Bundle of Joy

Salutations to all! I have been holed up in a bunker surrounded by soiled diapers, baby spit, and varied and copious amounts of baby crap all around. I have managed at times to escape and replenish the oxygen however our humble abode continues to serve as our main stomping ground.
Can I just interrupt my thoughts for a second and let you all know on a secret that also happened to be an understatement? Having a baby is HARD! One more time: Having a baby is HARD!
Somehow though, I seem to take a lot of things in stride. For instance, this morning when I was driving Ashley to work, my worst nightmare was realized. Aubrey started crying his cute little eyes out non stop till we dropped Señor Bright off. It may be hard for folks that don’t have children to understand how incredibly hard it is to hear your baby cry. You see, I just learned that giving birth and especially breastfeeding releases extra hormones that cue your body to make milk, and feel excruciating pain when your child is screaming bloody murder. So the screeching that was emanating from behind the drivers seat was hard to listen to, but by no means as painful as I was imagining it would be as those hormones I take it are kicking in ( No doubt to keep me from loosing my mind). For Ashley, though, he may have a different story. Either case, he is doing an excellent job and is a life saver in the morning, as he takes the kid and lets me sleep a couple of extra hours until the little one needs a boobie snack. On that note, I have a new understanding and appreciation for my mom and mothers in general. I know that my parents did the best they could with what information they had and I keep thinking of that saying that people repeat when they have children or want children. They keep saying that they want to provide something better for their kids. They want to provide more than they had as children and usually that means materialistic things such as piano lessons, a car when they turn 16, private schools or anything that money can buy. It didn’t take me too long to figure this one out. I want to provide for my child something that was unfortunately the exception and not the rule in the home I grew up in. I want to provide a safe and loving home for Aubrey. I want him to constantly be reminded what a loving partnership full of respect, love, intimacy and most importantly laughter looks like. I want him to see that Ashley and I are comfortable telling each other how much we appreciate each other and how we love each other. I want him to see that even though Ashley or I make food for each other, do the dishes, take the dog out, go to the grocery store or run any errands, that every time, we say thank you for doing this, or that. I know that sounds corny and even fake, but believe me, it is so important to know that you are being appreciated and to know how to appreciate someone else.
Sometimes as I nurse Aubrey, my mind always tends to wander about all those moms that are not in the greatest relationship. I think about how hard that must be for all the women who perhaps are in domestic violence situations. I think about the close bond mom and baby have while they are nursing and I cringe at the thought of having a little one be witness to the violence that the person they rely on for warmth and shelter, food and love is sometimes kicked, beat, raped, hurt or verbally abused constantly about her appearance, her weight, her skills as a mom, etc. I know this because I use to work with women whose existence was that every day. Even though I loved my job, I am so glad that I left when I did. I needed a break from the constant stories and now I finally realize that I need to direct the strength to my son.

As he grows, I want my son to know that it is ok to cry, it is ok to feel sad and it is ok to discuss and confront something that is making him uncomfortable. It is ok to be mad at someone you love and to talk about it. The worse thing is being afraid of not expressing your emotions. I have known people that live their lives afraid to embrace whole spectrum of emotions and to some degree it was probably a survival mechanism as maybe it was never safe to express their thoughts or feelings to someone that they loved.

When I was working at EDVP, we constantly talked about the cycle of violence and how it affects generations. The work sometimes felt overwhelming since there were so many cases every day, but the thing that kept me going was the thought that I didn’t have to change the world, all I had to do was make just one person feel heard and informed and hopefully that would create enough energy to change something in their lives for the better. That energy in turn would transcend into their relationship with the their children, family, lovers, bosses, a complete stranger and in turn that positive energy would live on forever making its way around the world changing something. These thought brings me back to Aubrey; his beginning in this world as a single cell, dividing into millions of cells building onto one another forming tissue, organs, systems, limbs, birth, a smile, back to his mom who looks at him everyday and is filled with positive energy, despite the poopy diapers, the spitting up and the sleep less nights. Peace.