When parents have new babies, one of the biggest challenges is learning how to deal with putting your baby in their crib in a different room to sleep.
Most parents set up baby monitors in their infant's room to keep an eye on them, but when they start to whimper in the middle of the night, it's hard for parents to decide what to do.
Some people recommend letting babies cry it out — they'll eventually learn that crying just for attention won't work and they'll only cry if something is actually wrong.
On the other hand, it's hard to just listen to your baby cry in their crib — so lots of parents choose to rush to their babies anytime they cry.
Either way, it's exhausting to wake up in the night to take care of a crying baby, no matter how rewarding it is.
So when one new mom, Dayna Mager, thought about her experience with parenting, there was one moment that stood out to her.
[H/T RedBook]
Dayna shared the above photo on Facebook, where it got over 70,000 reactions and 27,000 shares.
Dayna wrote:
This was from several weeks back, yes, I climbed in the crib in hopes to soothe my screaming, teething, blushed faced, and tear soaked little girl.
My husband came home to this, and I am re-posting because this captures the essence of my heart, and my "why…"
There I was in the heat of this exhausting, beautiful thing we call parenthood, and I remembered a promise I made to her.
One of the first times Matt and I left Luella, was to a worship concert.
At that conference, a missionary shared his story, and it shook me to the core.
A moment that would forever be burned in my fragile, hormone raging, new mommy heart that had already become 100xs more fragile after meeting her.
That missionary was in an orphanage in Uganda, and he has been in many before, but this one was different.
He walked into a nursery with over 100 filled cribs with babes.
He listened in amazement and wonder as the only sound he could hear was silence.
A sound that is beyond rare in ANY nursery, let alone a nursery where over 100 new babes laid.
He turned to his host and asked her why the nursery was silent.
Then, her response to him is something I will never, ever forget. EVER.
This was my "why" moment.
She looked at him and said, “After about a week of them being here, and crying out for countless hours, they eventually stop when they realize no one is coming for them…”
…They stop crying when they realize no one is coming for them.
Not in 10 minutes, not in 4 hours, and maybe, perhaps, not ever…
Broke. I broke. I literally could have picked up pieces of my heart scattered about the auditorium floor.
But instead, it stirred in me a longing, a hunger… A promise in my spirit.
We came home, and that night as Luella rested her tiny little 10lb body against mine and we rocked, I made a promise to her.
A promise that I would always come to her.
Always.
At 2:00am when pitiful desperate squeals come through a baby monitor, I will come to her.
Her first hurt, her first heartbreak, we will come to her.
We will be there to hold her, to let her feel, to make decisions on her own, and we will be there.
We will show her through our tears and frustrations at times, that it is okay to cry, and it's ok to feel.
That we will always be a safe place, and we will always come to her.
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