Letting Ruya be a Butterfly and Letting Me Fly

I often get asked the question, ‘does she sleep through the night’? My answer questions the question - what does sleeping through the night mean? Because it means one thing to an adult does not mean that it should be superimposed on a baby. But I feel like we do that all the time - place adult perspectives on a child’s world. Being a mama teaches me daily to let my baby be a baby. To do that I have also had to learn to let myself be the mother I am.

There are so many ways to mother but finding the right way for me has been the challenge. It has taken me a long time to be okay with the fact that I am a mama who loves to co-sleep, carry my baby, breastfeed at night, not do cry outs, cook every meal for her and take care of her full time. Before having Ruya I had a lot of ideas about what I thought a good mother was. Many of them have not ended up being the right way for me. I have been told by a few people that my way is the hard path, that I always seem to choose the road with more work and intensity. This is true. My approach right now means Ruya wakes up more often at night to fee,d and that she loves being held by me as much as she loves to walk. She always keeps a close tab on where I am. Yes she does sleep at night - she goes down at 6 and gets up at 6. And along the way she wakes up to drink milk or check I am still around, or have a brief cuddle. Some nights she is very restless and others she is deep in dreamland. My way is hands on and immersive. Its intense and intimate and sometimes extreme. And it says alot about me. It has pros and cons like any way does, it forms Ruya and I for better or worse. But what is essential is the closer I get to being the mama I truly want to be, the more relaxed I am, the easier it becomes. The more I embrace who I am as a mother, the more I embrace the many approaches in mothering I engage with. I think crying out is as good as not, crib sleeping as appropriate as co-sleeping, it all works, each family has their approach. The ease I feel now releases me and Ruya to be what we are. And that makes me wander a lot about what being a baby is really like. Because I have become so attached to viewing the world as an adult I forgot. Thankfully Ruya reminds me every day to open my wings.

These wings show me how much a baby is meant to explore, to have her attention on everything, to be getting into every drawer and crevice. Their sleep patterns, like them, are malleable and change rapidly with each passing month. Instead of labelling my child's experience quickly - she is having a tantrum, she is being naughty or loud - I am learning to slow down and get curious about what her experience is like for her. The more I pause the more I realise that for her everything is a science experiment. She is the great explorer testing out her borders. I find that I can smile more and enjoy her little dragon moments when she belts out her voice or resists some activity. It doesn’t means I give in where a boundary needs to be placed. It means I set that boundary more aware of how different our realities may be. And like this amazing talk suggests, that her reality is the butterfly:

http://www.ted.com/talks alison_gopnik_what_do_babies_think#t-718199

I value my adulthood ways too. The focus, sense of purpose and discernment. But equally I adore being opened up to the child in me, as my curiosity expands, and the sight of the wind raising blossoms from the ground makes me pause in amazement.