Tears

This evening Maya and I had a good old cry together. Maya was crying because she wasn't allowed to change into different pyjamas for every night of the week. And her mama was crying because she's slept about four hours the past two nights and been a big old emotional, hormal mess today.

Am I a bad mother for letting her see me 'let go' like this? I try and limit, obviously, the amount she sees me cry. But supermum I ain't. I'm human. And shocked as she was to see me like that, when I was ok again, we talked about it. I said to her that it's ok for mummy's to cry too sometimes, but that it's nothing she needs to worry about and what a special girl she is. She then flung her arms around me, told me how special I was too and how proud she is of me. Which made my heart burst and I nearly started sobbing all over again.

A friend recently reminded me that in the weeks and months leading up to the birth of Lily, I was going through an incredibly tough patch sleep-wise (so easy for me to forget this - these 'patches' blur and meld into one another over the past four years... though I do remember during the period she's talking about one long early morning walk through the backs of Cambridge as the mist rose, starting at about 3 am and ending around 7). Anyway, this friend helped me to remember that when Lily arrived, I felt far, far better. Maybe this is because you expect not to sleep because you have a new baby and the excitement of it all takes over. Or maybe it's nature's way of making the body get at least a little rest that it needs so much at this time.

Perhaps the same will happen this time. Perhaps not. But two things I do know: Firstly, that I'm looking forward to meeting this little person that has been giving my insides a battering and my heart a yearning and secondly, that it doesn't help an iota to bottle up tears.