I'm Rocking My Baby and Babies Don't Keep

Today a friend at work came and gave me a card, 'Advice for the Mom-to-be'. A fellow teacher is pregnant with her first child and is due in April, she is having a boy. The friend is making her a book filled with these cards. On each card will be advice or some words of wisdom from a been-there-done-that mom.

I spent the afternoon periodically pondering what I would write on that card for my friend. I have never given birth to a child, I have never been mom to a child before they were 12 months old. The best advice I can give from where I have been is, 'sleep when they sleep'. But tonight flipping through thoughts in my mind I remembered a poem I have seen on iVillage in other ladies' signatures. I decided that I will put this poem on her card. This poem says everything I want to say. As the mom of a now 9 year old boy I can tell her honestly that babies don't keep, they grow so fast, too fast. One day they are no taller than your waist and the next day they are almost as tall as you.

Nathaniel at age 2, fell asleep 'walking his bear' on a dog leash.

So to my friend and all of the mommies out there who are rocking their babies and praying they slow down just a smidge on their growing up, enjoy this poem.

Song for a Fifth Child
By Ruth Hulburt Hamilton
Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.