A Nap: So Near, Yet So Far Away

'Sleep w hen the baby sleeps!' 

'Rest during the kids' Quiet Time!' 

'Put your feet up when you can!'

These helpful suggestions become harder and harder to implement when there are more children, older children, and children in activities which require their mother to drive them there.

I can laugh in retrospect at the typical scene on Wednesday. I was actually blessed to leave the two-year-old home napping while Daddy worked from home, so he got better than his typical 20-minute "car nap" while I drove the other three to and from swim lessons.

We arrived home and before I could waddle with my swollen feet across the kitchen, my 8-year-old boy had raced through the kitchen, bounded up the stairs, and burst into the boys' room in order to wake up the still-napping toddler--because that was a good idea right?

Pardon the poor quality of the picture taken by an 8-year-old

I heard Joseph waking over the baby monitor and my heart sank, as I'd been oh-so hopeful that I could actually lay down for 20 or 30 minutes before he woke naturally.

I steered this ship of a belly into the den and reclined in a chair in new hopes that maybe, just maybe, they'd leave me alone so I could try to rest.

But, no. As an article I read recently proclaimed, "You'll never be as loved as you are with young children," the 2- and 4-year-olds immediately sought me out and had to both squeeze into the armchair that really barely fits me at this point.

Ah well . . . such is the bounty of children's love. I think it's all part of God's grand design: to make sleep so short and so disturbed during the third trimester that one will go through anything to have the baby and then one enjoys getting more rest with a newborn! All I can say is that that's been my experience four times over!