A letter to my long-awaited miracle baby

What follows is a letter to my eldest son that I wrote shortly after he was born. It was published in the local newspaper at the time. That was 12 years ago. The Boy has grown into a scrapping young Wild Thing now and I wanted to commemorate his birthday by republishing this letter. May it bring hope to anyone with a newborn child or who has ever struggled through infertility.

Dear Future Wild Thing,

Welcome to the world. Welcome to our family. I can’t wait to get to know you and spend the rest of this crazy thing called life with you.

There’s so much I want to tell you and so much I want to give you. Though you only communicate through coos, gurgles and cries, I look forward to the conversations we will have as you grow older.

I can’t promise you that life will be easy. It isn’t. I can’t promise that the road will never be uphill or that you will never struggle. I can’t promise that you will grow up to be president or that you’ll have a wife, three kids and a dog. Turns out your dear old dad isn’t very good at predicting the future, and he doesn’t really have a knack for making promises he can’t keep.

But here is a promise I can keep.

I promise that you will always know you are loved.

You are more loved at this moment and at all future moments than you can fathom. Your arrival wasn’t a haphazard whim. It didn’t just randomly happen. (You also weren’t delivered by a stork, no matter what your grandparents decide to tell you one day.)

No, your birth was the culmination of a decade-long struggle. Your Mama and Daddy loved you long before you were born and long before they were even married. Your full name was picked out when we were just two silly teenagers with big dreams and a small view of the world.

You are more loved than you know. While most of our friends were having their first children and discovering that they would give anything and everything for their sons and daughters, we were already giving anything and everything just to bring you into this world.

Our struggle to have a child encompassed everything. Our future plans were put on hold, we went into debt— often. But those weren’t the only sacrifices. There were spiritual questions, emotional angst, mental stress and the loss of dignity that often comes with being unable to have kids. It was a rough road and a constant inner battle for both of us. But after looking into those eyes of yours— after holding you as you wrapped your tiny fingers around my thumb for the first time, I can assure you, I wouldn’t hesitate to go through that struggle all over again.

You are loved, you are cherished, and you are worth every bit of the heartache it took to get you here. We’ve been waiting for you. We’ve spent the last ten years preparing a loving home for you and a strong marriage that will form the backbone of our new family.

I can’t promise you that we will never disappoint you or that you’ll always like us and want to be around us, but I can promise that everything we do will be done out of a deep abiding love and with your best interest and future in mind.

Oh, and I can also promise that we’re going to laugh— a lot. If I could give you one piece of advice to last your whole life, it’s this: Laugh. It makes the adventure easier.