My Truth About Motherhood: Monotony

Before having a baby I never imagined how monotonous motherhood would be. As Enok is getting older, this is becoming less and less of a trial as he is able to do new things and explore the world a little bit more.

But for the first 4 months of Enok's life, the monotony of motherhood was my enemy. And unfortunately, I let it drive me crazy.

I actually started writing a post about this shortly after Enok turned 4 months old.... things have gotten much, much better since then... thank heavens..... but here's a backflash.....

June 2013: Turns out that having a young baby is very monotonous. While they do occasionally do different and cute new things, for the most part they do the same things over and over and over... I may be unappreciative of the age Enok is at, but I am really excited for when I don't have to feed Enok 6-8 times a day and when he can entertain himself for 10 minutes. Everything I've read and heard is that babies are supposed to get less fussy as they get older. And if you are constantly giving Enok your attention every minute that he is awake then maybe he has gotten less fussy, but take your attention away for a minute and he turns into a super fussy boy. Compared to how he was at one or two months old, he is much more fussy now. He wants to be sang to for the entire 8-10 hours of awake time he has each day. Sorry, but I can't sing that much. I'll lose my voice and go crazy. An older sibling to give him some attention would be very handy about now. Can I rent one? And his naps are so short lately that I'm lucky to be able to pee and eat. Everyone talks about how much free time I must have being at home with one little baby, I only have lots of free time if you count the time I'm holding Enok and have one free hand. So free time for whatever you can do while standing, bouncing, singing, and holding a baby. The free time list of activities is pretty short. I love that Enok wants to interact, but I need to clean and pack sometime too. I always could just stand up and hold him or bounce him on my knee while watching a movie, but I'm tired of tv. It's no fun anymore. Babies are hard.

Back to present. Now Enok is 6 months, and he actually will entertain himself for 10 - 20 minutes at a time several times a day! It's wonderful! And he's down to eating 6 or less times a day! Yay! I used to say I couldn't wait till he holds his own bottle, but now I don't want him to learn that cuz I'll lose my snuggle time. And we can play more together now too! Yay! He still does get quite fussy, and he still fights going down for a nap, but he also does tend to take longer naps now too!

My silver lining for the monotony of motherhood? It comes to an end. [Although I'm sure in the future it changes as kids get older]. The older they get, the more interested they become and the more fun things they can do. I think I'm just not really a newborn type of person. I would have to say that so far the older Enok gets, the more I love what stage of life he is at. I did like birth-8 weeks, but from 8 weeks to about 24 weeks, we had a rough time. I'm really looking forward to Enok growing up and being able to do activities with him and help him learn about and explore the world around him.