September 8, 2008
Dear Aidan,
Today you are officially one month old. One whole month. In some ways, it seems like ages ago that we came home from the hospital, both of us somewhat bruised, squinty-eyed, and ready for a really, really long nap. In other ways, it seems like just yesterday I was marveling at your 7 pound, 4 ounce tinyhood.
Time does fly, doesn’t it, Sweet Pea?
Being your mom has been the most awesome and most intense experience of my life. Your sweet little toes, your unbelievably soft velvety skin, your button nose and bubble chin that you inherited from me, your grayish eyes that are slowly turning blue (I think), and your sweet, mellow disposition have completely captured my heart. Sometimes, when my mind is racing, and I cannot sleep – and there are many nights like that – I watch you sleep, and your peaceful face and soft, contented little sighs make everything fall into place in my heart.
Your daddy and I love to watch you any time of the day, especially when we are burping you. Because that’s when you make the cutest “old man” faces, cheeks a-chubbed and arms hanging at your side as you help us work those gas bubbles out. You can burp like a frat boy at a kegger, my love, and I have never been more proud of such booming bodily functions. I know you don’t know what “good boy” means, but we tell you that pretty much any time you burp, fart, pee, or poop. I can’t promise that you’ll always have a cheering committee when you perform these acts later in your life, but for right now, they’re always a reason to celebrate.
When I first held you in my arms in the operating room, I knew I had so much to teach you – about the world, about the God who created you and loves you, about your father and I, and about all the big and little things of life. But the great surprise of this month, and likely about the next 21+ years to come, my little one, is that YOU are the one teaching me.
Aidan, you’ve taught me how to roll with the punches. Even from your emergency C-section birth – necessary because your head was pushed against my pelvis with every contraction, causing your heart rate to drop – you were God’s little messenger, telling me: Anne, you can’t plan EVERYTHING. And so it began: the pile of cloth diapers we’d amassed for you because we wanted to be both financially conservative AND ecologically sound when we dealt with your poop? A huge box of Pampers soon replaced them. You love Pampers, and so does Mommy, Aidan. They keep your sweet little bum dry! The breastfeeding I had planned to do since I’d wanted to become a mom? I had to stop because of a medication I had to take in order to be a happy mommy instead of a neurotic, no-fun mommy, and you took formula instead. That was a hard one, because breastfeeding you was so bound to the ideas of motherhood I had jammed in my head, it was hard to imagine that anything good could come out of formula. However, you were perfectly happy on formula, didn’t seem to notice the change in food delivery systems, thrived beautifully, and put on weight like a champ: at your two-week checkup, you were 8.5 pounds, up from your hospital discharge weight of 6 pounds, 10 ounces. Every day, we watch your sweet little face get fuller and a double chin start to appear, so it seems that you and formula do well with each other. In the end, your health and happiness is more important to me than my stubbornness about sticking to an ideal that just doesn’t work for either of us.
Can I embarrass you for a moment? I’m sure I’ll embarrass you countless times in your life, so I’ll start with a doozy now: YOU HAD GREEN POOP. Not just at birth, either, my love, because all babies have green poop then. Right around 3 weeks, you were having some trouble digesting the formula we gave you. You grunted and groaned and strained, and it eventually drove you to cry. And when we heard our mellow, sweet baby cry, we knew something was wrong, because prior to then, you’d only cried a handful of times in those three weeks. We tried soy formula, and things got worse… and THAT is when the poop turned clay green. And it stunk worse than anything your daddy could produce after a night of lager and hot garlic chicken wings, so we quickly switched you to a lactose-free formula. Ta-da! Tummy trouble gone.
And so ends the embarrassment. For now, anyway.
You’ve taught me how to trust my instincts as a parent. Those early days when we were home from the hospital were quite a roller coaster ride, my love: you were unbearably adorable and cute, but there’s nothing quite like a helpless, non-verbal little human being thrust into your care that makes you question every move you make. We worried and fretted over everything about you: your delicate skin, the color and consistency of your diaper contents, your every sound, your sleeping habits, you name it. Your Nana was my parenting encyclopedia (still is), and in those first few weeks, I must have looked to her with a pained, worried expression at least five hundred times a day and said, “What do I do? What does that mean?” I doubted myself even more when we had to take you back to the hospital for an overnight visit, just days after we’d first left because your jaundice wasn’t clearing up. But we finally got to know each other, and I started to pick up on your little signals and cues, and being your mommy wasn’t such a mystery job anymore.
You’ve taught me how to laugh, even in the face of sadness. You’ll find out soon enough that your mommy tends to worry about things a little too much, and during this first month, there wasn’t much I didn’t worry about, from the reasonable (is that diaper rash I see?) to the completely irrational (what if the ice caps melt so much that everyone drowns and you never get to grow up?). Inevitably, though, just as I was getting into a full-blown worrywart mode, you’d pee straight into the air during a diaper change with a goofy look on your face, or make an enormous belch, or fart really, really loud and stinky. And I’d have to throw my head back and laugh at how funny you were, even when I’d just been on the verge of tears. Yes, your mother is just that mature: potty humor is the BEST humor for me, my dear boy. It’ll come in handy when you’re in school and you need to learn how to produce your own belches. Or learn the infinite joys of a whoopee cushion. That’ll be your mom teaching you all of that.
You had a wonderful photography session with a friend of ours from church, Garrick Boyd, and you were, of course, a natural in front of the camera, even at 2 weeks old. At one point, we completely undressed you for some “natural” shots with your daddy (he stayed dressed), and as I handed you off to him, you decided that it was the perfect time to unleash your power: you peed straight into the air, all over yourself, your daddy, and the blanket you were both laying on. And just as we managed to wipe everything up, you promptly pooped on your daddy’s jeans and completely grossed him out. I was laughing so hard that I nearly doubled over. (You’ll be grateful to know that no photographic evidence of that poop-on-Daddy event exists…)
Most of all, you’ve taught me how much l can love. And oh, how I love you, my sweet Aidan. I love you so, so much. Sometimes, I look at you, and my heart swells with that love, and I physically hurt from it. Sometimes that love is almost too overwhelming, and I wonder if I am good enough, qualified enough to be Mommy to such an amazing little boy. Aidan, neither of us will be perfect, and there will be times where we both make mistakes along this journey as you grow up. I will always try my best to be the best mommy to you that I can be, but I may stumble along the way. You might stumble, too, but I’ll always be here for you, little bud. And Jesus, who loves you and I more than we could ever imagine, doesn’t make mistakes, and He certainly didn’t make one when he paired us up together. He knows how much I needed your sweet little heart to connect with mine, and I have never felt so humbled or so blessed to be called your mother. Because of you, I understand how deep and how strong our Father’s love is for us – a million, billion times more than even my love for you. And as I send you out into the world, a world full of uncertainty and stumbling blocks, a little more each day, I know Jesus will be holding your hand the entire way, guiding and protecting you, loving you, holding you close, and growing you every day.
I love you, sweet Aidan. Welcome to our family.
Love,
Mama
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