Baby Barf, Bubble Gum, and Brownies: Lighthearted Devotions for the Weary Mama

By Jaime Curtis

Most mothers will recall those days when the two-year-old vomits on the couch, the dog eats a plate of cookies, and the toilet overflows""and that's all before breakfast! As a mother of seven, Jaime understands that some days are just plain overwhelming. Join her as she walks you through some of her family's most unforgettable and hilarious memories. You'll be inspired to laugh at the chaos and embrace the sticky situations. But more importantly, you'll learn to see that God's grace and goodness is there through it all. Because, after all, motherhood may be sticky, messy, and even disgusting at times, but it is also so unmistakably beautiful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644923535

Book preview

Day 1: Baby Barf

I was a young twenty-two-year-old when I brought home my first baby girl. She was born a mere twelve months and sixteen days after my husband and I got married. We were still in honeymoon marriage stage. Yet suddenly, it was no longer just the two of us. It was the three of us. And that third little person was depending on me for her very life sustenance.

I remember looking at my perfect baby girl as I sat there in the hospital bed. She had a tiny bit of blond, peach fuzz on her head. (That’s a nice way of saying she was mostly bald.) She had beautiful baby-blue eyes that stuck around as she got older. She was absolutely perfect—and I could not believe that they were going to let me take her home! Didn’t they know I was only twenty-two? Didn’t they know I had only been married for a year? Didn’t they know that I had graduated from college just sixteen months before? Didn’t they know that I was still struggling to figure out how to put on her tiny little onesies without breaking one of her teeny-tiny, little arms? I half felt as if I should talk the nurse out of it when she came in with my discharge papers. Listen, you don’t know this yet, but I’m not fit to take this baby home. I’m in way over my head! Maybe she should stay here with all you highly trained professionals for a while.

But, needless to say, my husband thought otherwise. And funny thing, but apparently, those hospitals are required to send newborn babies home with their parents, no matter how nervous or inadequate the new mothers may feel.

So, there I found myself, about ten days after the birth of my daughter, sitting in bed, one night, and nursing her. She was the world’s best milk drinker. You think I’m joking, but I’m not. She could cuddle up and dig in for a meal and not come up for air for forty-five minutes. She would have put all those hotdog-eating champions to shame. If there was a Guinness Book of World Records competition for best nursing babies, my daughter would have won, hands down. So anyway, there we were, settled in for the evening for one of our marathon nursing sessions. What seemed like years later but was probably only about an hour, she finally got full, sighed a little sigh, and conked out. I put her on my shoulder and burped her and then laid her down peacefully in the bassinet beside our bed, careful to put her on her back like all the experts recommended.

We switched out the light, and I breathed a little sigh of relief to have some rest time before my little piggy woke up again to eat. Suddenly, as I drifted off to peaceful sleep, I heard her spit up. I reached over to turn on the light and check on her. Now, you know how when most babies spit up, they have a little bit of milky droll rolling down their chins? Or maybe even a little puddle on their outfit? Well, I am not exaggerating when I say that my daughter had a swimming pool of milk in the bassinet with her. To this day, I believe that the entire contents of her stomach that I had just worked so hard to feed her was in the bottom of her bassinet.

I would like to say that I handled this beautifully. I would like to say that I calmly went and found a towel, mopped up the regurgitated milk, and rocked my baby back to sleep. That’s what I would like to say. But that’s not what happened. Instead, I did what probably any other first-time mother would have done. I freaked out. Oh, my goodness! We have to call the hospital! My husband looked at me a bit confused. Call the hospital? I assured him that it was after-hours for the pediatrician, and there was clearly something wrong with our baby girl, because healthy babies just don’t spit up like this. We needed to call the nurses station of the pediatric wing and see what we should do. My ever-patient husband gave a small sigh and picked up the phone while I cuddled my infant daughter and tried to figure out what terrible ailment she might have. Cancer of the stomach? Severe silent reflux? A hole in her intestines? See, I knew they shouldn’t have sent her home with me! She was only ten days old and my ignorance was already proving dangerous to her very well-being. My husband returned from the other room. (Yes, the other room. This was in the days before everybody had a cell phone, and he actually had to go out into the kitchen to use the phone.) Well, what did the nurse say? I prepared myself for the worst. He grinned a little, patted me on the shoulder, and said, The nurse suggested that if she really did spit up that much, she’s probably hungry again, so feed her.

Oh. Suddenly, I felt very silly for having freaked out so completely. My daughter wasn’t dying, and she didn’t have a terrible disease. She had just spit up so much because her mama made awesome gourmet milk, and she couldn’t stop herself from chowing down. Mark it in the books for the first of many, many times over the years that this mama would overreact about something. Although, I must admit, I never did make my husband call the hospital again over some baby barf.

Find the truth

Psalm 103:14 says, For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.

We mothers tend to be our own worst critics. We think that perfection is expected, and it is—at least, we expect it from ourselves. From the moment we bring those tiny bundles of joy home, we expect ourselves to know everything about parenting and prove to the world that we are the most awesome mother to have ever walked the planet. All those mothers for generations before us who fed, clothed, nurtured, and kept little people alive? Psh, they have nothing on us! And so, after setting ourselves up so quickly for failure, it’s no wonder we come crashing down when we realize that we are but dust.

But this verse tells us otherwise. God doesn’t expect for us to be perfect or the most awe-inspiring mothers. In fact, He already knows that we’re not. He made us. He knows all of our imperfections, our inadequacies, and yet all of Him loves all of us. (Go ahead, sing the John Legend song, I know you want to.) In fact, He loves us so completely that He was willing to send His Son for us when we were still in the thick of our sin. If that’s not enough to make a stressed-out mama give herself some grace, I’m not sure what is.

Day 2: Playground Woes

It was a hot summer day toward the beginning of July, and I was very pregnant at almost nine months along. I had a three-and-a-half-year-old, a two-year-old, and one due very soon. I was headed to my weekly OB appointment which was in a town about forty minutes away. Suddenly, my whole family realized that I and my very pregnant belly would be making the trip with two toddlers. My husband was working out of town that day and was unavailable to go with me. My mom and sister were otherwise occupied. I argued that I would be fine and there was nothing to worry about. There were no signs of baby coming anytime soon. But my family disagreed. And so, it fell to my lucky teen brother to go with me. Just what a nineteen-year-old teen guy wants to do on a summer afternoon, right? Take his sister to her OB appointment. But, being the good sport that he is, he agreed (I secretly think my mom threatened to take his truck away or something if he didn’t go with me).

We were a little early to my appointment and decided to swing by McDonald’s and get the kids an ice cream cone and let them enjoy the play area