I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep

Song for a Fifth Child

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton


This poem sprang into my head one early morning as I was trying to get Serena to sleep. Only instead of thinking "I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep" I changed the line to "I'm rocking my baby and babies don't SLEEP". Either one would work, no? But this poem really makes me stop and think. Our little ones really don't keep. They don't wait until we are ready for them to grow up, they just grow. One day we realize we have barely blinked and they will be turning three. I remember when I rocked Calli to sleep in the same rocker I use for Serena now. When Calli was going on ten months old I got concerned that she should be falling asleep on her own. After all, that is what all the expert books told me so how could all those hot shot doctors be wrong? I had to figure out something, but the crying-it-out just never quite worked for me. Who can really stand to listen to their baby crying their heart out because they just want to be held? I tried and couldn't do it. So it was back to the endless rocking wondering if I would still be rocking a kindergartener to sleep before her first day at school. Then one day, my dad, of all people told me something that has kept with me. "Just keep rocking her," he said. "She will eventually learn to put herself to sleep and one day you will miss being able to rock her. So just enjoy it while you can." So I just kept rocking her, realizing how true this was. I rocked her for another month before one night she just decided she didn't want it anymore. She was fussy and wouldn't fall asleep in my arms. I put her in her crib and she went right to sleep. And wouldn't you know, the next night my arms ached to hold and rock her, but she had outgrown me. And every day she keeps outgrowing me a little more.

I think these things when I am rocking Serena for the umpteenth time that night, after unsuccessfully lying her down for bed. I am thinking in how a few short months she won't need her mommy quite so much and I should be grateful for the chance to hold her now. It's so hard because I am torn between being too tired to appreciate this and never wanting to put her down. But no matter what I do, she will grow just like Calli did. Life is a never-ending vicious cycle like that and I just have to love every moment of it. If I don't, I will blink and it will be gone.