Three O'Clock in the Morning

                Three o’clock in the morning is a time of day I used to have very little experience with. Sure, there was the summer at the salmon cannery when Alecia and I held the 10:00 PM to 2:00 PM shift and got to behold three in the morning in all its glory every day, but the monotony of that job made it different, just a blip on the shift-clock reminding us we still had eleven hours to go. There also, of course, were college parties that would occasionally keep me up to and sometimes past that hour, but 3:00 AM has never felt like this before. For the first time it feels truly important.

                Elliott Aillaud was born at 6:59 on the morning of February 15, 2013 at Providence Hospital in Everett. When the sun rose, it was a beautiful day, the kind that keep people living in rainy Western Washington and it brought with it feelings and emotions that can be explained endlessly, but never fully understood until they are experienced. We had brought into the world a new little human who will depend on us for love and support, nurture and care, and on that day the whole idea of giving him everything still didn’t seem like it would be enough.

                Seven weeks have passed and so many things that everyone says before the birth definitely come to fruition. There absolutely isn’t as much sleep as there was before. Parenting is, undoubtedly, exhausting. In fact, the entire day changed for me. I used to function pretty much from 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM and the hours in between were more or less a void. Now, I feel each of the 24 hours.

There are absolutely A LOT of diaper changes. We’re currently averaging about twenty a day and will occasionally get five-minute periods with three new diapers—or worse—a diaper change followed by swaddling, sitting down and rocking for twenty minutes calming Elliott to sleep and just about the time everything seems peaceful enough to go back to bed…the explosion.

Our lifestyle absolutely has changed. We haven’t been to a movie or to a show or to a sporting event. As a matter of fact, these days 8:30 feels pretty late and 9:00 seems like it’s well past bedtime. It’s unusual for us to make it through a one-hour TV show without interruption. Just watching two episodes of Game of Thrones was a week-long process. When we get Elliott down, it’s time for us to join him. There’s really no telling how many hours he’s going to give us, so we take it while he’s offering.

Those are some of the things people told us and I think, for the most part, we were ready for them, perhaps with the exception of the sheer magnitude of diapers. But there is so much more that I had no preparation for at all.

To meet the gaze of my son’s curious dark eyes already searching for meaning and discovery in his surroundings and feel the most powerful, boundless love, closeness, and attachment. There is a seemingly desperate need to keep him safe and make him happy and comfortable. The feeling of warmth and joy I get touching his soft skin and seeing his little smile or the excitement I feel when he tries to mimic facial expressions. Or simply the overwhelming feeling of looking at him sleeping, his huge butter cheeks, tousled red hair, tiny chest rhythmically rising and falling as tears begin to well in my eyes knowing we brought such a beautiful little person into the world. There is nothing that quite prepared me for all of that.

It’s at three o’clock in the morning every day when it all hits home. After the diaper change. After the feeding. When rain or wind is the only sound and I’m rocking Elliott slowly back to sleep my eyes heavy, feeling his breath on my skin, his head in my hand, that’s when I feel my heart, my soul, and the entire world all wrapped up in this tiny human being. Despite the exhaustion, the diapers, and the early bedtimes three o’clock in the morning has never held so much meaning or so much love.