The Most Important Seven Words Ever...

There is never a lack of people out there willing to give parents, new or otherwise, advice on just about anything.  At the risk of being one of those people, I want to pass along a piece of advice that my wife and I were given very early on and it has stuck with us ever since.

When my oldest son was about a week old, my wife and I were at our wits end.  We were new parents, my wife was new to breast feeding, and our son did not seem to want to eat.  He would initially latch on to the breast very well, but would quickly pull off in an absolute flurry of anger and frustration.  The crying would start and would only end when he cried himself to sleep out of pure exhaustion.  The feeding routine was unpleasant, exhausting and  exasperating, and my wife and I were terrified because our baby was not eating, not flourishing.

We were at our one week appointment at our pediatrician's office and we were seeing the nurse practitioner that day.  She was a wonderful woman and was definitely one of the reasons we liked the practice as much as we did.  Upon telling her the challenges we were  having with our son, sharing with her the exasperation, the frustration, the feelings of being at a complete loss, she said something that we have never forgotten.  Her exact words were "A crying baby is a breathing baby".

These seven words became tremendously important to us and completely changed our perspective as parents.  No matter how bad things get, no matter how frustrated you become, no matter how at a loss you feel because everything you try to comfort and console your baby just does not seem to work, that baby being here is a miracle, and the act of crying means that your child is alive and well enough to cry.  It is with those seven words in mind that has made so many situations that would seem unbearable, bearable.  Those seven words have played a vital role for me, and particularly for my wife, on our journey to build our family.  Perhaps we would still have ended up where we are today had we never met with the nurse practitioner that day, but I can tell you that those words have made the journey infinitely easier, far more rewarding and if nothing else, they have made us far better parents for the perspective they gave us.