care for a little while before she’s all grown up. I don’t want to blink and miss it. I know that things will not always be easy, but I trust that God will carry us through. He’s more than big enough for that.”

And He is. Just this morning as I sat on the couch in a quiet moment, I thanked God for being Who He is. My world has completely changed, but He is the same as He has always been. Lately I’ve been reading the book of Daniel, and if there’s anything I have learned, it’s that if God can uproot nations and depose kings like Nebuchadnezzar, He can surely see me through this time. My world may seem small right now, but God is big, and He is exceedingly able to help me be the mother that He created me to be.

Just so you know, Micah woke up about 20 minutes after I put her down, and it’s now the next day, but the good news is that the article is finished. Writing this reminds me that I’m still me, and I’m still able to do the things I love . . . I just have to do them 20 minutes at a time.

Leslie Ann and her husband, Dennis, welcomed Micah into the world on September 17, 2009. They thought it was ironic that the tallest parents in the hospital had the shortest child in the nursery. Thankfully, Micah’s growing longer every day.