Feeling Sad

I was holding Silas today. It was almost time for him to eat and he had started fussing a little, rooting around and sticking out his tongue. He was making some sounds and I asked him jokingly if he was trying to talk already. I told him that I'd be around when he started to talk.

That was a bad thing to say, even to myself. I remembered (as I will myself to forget as often as possible) that I won't be able to stay home with him and that there was a perfectly good chance his first words would be spoken to someone without me or Smiley there. A sad thought, but I pushed it to the side because there's no point in crying over hypotheticals.

Still, it had set a mood for me, and unfortunately the next step was for Silas to hammer the sadness home. As his fussing increased, I got set up to nurse him in my favorite chair. He quieted down, perhaps anticipating what would happen next. As I held him up to my chest, however, he did not latch on as he normally would.

Instead, he paused, making no noise but his face turning bright red and then he started wailing - a desperate, loud cry that frankly shocked me with its intensity. I stared at him for a moment as he cried again, the pleading note in his cry horribly evident.

In that moment, tears gathered in my eyes and then started falling. I rocked him back and forth for a moment to calm him down before attempting to latch him on to nurse and his cry subsided fairly quickly as he reassessed the situation, headbutt me a few times trying to coordinate his head and then latched on to nurse. His eyebrows quickly turned from serious and concerned to happy and calm.

But for a few minutes while I fed him, I continued crying. It was one of those moments where it was obvious - even now, at just over a month old! - that sometimes, I'll be there for Silas with exactly what he needs and it still won't be enough.

Sometimes, I feel frustrated. I think as a new mom, and especially as someone who wants to have children, that I can only share the good parts - that sharing the bad parts of having a child only opens myself up to the attack that "you wanted to have kids so deal with it." Which is true, and I will deal with it, but life is full of choices and sometimes, occasionally, I want to talk about the bad parts of a decision.