Instructions Left in My Daughter’s Crib

Athour .....shahjahan

The first time I saw the note, it was 3:14 a.m., a time I knew too well. Sleep had become a ghost — always nearby but never quite arriving. My daughter, Ava, had just fallen asleep again, her tiny chest rising with the rhythm of innocence.

I went to adjust her blanket and found a folded piece of paper tucked beside her favorite stuffed rabbit. White. Unmarked on the outside.

I opened it, expecting some scribbled note from my wife — a reminder, maybe, or a “don't forget her bottle at 5.” But the handwriting wasn’t hers.

The paper read:

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“Instructions for When It Feels Too Hard”

1. Breathe in. Deeply. The world has not ended. It’s just quiet right now.

2. You’re allowed to cry. Especially when no one sees.

3. Your presence is a miracle to someone. Keep showing up.

4. Feed her. Hug her. Smile. She learns from your eyes.

5. You don’t need to be perfect. Just present.

6. You’re doing better than you think.

7. Love her. That’s the only rule that matters today.

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My chest tightened. I sat down on the rocking chair, the paper still trembling between my fingers. My first thought: Who wrote this?

My second: How did they know?

Because the truth is, I’d been unraveling quietly.

After Ava was born, I thought I’d be ready. I’d read the books, memorized the feeding schedules, learned the lullabies. But no one tells you what it’s like when the house gets so quiet at 2 a.m., you can hear your own doubt whisper.

I didn’t tell anyone how often I wondered if I was enough. How often I felt like I was pretending. How I’d stare at her, beautiful and new, and think, Please don’t inherit my anxiety. Please don’t become the version of me that fears joy because it never lasts.

That note felt like someone had seen inside me.

I asked my wife the next morning. She hadn’t written it. Swore she hadn’t seen it.

A coincidence, maybe. A nurse from the hospital? A friend slipping in during a visit? I couldn’t explain it.

But a week later, there was another one.

This time, the note was folded neatly beneath Ava’s crib sheet, discovered while changing her linens. It was shorter, written in the same careful script.

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“Instructions for When You’re Losing Patience”

1. Walk away for 60 seconds. She’s not trying to break you. She’s just tiny, and confused, and needs you.

2. Anger is not failure. It’s fatigue trying to speak.

3. You are still the right parent for her. Even when you raise your voice.

4. Apologize. Hug. Reconnect. Try again.

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This time, I didn’t cry. I laughed — a dry, astonished kind of laugh — because how could this stranger, whoever they were, know the exact moment I’d nearly snapped the night before? When I’d had to put Ava down in her crib and walk away, afraid my tired hands were shaking too much to hold her?

By the third note, I stopped trying to explain it.

I started keeping them in a small wooden box. They kept coming, not daily, but always when I needed them. After particularly hard days. After milestones I thought I’d failed to appreciate. After the day I forgot her doctor’s appointment and sat in the parking lot, holding my head in shame.

The notes kept arriving.

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“Instructions for When You Feel Invisible”

She sees you. Every day.

The way you lift her. The way you hum that off-key song. The way you hold the bottle like it’s sacred.

She’s learning love from your hands.

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As Ava grew older, the notes changed. They became poems. Tiny, free-verse encouragements written like lullabies.

> “There’s no manual for this —

But you are writing it with every tear you wipe away,

Every morning you show up anyway,

Every tired story you tell again

As if it’s brand new.”

One day, I asked myself: What if these notes weren’t from someone else?

What if, in some strange cosmic twist, they were from me?

The version of me who’d finally learned grace.

The me who had survived the long nights. The me who had seen his daughter take her first steps, fall, cry, and rise again. The me who knew now that parenting was less about knowing what to do and more about never giving up trying.

Maybe this was how the universe leaves breadcrumbs.

Maybe this was poetry — not written in rhyme, but in reminder.

Maybe every parent needs a voice outside their own to say, You’re doing okay. Don’t give up.

Today, Ava is four.

There haven’t been any notes in months.

But this morning, while making her bed, I tucked a folded paper beside her bunny — same way I once found them.

And on it, I wrote:

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“Instructions for When You Feel Small”

1. You were born from love. You are made of it.

2. When the world feels big, remember your heart is bigger.

3. I believe in you. Even when you don’t.

4. You are not alone. Ever.”

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She won’t understand it now.

But one day, she will.

And maybe she’ll write her own notes for a crib of her own.

And the love will continue.

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