The Crying Game

One thing I never knew about having a baby was the crying.

Me, not him.

Don't worry, I swear I don't have post-partum or anything.  I take that really seriously, but I promise I'm feeling good, getting enough rest and not feeling down.

The first week was a sob fest.  I'd just sit and hold him and cry.  I'd cry for the experience I had just gone through, for seeing him finally in my arms where I'd dreamed he would be for so long.  I'd cry for his tiny mouth, his duckling hair and his perfectly formed ears.  I'd cry for the amount of love I felt for him and for the future we'd share together.  

This was a good week.  This kind of crying I find lovely, cathartic and cleansing.  

Week two got a little morbid.

Brixton and I were outside on the grass, getting some sun time.  He was cuddled into me and like usual, I was just staring at him and brimming with love (seriously, if you need to gag or retch at all during this post, I totally won't be offended).  Then I started thinking about losing him.  How awful that would be, how I don't know how I'd recover.  Then I started thinking of all the women throughout the history of time who had lost a baby or a child and how they coped with it, the intense feelings of helplessness, permanence, and emptiness of death.

Then I started thinking about the Holocaust.

How women held their babies close but could do nothing for them.  Women seeing horrible things happening to their own children.  I started recalling stories of things the Nazis did to children and babies.  I won't write here some of those things, since wow, they were awful and not deserving of more airtime, but let's just say I went there in my mind.  It was me on the train, it was me in the line to the gas chamber, it was Kelley's Choice, not Sophie's.  

And how I cried that day in the sun.  I cried and I cried and I cried.  I cried for all of them in a way I had never before.  I cried for the brand new mothers and the veterans.  I cried for the babies.  I cried for the toddlers.  And I held Brixton so close to me.

That day kind of worried me.  Because I then went through a few days of fear.  "What if?"  I read about senseless deaths of young men and instantly thought of their mothers. I worried about tree branches falling on us during a walk down the street.  Agoraphobia entered my mind.

A few days later I realized I had to leave those thoughts behind in order to move forward.  I had to trust God.  I had to say goodbye to those women on the boxcars and hiding in attics.  I couldn't stay with them in their grief.

Now we are in week three.  I haven't cried much, but I did last night.  4 am.  Holding a very wide awake little boy, I realized I was holding a man.  A man who has so much to learn.  A man who will one day have to make hard choices. A man who will always call me mother.  I cried.  I cried for all of it.  Most of all I cried because I never wanted children before and look what I almost missed.  

Do you cry?  Will this ever stop? Should it?