Cry out

Well, my boy, you're a week and a day old. There have been nights, some good and some bad. Your mother is losing more sleep than I am, mainly because she's not only your primary caretaker, but she's also your entree and salad bar. And, I can sleep through almost anything. Your crying to me is something that I can handle, and that may make me one of the few people who can. You could be screaming and screaming because of a dirty diaper or hunger, but it's hard for me to notice because you're a blessing to us and this world whether you like it or not. You're a week old and I'm looking for a job. I'm looking for a difficult job to find. Sometimes when I think about getting that job that I want and need, I get very, very emotional. Angry, sad, depressed, and doubtful. I feel that I made mistakes in my life about my chosen career path and its potential to keep food on the table (and diapers on your butt) for all of us, and I want to do things over. It may seem childish, but even I throw little tantrums (which I know you'll be throwing in the cereal aisle of the grocery store very soon). I cry out to your mom, and to God (and sometimes who ever will listen). Your mom gives me the usual answers, "I know you'll find something...I know your talent and someone else will recognize it too." But sometimes those answers don't do anything. I still feel emotional. Sometimes when I cry out to God, for whatever I'm worried about or needing, he helps me feel better, but sometimes he doesn't. Even though God knows you, every cell in your being, he still wants you to trust in him, just like you trust in your mother to keep you fed right now. And sometimes you have to be patient with God, too. I can hear you crying out when I hold you and I can try to make you feel better, but patience is something you haven't learned yet, even though I know it is something you will learn. Maybe when I cry out, I am learning how God wants me to be patient too.

Nonetheless

Welcome to the world that the Lord has made! Today is your birthday, and however you're going to celebrate it is up to you. Whether it's with cake all over your face and high-chair or maybe with your first bicycle (which I haven't run past your mother yet) or maybe with your first driver's permit, you'll be having a good time. I'm going to chronicle today for you, so you can always have this somewhere to look back on.
You were just a trailblazer today, really. At midnight this morning, you were already trying to get out of your mother even though she wasn't ready for you. At 2am, contractions were bad enough to wake her, and she woke me up just after 4 am. By the time we got to the hospital (St. Anthony's Wha-What!) at just after 9am, contractions were between 3 and 7 minutes apart and your mother was experiencing back labor symptoms (Google that later). As she would be having contractions, your heartbeat would decelerate (decel) from 150bpm to 110bpm for a short period of time. As one of these episodes flared up, your heartbeat sunk all the way down to 60bpm, which is not good. You were under stress, and while you were still safe, the doctors wanted to get you out of Mom, so they did a C-section (Google that too). You were born/pulled out of your mother at 11:10 this morning, and have been amazing ever since. The 'stress' I mentioned earlier was your umbilical cord wrapped around your neck (which is such a cute little neck right now).
Your mother has been a trooper this entire time. She saw you for five seconds during the surgery, and then had to wait for nine hours for your sugars and breathing to come up to snuff with the doctors around here. But she finally held you!
The tears that we share whenever we look at you are proof positive that we LOVE you. I know that the hardest thing right now for me is that not only am I responsible for you, but that I could lay down every atom in every cell of my entire being just to keep you happy and safe. I would die for you.
Let me try to sum this up: I love you sacrificially, I would lay down anything for you, including my life. When I confess that Jesus died for my sins, I feel that my great, heart wrenching need to keep you safe is just a speck to what he must have felt as he was walked to that cross, knowing full well the weight of the world, and taking it onto his back nonetheless.

Difficult to say...

I used to support our family monetarily, however your mother's working made it possible for me to take off of gainful employment to follow my career path. I got a degree in broadcasting, with a specialty in advertising, and have been looking for a job for the last four months of her pregnancy with you. I try hard. I look for jobs online and in the real world (like going in to a store and filling out applications).

I'm also in the process of quitting smoking: from a pack of cigarettes a day (about a year ago) to none today (except if I can find someone to bum me one). Not only will this save my health and well-being, but it will save our family approximately $15 a week (respectable smokes are only about $4 a pack now). That may not seem like much, but a sacrifice is a sacrifice. No matter how much someone else sees you give up, when you start (like regular exercise) or stop (like quitting smoking) something for the sake of your own body and your family, you place yourself on a road to a better life.
Just like your mother not knowing what it is for me to quit smoking or to find a job to support us, I don't know what it is for her to be carrying you. I can imagine the pain of a growing waistline and muscle aches. I can imagine having feet that won't fit into your shoes because they're too swollen. I can imagine what's going through her head when she knows I'm at home and she's working. I know how she must feel that I don't know what she's going through, but I do.
I want you to know that she is going through a lot just to meet you. She wants nothing more than to see you for the first time and to hold your tiny arms in her strong ones. She would rather you be healthy and happy than to have any possession that this planet could give you.
I want everything she does, but I want to be able to support our family the right way. I want to make sure your mom only has to worry about you, like when you will cry when you're hungry or need changing. I want to make you her focus, and not the rest of the vain things of this life. I can wait patiently to be your father, because I made a promise to support her and to be her husband first.
I love you and your mother more than anything in the world, and if I could convey that with simpler words, I would. Sometimes your mom and I will fight, and it will never be your fault. The things of life are hard to understand, no matter how old you are.

It's hard to just look someone in the eye and tell them what you feel. This will never get easier.

First off, I would like this to be published as a book someday. I want to tell my child (as of right now, unborn and of unknown gender to myself and you, the reader) things that occur to me during daily life as I think of them. Humans are fallible and I will, without fail, forget to tell him/her certain life lessons as time marches ever onward from the present to the future. I want my baby to read this when it will matter to him/her the most, after their adolescence and before their first child enters upon this world. In other words, I want them to read this at the point, in my life, when it was written and when will actually mean something to them. Not before, and not after. That being said (actually written), I propose to write this for him/her, with the knowledge that I may never finish it, and the hope that my words will not be taken out of the context from a loving father, faithful to the God who created us all, to his child, a gracious and merciful blessing not to keep, but to guide, to cherish and to protect.

_._:_Derek J. DeBoer_:_._