Please Don't Stop the Music

This morning on the way to daycare, which takes approximately 1 minute to drive, my girls requested Please Don't Stop The Music (by Rihanna). I happily obliged, relieved not to be listening to I'm A Little Teapot for the zillionth time.

Both Colin and I have the Disney Radio app on our phone so the girls can listen to their favorite songs, as if they were teenagers. They request songs by the repetitive lyrics, not the actual song title: "Mama, can we listen to 'break-break-your-heart"?

They remind me that before they were born, music was a great source of comfort for me, and somewhere along the way, I forgot.

When my perinatalogist insisted that I refrain from all activity at 16 weeks pregnant, the music stopped abruptly. From the soothing music in my massage therapy room to the carefully selected workout music on my iPod.

I used to drown out the thoughts wading through my head with techno music turned up full blast in my car.

Josh Groban was my savior whenever I felt nervous or anxious. My heartbeat would slow at the swish of the CD being sucked into my car stereo.

I would crank the bass in my cozy little SUV and let the thumping in my chest re-calibrate my emotions.

And what is more stress dissolving that screaming to a song at the top of your lungs?

But for almost 2 years, I deprived myself of music, listening only to the frightened voices in my head during pregnancy, the beeping of the NICU monitors after giving birth, the cries of my duplicate infants and the cacophony of twin toddlers.

Children bring with them so much noise that I couldn't bear to add to it. I preferred the silence - rather, I preferred to sleep, when I could stand no more. 

And, in the midst of postpartum depression, when I needed it the most, I neglected to see what I was missing, even though my babies were already discovering the joy in melody.

Our garage sale Baby Einstein CD soothed the girls to sleep at each naptime and bedtime. And in the frantic absence of that CD, I discovered John Mayer's Continuum lulled them to sleep in the car.

Now, I'm rediscovering music through 4 year old eyes. Jaeda and Tristyn love to dance - each with their own style; Tristyn with her Elaine Benes interpretive dance, and Jaeda with her spin-until-you're-dizzy ballerina dance.

Our house is one big dance party. The other night, my iPod plugged into one of those crappy little speakers that came free from Office Depot, the three of us danced up and down the hallway at the top of our stairs, taking turns creating dance moves.

Slowly, music has come back into my good graces. On a particularly anxious Saturday, I found myself calmed by Michael Jackson's rhythmic beats while I made dinner. Another day, I danced around the house to George Michael while the girls napped. And this past Sunday, I let Enya lull me to sleep when I couldn't fight off a late afternoon headache. 

And like a long lost love, When you rediscover something you once couldn't live without, you cherish it even more.