Sorry doesn't fix it

I've known this my whole life. Sorry doesn't fix anything. Sure, it's nice to say after a wrongdoing, especially if you actually mean it. But it doesn't make the words you said disappear. It doesn't make the sting from your hit subside. Itn cannot, in fact, actually do anything to change what has all ready occurred. I know this. I'm a firm believer in this.

And yet I say that I'm sorry to baby B every single day. Sometimes multiple times a day. While he's nursing. While he's sleeping. While he's toddling trepditiously toward me. And away from me.

I say it even though I know that I cannot fix those first few months for him. I cannot make myself look back on my birth experience with him and say it was beautiful and great like Miss H's. I cannot go back and make myself happy. Sure, I wore him just as much as I did Miss H, but with so much reluctance. And only because I'd had her first; I knew what the right thing to do was, even though I didn't feel an overwhelming desire to have him on me. I hugged him and kissed him because I knew babies needed that, but it was on the rarest occassion that it was out of anything more than obligation.

I loved him, yes. That is a given. Just as with Miss H, I would have gladly laid down my life for him from the second I laid eyes on him. Before that even.

But I cannot go back and re-create a connection with him in those first precarious months that simply was not there.

Baby B is a happy, lovely, and loving baby boy. I know without a doubt that he knows how much I cherish him. We are connected now. That's for sure!

Bust still. There are things that make me feel awful, when in reality they should not. They way he is so wrapped up with J. At this age Miss H wanted nothing to do with her papa. But baby B happily crawls into his lap. He gives him hugs and besos unprompted. He cries when he leaves him. These are all good things, and things he does with me as well, but I feel sometimes that he only does it with J because he knows that J was the one genuinely connecting with him in those early months.

Even with breastfeeding I sometimes feel like I screwed things up. He's never nursed half as much as Miss H, which is a totally fine thing. She's a bit of an addict. But then I sometimes find myself thinking "Well, maybe that's because he knows." And so, of course, I apologize, even though I know it won't fix it.

I figure some day I will be able to look at him and not think, "I am just so sorry." Some day I will be able to stop trying to make it up to him on an hourly basis.

I remember telling J during those first few months that baby B deserved so much better than me. That he was so perfect, and wasn't it his rotten luck to get stuck with a momma like me. And then the lightswitch went on and things got a million times better and I realized that he got a pretty kick-ass momma. I will always be honest and forthcoming with him. I love him to absolute pieces and would never let harm befall him.

But I'll still likely tell him I'm sorry on a daily basis. Because I am.

From the deepest depths of my soul I'm sorry, my sweet boy.