Mother's intuition

An animal relies on instinct. A detective relies on his gut. And a mother, no doubt, relies on the unexplained phenomenon we call mother’s intuition.

It is a feeling that all mothers know. We don’t know where it comes from. We don’t know why we have it and the men in our lives don’t. Sometimes it’s a gift; other times, it is just a troublesome curse. But it exists, nonetheless, and we have no choice but to heed those hunches of ours. There’s no telling what trouble or injury we may avert when we do.

It’s almost eerie how these encounters transpire. Many times Dad is right there with us, but he is clearly oblivious to the signs. Like the feeling we get in the middle of the night that there might possibly be someone in our room…hovering, waiting for the perfect moment to reach out and touch our arm.

Some nights I wake up from a sleep of death with the feeling that someone is simply staring at me. Sure enough, my little night-stalker is standing at the head of my bed, looking right into my face and waiting patiently for me to pull him over the edge.

And of course there are the times when the kids disappear to “play quietly” in another room. A mother always seems to know just when it has been too long. When we feel the hairs stand up on the back of our necks, or when we get the feeling like it’s midnight on Friday the 13th and the Boogie Man is about to jump out from behind the couch…yes, these are all signs that seem to tell us there might be a problem lurking, or a sticky situation on the horizon.

Accompanying this fascinating phenomenon called mother’s intuition is the heightened sense of hearing that we seem to acquire after giving birth. Maybe it’s a result of the pressure that builds up in our heads from all the pushing. I’m not sure the cause, but I know it exists, nonetheless.

Randy and I can both be fully engaged in the same program or activity, sitting in the same location in the living room, and I can hear those boys rustling in their beds, or sneaking down the hall to make sure we are still awake. Without fail, I will ask, “Did you hear that? I think someone’s up?” Dad’s standard answer? “I didn’t hear anything.”

Sometimes we even encounter mother’s intuition when our children are nowhere around. Like when we finally get an afternoon to ourselves and we sit down in a quiet house to read or work and we swear we can hear one of the boys calling us from the other room. (Well, this isn’t actually intuition. It is more what I’d call the brink of insanity, but it’s also just another example of how a mother’s mind is never off duty.)

Whether we’re saving them from trouble or catching them in the middle of it, intuition has been a mother’s means for rearing her children for centuries. I can recall dozens of times I tried to sneak a peak at David Letterman or attempted to wear my favorite shorts under my Sunday dress. It seems my mother’s intuition was always on high alert.

It’s like the old saying, “I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.” I can’t think of anything that would be handier. But I guess the next best thing is this sixth sense we call intuition: this inborn, mothering-mechanism on which generations of mom’s have learned to rely.

And that’s All in a day’s work!