Being a mother is a calling

Motherhood is going to teach me lessons! The other day, my baby's nanny told me mtoto 'ameteuka' and I started screaming for help thinking that word meant something really bad had happened to my baby only to realise she meant the baby had belched. Yet Kiswahili is the national language in my country!

The other day, I was woken up in the middle of the night by my baby's cries. Normally, I breastfeed her as soon as she starts crying and before her cries become louder. The moment I hear her preparing to scream, all I do is hold my breast and insert it in her mouth and she starts feeding.

On this day though, I heard her crying and, as usual, I started looking for her mouth in darkness. My friend! I ended up crawling all over the bed looking for her mouth in vain. She was nowhere to be seen (well, felt) yet her screams grew louder by the second.

I started screaming thinking that someone had stolen my baby and was rushing out with her as she screamed for help. I had gone to visit an aunt in the leafy suburbs of the city and I know kidnappers are known to prey on 'those who have' for a ransom unlike our Komayole where kidnappings for ransom are unheard of.

You know screaming is my second name. Blame it on my mother who used to dress in white bed-sheets in the middle of the night then come to our room flapping her 'wings' as she pretended to be an angel.

The number of times my siblings and I dived under our beds screaming is uncountable! She would then switch on the lights and start laughing at us telling us to surrender our lives to Jesus because that is the same way He would show up when the trumpets sound.

Anyway, back to my baby. I started screaming for help and my aunt rushed to my room within seconds and switched on the lights only to find me screaming as I crawled all over the bed with one 'boob' in my hand trying to locate my baby's mouth. "Beryl! Kwanini umeangusha mtoto?" She shouted as she rushed to pick my baby from under my bed! Ahem!

That is when I realised I had dropped my sweet little pie as I slept! How I dropped her I still cannot comprehend since she always sleeps next to the wall as I sleep on the edge! Could I have gone round and round the bed like a clock's second hand scooping my baby and pushing her all the way to the edge of the bed and down?

Blame it on motherhood! Your brain works for 24 hours with minimal or no breaks that by the time you lie down to take a nap you sleep like a log of wood.

Salute to all women who juggle between motherhood and work. I am a full time mother at the moment but I rarely rest even when I am resting.