The video monitor is holding me hostage. P-TV is always on and I am a junkie. I need help. Never far from me, I checked the monitor before going to bed last night and there you were, staring right back at me, or past me, it’s hard to tell on the video. Regardless, your eyes were open and continued to be so for the next 3 hours!! It drove me crazy, literally. I think I lost my mind a little. Cortisol was coursing through my veins as I wracked my brains trying to figure out what was “wrong.” You sat up and cried out once, twice, three times and I bolted down there armed with Advil convinced it was extreme teething even though you were calm as a cucumber in a chilled fridge. I gave you the Advil then of course, just had to nurse you for a bit. As I sat with you in the chair I realized what I was doing. Taking some GIANT steps backwards, nay, leaps. I had to abort my mission. I laid you back down. After another 45 minutes of quietly looking around you fell back asleep. And why do I know this? Not because you were making barely any noise at all- save the three tiny little cries out- but because I was neurotically checking the damned monitor, over and over and over and over and over again. Your poor papa next to me. He was trying to sleep. I was not making it easy for him. I wanted to cry I was so frustrated, with myself. I had lost control.

My instincts are extreme. I believe this has something to do with the “peculiar mental twist” of my recovered yet alcoholic in perpetuity brain. The instinct to want to “soothe” and “calm” my child are perfectly natural and God-given I believe. Mine, however, are just amplified to an unmanageable degree. They cause my body to start moving in your direction before I can stop it. Making me fear if I will ever be able to become the firm but loving mother I so desperately want to be. How will I ever be able to let you make your own mistakes, experiencing failure so you can ultimately experience massive amounts of undulating success? How do I let go, just a little, of this preciousness that is strangling me?

I don’t want to smother you. I really honestly don’t.

Think it’s time to turn off the video monitor and let you be.

Time to cut the visual voyeur cord.

I trust you. I love you.

Mom