The Math of Motherhood

​Does rocking your child ever get boring to you? Even if you love it, it can get old, and, well, it leaves your mind free to wander. Sometimes it wanders to the laundry that needs doing and bills that need paying. Sometimes it wanders dreamily forward to what life will be like when you don’t have a person laying on you, tugging at you, keeping you from wearing cute necklaces and earrings. Sometimes it just wanders into a place of desperately-needed sleep.

5 Minutes a Day x 7 Days = 35 minutes a week
35 Minutes x 52 Weeks = 30 hours a year
30 hours x 4 years = 120 hours
120 hours = 5 days

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​But a wandering mind is not always a bad thing. This week my mind wandered into some simple math as I rocked with my youngest. She’s two, so our post-lunch hour often sees a lot of contorted faces and declarations of “But I’m NOT tired! I don’t WANT a nap!” Those moments make the sight of her still-chubby cheeks, fluttery eyelashes and gaping mouth, finally at rest, all the more welcome. And so, not 15 minutes after deep sighs and much struggling with her, I found myself looking at all her sweet sleeping pudginess and thinking, “Oh, I could do this forever.” Babies’ sleeping faces, I am convinced, are what keeps us from eating our young.
 
Anyway, that’s when the math came. I started wondering how much of our lives we mothers spend rocking our children, cuddling with them, or nuzzling that sweet spot of skin where their neck meets their shoulder. That time is more intensive in the first year or so, certainly, but I wanted to know, from birth to, say, age 4, when the cuddle time often starts to dwindle, how much it might work out to be. Five minutes a day seemed like an average that I could work with, math-wise. It accounts for the decrease in time that comes with your child’s growth. And it is also probably not intimidating to anyone not naturally given to cuddling.
 
The answer? Five days. Five days! If you cuddle with your child just five minutes a day, then by the time they turn four, you will have spent five days worth of sweet moments with that person. I suspect many moms spend far more than five minutes a day loving on their kids, so scale it up to 10 minutes (10 days) or 15 (more than two weeks!) if that’s you. And certainly older kids need their snuggles too, so it doesn’t stop there.
 
Is that encouraging to you? That a bit of daily faithfulness to showing affection can add up to so much? I hope it is. It takes so little to pour into a person, and they aren’t the only ones who get something out of it. Though being “touched out” can be a real thing for moms, make no mistake--research shows that we greatly benefit from physical contact with our kids as well.
 
These minutes spent rocking and cuddling are not a waste. They may delay the laundry, yes. They may not banish those visions of Future Me wearing cute dresses and long jewelry again. And they may not always feel like a Publix commercial. But I assure you, they are not misused moments. So mama, don’t ever let those feelings of wasted time linger, because when you look at how you spend your days, they add up. The simple math of brief but frequent cuddles equates to bonds that can’t be divided, unshakeable trust multiplied, and love unspoken, times infinity. Not bad for five minutes a day.

A faithful person will have an abundance of blessings... 
--Prov. 28:20a