Now what? When a sleepless baby starts sleeping.

Hobby – a foreign concept that is reemerging from its forgotten place in my consciousness. In nursing school I was so consumed with my workload and my singular passion for growing into the profession that I dropped most of the little dallying pastimes I used to enjoy in high school. I told myself when nursing school was over and I had real time off (not time off with the black cloud of what I should be studying and the desperate need to converse with people whose friendship I did not want to loose due to busyness) that I would start reading more fiction, maybe write a little here or there, take a dance class. But then I was thrown into the first year of a challenging, heart-wrenching profession in a new city and discovered myself pregnant just out of orientation. These two new identities – nurse and mommy – took up all my thoughts. I read pregnancy books and reflected on the life to come. I slept, worked, and processed the happenings of my job. Often I was too worn out with my reflections to pick up a book.

Then my new little life came along and the newborn period is wonderfully and magically consuming of your all. I started work again and every spare moment was loving on my child. She was a difficult sleeper so I rarely had a moment not attached to her precious body day or night (and I don’t just mean the peaceful, wonderful co-sleeping part, but the waking every hour all evening long to nurse and snuggle until mama was safely in bed providing the uninterrupted night snack). I stopped working and all the sudden there was housework begging for attention during every naptime. She’s a cat napper so I rush around to get anything done before she wakes.

But now my baby is almost 9 months and she is sleeping. Those who know Sharlotte and I know that this is a new thing, just in the last couple weeks. So new there is sometimes a bewildering sense that something is missing. She goes to bed at 7:40 and just sleeps. And I am here. And I don’t know what in the world to do. Phil is often traveling and when he is home he has a long list of hobbies to draw from. Should I study something? Should I just fill the time with more housework, because that is something that has no definite end? Should I relax totally and mindlessly in front of a favorite TV show on my little laptop? Delve back into fiction? Pick up scrapbooking? I suddenly have a block of time and the peace of mind to use that time instead of tearing myself up over the worries of a new job. I feel restful. I feel ready. I want to develop and grow. I guess I am coming into a new season of motherhood and while I miss the constant responsive closeness that defined every waking (and not sleeping) moment of the first months, I look around this silent house and think there must be something good I can make of these quiet hours.

But even as she sleeps, Sharlotte is on my mind and I spent tonight writing in her baby book and remembering her birth…