Relaxin

So I’ve read it in books—when you nurse your baby, your body produces a hormone called relaxin. (It could be spelled “relaxen” or some other way; I’m not entirely sure…) You can probably guess what this hormone does. Naturally, I never really gave it much thought.

Until a few nights ago when I woke up at 3:00 in the morning because Bentley was crying “Honey!” from his room. “Honey” is his version of “hungry.” And while I have occasionally heard him say that when he’s first waking up from a nap, I have never heard him yell it in the middle of the night. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I got him up, strapped him in his highchair and fed the poor hungry kid some bread and butter. Bentley thought all this was great fun, especially when cars drove by and their headlights shone into the kitchen window (still no blinds or curtains—oops). It was all I could do to encourage him to hurry up and EAT so I could go back to bed. Finally he was done, I put him back to bed and then dragged myself to bed. And then I proceeded to lie there wide awake. Finally, a half hour later, Kendra woke up, too, so I went ahead and fed her and then—poof!—I went right to sleep! At least, until Craig’s alarm went off less than an hour and he proceeded to want to discuss what he should wear that day and ask if he could turn on the lights to find it; why does my entire family conspire against me?

But I digress.

The point in all this, is that I had never really thought much about this amazing little relaxin hormone, but apparently I need to start giving it some more credit, because in all my time of middle-of-the-night feedings, I have never once had trouble falling asleep again. Until I was feeding a toddler and therefore I didn’t get my little kick of hormonal relaxers. Clearly I need to start appreciating this more! Hurray for hormones! At least, hurray for relaxin!