Hello gorgeous!!
For those of you who don’t know me
personally, my husband (JD) and I were recently blessed with an addition to our
family – a sweet baby boy! Beckett William Lowry graced us with his presence on
March 20th at 3:04am. Yup… momma was tired and SO ready for him to
be here at 3am!
With my new found title – mom, spit-up rag, diaper fairy,
human swing – I have a whole new set of eyes on life. If you are a mom, you
know that things just look different when you are looking at them through the lens
of motherhood…
Middle schoolers all of a sudden seem SO BIG.
An hour is a really long time (especially if you are alone).
Showers become like mini spas.
You are exhausted, irritated, and messy... but feel like you could
conquer the world on 3 straight hours of sleep.
And all of that said… it’s also the sweetest, most
rewarding, most worth-it experience of your life. That 3am feeding (which Becks
and I have every night consistently…his preference, not mine, haha) becomes one
of your most precious prayer times. And when he finally catches your gaze and
keeps it for the first time, your heart melts into a million pieces!
One of the most interesting things I look at differently
through the lens of motherhood, is my hairdryer. Yes…hairdryer.
My hairdryer has become a companion of sorts – and it has
gotten more use in the last 6 weeks than it has in the last 6 years. Why?
Because I have learned that it has two incredible powers.
Let me explain…
Power #1: A hairdryer
makes my baby super happy and content after a bath.
Every night, JD turns into “The Bath Man” and he spends
about 10 minutes giving Beckett a full-service bath in our basement laundry
tubs. After he is squeaky clean, the proud father opens the dryer that is
actively warming Beckett’s towel, and wraps him in a heated heaven of cotton.
Finally…he brings him upstairs, says “Mom, we’re ready”, and out comes my
hairdryer.
For a good 10 minutes, Beckett has a date with the hair
dryer, and I dry him head to toe – every nook and cranny of that baby skin gets
warmed and dried. The minute I turn it on, his lips curl into a smile and his
arms and legs fall limp in the warmth. It’s the best feeling – not just for
him, but for us, because we simply love that he loves it.
Power #2: The second
power that my hairdryer has is to put my baby straight to sleep.
I learned this one the hard way – after many hours of
swaddling, “shoosh”ing, and swaying in the wee hours of the morning.
Every night, Beckett wakes up at 3am and he’s down right
starving. So, I change him, nurse him, and try my darndest to get him back to sleep.
Of course, no amount of nursing or rocking could get him to close his eyes and
drift off to dreamland. One day, when I was talking to a friend about how hard
it was to get him back to sleep, she passingly suggested turning on the
hairdryer. It had worked for both of her daughters, so why not?
That night, on the hairdryer went and off to sleep my son
went. VUALA! A MIRCLE!
I don’t what it is about that sound, but it can almost
instantly take my little one from fighting sleep, to relaxed and snuggling into
sleepy time.
Being a mom is absolutely incredible and nothing can fully
prepare you for how it changes, not just your schedule, but your heart. I love
this stage of life and if I can encourage new moms to do anything, it would be
to embrace every moment because you can’t get them back once they’re gone.
All in all, the past six weeks have been somewhat of a blur…but
this I can remember – I love my hairdryer.
