Growing Pains

I’m pretty sure Gaia is smack-dab in the middle of her twelve-week growth spurt. She was wide awake and starving yesterday morning at 5:30am. She spent the rest of the day alternating between pathetic whimpers and full-blown screaming. Too tired to calm down enough to eat and too hungry to get any sleep. We went through countless half-drunk bottles and I managed to get her to sleep upwards of forty times only to have her wake up less than five minutes later. Of course I felt for her. Her little baby body stretching to make room for the next version of her baby self... Gaia 3.0. But I also felt for me. Exhausted and frustrated and becoming increasingly prone to fits of tears as the day wore on. While she suffered through her baby growing pains I was dealing with some serious Mama growing pains myself. Finally in the evening before I put her to bed, she stopped crying long enough to indulge me with over an hour of lounging lazily on my chest.

That smile... oh THAT SMILE and the way she looks at me. It’s worth a million or more sleepless nights and years made up of three hundred and sixty-five exhausting days.