First Baby…

Chapter 3

And now these three remain:

faith, hope and love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Hey God,

It’s me Lori,

Thank you for giving me the joy of my life a love that is unconditional and boundless.  Through my immense love for him I can start to witness what your love for me must be like. 

Thank you!

First Baby…

Before I gave birth to Ethan I had been a full time nanny for a wonderful family.  I took care of a baby and a 7 year old for 18 months until I was about to deliver.  Then I quit because I wanted to stay at home with my baby as long as I could.  I had babysat as a teenager for the same family for 6 years once or twice a week and even worked daycare.  But nothing prepares you for a baby NOTHING!!

I read books and talked to my overgrown (I gained 40 lbs) belly and I even took Lamaze classes.  Nothing prepares you for getting up in the middle of the night five times every night.  Nothing prepared me for the intense love you have for that baby.  The sitcom Frasier said it best when the main character Frasier said to Roz who was then pregnant “No one tells you that you actually fall in love with your child.” This is the truest statement ever spoken.  You literally fall head over heals in love with this little being that you and your spouse created.  But unlike the love you have for your spouse this love is void of any impurities it is only innocent pure, unbelievably unconditional die for love.  There is no way for anyone to experience this type of undying love that I know of without being a parent.  In a matter of days your heart expands 100% and there is no going back!  Suddenly you want to protect and provide for this little being more than you would ever think of doing for yourself.  All of who you are is wrapped up in his little eyes; precious nose and the sweetest little blushed colored lips.

I could not sleep more than a few hours a night when we brought him home from the hospital because I was so worried about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).  I had no reason to be, I was breastfeeding, no one in our family smoked, I always laid him the correct way and took every precaution the books told me to.  Yet I was so scared that I could scarcely sleep 2 hours straight through.  I would sleep with the light on, him in a cradle by our bed watching his chest rise and fall.  I would cry at night as I prayed God just please keep him alive watch him through the night if I fall asleep.  I do not know where that intense fear came from.

The only thing I can figure out is when he was born the Doctor told me he swallowed some amniotic fluid choked and turned blue.  So he taught me how to get the fluid out if he choked, it was then that I became a Paranoid Mom,  the first hour after he was born.  The Doctor also told me not to take him out of the house to any large gatherings, not even Church or the grocery store for the first 3 months of his life.  Maybe that’s where it was rooted, along with a love so strong that I could not take a chance that I would lose the most precious person in my life.  It set the tone of his first year of life.  Everyone had to use sanitizer if they wanted to touch him for the first 5 months of his life.  I actually told my parents “He will never fall because I will always catch him before he hits the ground”. Yes I know now I was a little crazy at that point.  But the love you feel for your first child that you have wanted, waited for and prayed for all your life is to say the least phenomenal.