Pants-Free Parenting: Parenting, exhaustion go hand-in-hand

People tell me I will forget the late nights. They tell me I will forget the exhaustion that presses into my eye sockets and rests as an ache in my shoulder blades. And maybe I will, but right now, as my children approach the ages of 5 and 3, the memory still is there deep in my body.

It's the time of year when everyone is sick and one night recently my son woke up with a fever. When my daughter was 11 months old, she had RSV. And once you've taken a listless baby to the ER with a high fever, you never forget it. When my son woke up with a 103 degree fever, I immediately called the doctor. It was an instinct carved out of a memory of holding a listless baby in the ER. My husband tried to tell me to just give our son Tylenol and go to sleep, but I called the doctor. I couldn't forget.

Of course my husband was right. The doctor verified that he was fine. Tylenol and sleep. So, that night as I lay in bed with him curled into me, I thought again of four years ago, sleeping with my daughter in the guest bed. I remembered it vividly, the way she smelled like sweet sweat and grape flavor, the way my body ached as I tried to hold still, the way she struggled to breathe, tossing and turning, her tiny fists smacking into my face.

I remembered everything then, holding her as a baby as we both nodded off in the rocking chair at 2 in the morning. Lying on my side, damp with sweat, feeding my son at a groggy moment between night and day. I remember the way their bodies felt against mine. The little chins on my shoulders, the warm smoosh of cheeks.

I also remember the exhaustion. The heavy blanket of fatigue that covered my whole body, but I still never found rest. Because even when I slept I was still conscious of the baby next to me. Every breath. Every tiny hum and stirring.

I loved those moments and I hated them. I loved them because of the perfect rest my children found in me. But I also hated them because I was so freaking tired. And I knew the next day, I would be short and irritated. And exhaustion lay before me like a road I didn't know if it would end.

My kids are almost 5 and close to 3. I still don't know if it will end. But the muscle memory is there — exactly how to hold the baby while they sleep. How to keep myself still. The sound of their breath, the way my body aches for sleep, the way my heart is completely happy and the way my head is full of worry.

This perfectly describes the paradoxes of motherhood. The peace in the worry and the worry in the peace. I hear so often that I should slow down and cherish these moments, but that often seems to be too simplistic. That advice doesn't completely embrace the complexity of raising a child and the questions that always linger in the edges of every moment — are they OK? Will you be enough? Will they get what they need? Will you? The answers are never clear until you finally get sleep and wake up the next day with the memory of the night hiding somewhere in you.

• Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.