1 one thousand....

She stops breathing….1 one thousand….2 one thousand…3 one thousand…4 one thousand…5 one (GASP!). She’s breathing again… I get up from my spot on the bed next to her. I snuck into her room just before heading to bed myself. I noticed she was on her back so I tried to roll her over but she was not having it. She stopped breathing shortly after that…my child stopped breathing. Any mother would panic and I do every time it happens and it happens… every night, multiple times a night. It’s been a week since her doctor told us that the results of her sleep study showed Grace has sleep apnea. My head spun at first because when I hear those words I think of an overweight middle age male…not my almost 5 year old daughter. I have not slept well since. Every time I wake up at night I go to check on her and I wait for the next episode. I am terrified because my child stops breathing at night. I use to stay awake and watch her for hours as a baby. When her first birthday passed I was so relieved because we had gotten through the “dangerous” part. Now at almost 5 years old we are back at the beginning. I can’t sleep because I am afraid my child is not breathing and I will be asleep through it. It’s every mother’s worse nightmare. My child stops breathing and all I can do is pray that the Lord watches over us until next Friday when we will hopefully get her some relief. Until then I will continue to sneak into her room…place my hand ever so gently on her back or stomach and pray that I feel the rhythmic movement of her breathing. If I don’t I start to count…1 one thousand….2 one thousand…3 one thousand…until I hear the most beautiful sound in the world again… my child breathing. 

For this child I prayed...

For this child I prayed….For this child I prayed….For this child I prayed. These are the words I repeat in my head over and over during the nightly struggle that is bedtime in our home. As I write this it is 10:25 pm….my 4 year old just fell asleep and my 2 year old is still laying wide awake in his bed. To add insult to injury tomorrow is Daylight Savings…that means the clock might as well say 11:25 pm. Connor has always been my trouble sleeper…although his recent fighting of bedtime is new. Usually it’s him getting up multiple times at night that’s the problem now a days it’s just getting him to bed that is the issue.  Grace however was a wonderful sleeper from 5 weeks old. I use to brag about what an amazing sleeper she was…yes KARMA… I know!! It wasn’t until about a year ago when her sleeping troubles began. I don’t know whether it was Steve being gone so much or her imagination taking flight that brought on the epic tussle that is her sleep pattern but something went terribly wrong.

During Steve’s last deployment I was sleeping less then 2 hours a night. Please note that does not say two hours at a time…that’s a NIGHT! Between Connor and Grace I couldn’t get any sleep in edge wise. I was a mess. This of course brought up the never ending venting on social media. It was during this time that I was told by a friend that I should really be careful how much I complain about my children, because I didn’t know what someone else was going through. While her words were well meaning and I know she meant no harm in her comment I was dumbfounded. First this friend is more of an acquaintance…a fellow mom who I met in a moms group at our last assignment. Well we got along I was never close enough with her to share my story. She didn’t know that I knew all to well the struggle of infertilely. She didn’t know that at 14 years old I was told children were not possible. Something I was told again and again through out my adolescent years. She didn’t know that I knew what it was like to pray day and night for two pink lines…to see negative after negative test. That the worse day of my life was in fact just 24 hours after what I thought was a day that I had beaten the odds and that crueler on this day I was having to smile and pretend that nothing was wrong because well Track Select must go on. She did not know my story. She did not know my struggle. Nor did she care.

Don’t get me wrong I have so many friends whose journey for children has been a much harder road then mine. Painted with failed attempt after failed attempt and far to often loss after loss. I know how truly blessed I am by my children. I thank God multiple times daily for these amazing tiny humans he has entrusted in my care, but that doesn’t mean the voyage of motherhood is easy. It can be a trying path although it is the most rewarding. Just because I have healthy babies doesn’t mean I am not allowed to vent when the going get rough or ask for prayers when I have reached my breaking point. Motherhood is hard… and if we can’t be there for each other in good times and bad then what’s the point of friendship? I need to know that when I am feeling like the worse mother in the world because my 2 year old just stood up screaming in his crib for the third time tonight (yea…that just happened) and I am about to rip out my hair because all I want to do is sleep myself. That I can go to my mom friends even it is through social media and go “SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME THIS WILL END ONE DAY!!” If you don’t like it don’t want to hear it or don’t care then by all means DELETE ME because we aren’t that good of friends anyways. My point is everyone has a story…just because they are in the place they are now does not mean their path there was an easy one. Thinking before you speak goes both ways. As for tonight I am going to go try and get my son down one more time and then try and sleep for as long as possible before my daughter gets up again.  For this child I prayed...For this child I prayed.... For this child I prayed.