Coming Back Stronger (23 page)

Gains and Losses

One of the strange things about life is the way our deepest sorrows can coexist with our greatest joys. Sometimes the good is woven in so tightly with the difficult times that it’s almost impossible to separate the two. That’s how the year 2009 was for my family and me: full of highs and lows, beginnings and endings, new life and death.

My son, Baylen, has been one of God’s most incredible gifts to Brittany and me. There’s no question he has changed my entire life, my whole way of looking at things. Before he was even able to talk, he was such an inspiration to me and helped me put life in perspective. Being a father has made my preparations each week and everything I do as a football player that much better, because I know that, no matter what happens, when I come home at night, he’s going to be there.

Brittany and I had wanted to begin our family in the off-season of 2006, but my injury threw a wrench into those plans. Then the minute we signed with New Orleans, there was so much to do. I was focused on rehab, and I also had to reestablish myself and my career. We had to find a home, and once we did, we needed to fix it up so we could live there. All of that made us rethink the timing and push back having children. After the 2008 season was over, we prayed about it and talked more about the roots we were putting down. We felt good about being in New Orleans, and we were looking forward to raising our children here. We both thought this was the time to start our family.

Brittany was the most unbelievable pregnant woman. Beforehand she warned me that pregnancy can really change a woman’s behavior. “Listen, when I get pregnant, I’m going to have these cravings and mood swings,” she would say. “You’d just better be ready for all of this.”

She was trying to prepare me for the physical, mental, and emotional fluctuations that were bound to come. I knew about the hormonal changes that get stirred up in a woman’s body when she becomes pregnant and how much turmoil that can cause. On top of that, we’d heard horror stories of the first trimester and how hard it is because of morning sickness and fatigue and changes in the body. But in Brittany’s case, we weren’t even positive she was pregnant at first. She had no morning sickness or mood swings or any signs to tell us otherwise. When we went in for what we thought was the eight-week ultrasound, the doctor said the baby was already almost three months along.

One of the tough things about moving to a new city was finding a doctor. We wanted to make sure the person who brought our child into the world was the best. After asking several people for recommendations and going in for a visit, we decided on Dr. Liz Lapeyre. As a first-time parent, you really have no idea how many things you just don’t know. I think I asked more questions than Brittany did at the visit. Liz has five children of her own, and she was great. No matter what time we texted her with crazy questions, she always responded. She was the first person to ever see and hold our son, and now she is a big part of our family.

But at that moment I just stared at Dr. Lapeyre. “Are you sure?” I said.

She gave me a look. “Your baby is twelve weeks along.”

I didn’t need her to break down the math for me. This had obviously happened on the first try.

Before the pregnancy, Brittany had set a goal to be in the best shape of her life going into it and then to do her best to maintain that strength and stamina right up to the due date. She stuck to that and really saw it through. After all we’d learned about the importance of diet and sleep habits from Dr. Heitsch, she believed that being in shape and eating well would help her deal with the changes to come. She cut out most caffeine and continued to exercise hard throughout the entire pregnancy. She was nine months pregnant and still working out. People couldn’t believe what great shape she was in. Brittany talks a lot about my discipline in terms of training and getting ready to play each game, but I was in awe of her work ethic and daily regimen.

Throughout the pregnancy it was amazing to watch not just Baylen’s growth inside of Brittany but also the way her body naturally responded to the new life. She was meant to be a mom. She did whatever she could to care for the baby growing inside her. And if I can say so myself, she was a sexy pregnant woman! People talk about the “pregnancy glow,” but Brittany really did have a glow about her that was remarkable. Plus, I also couldn’t get over the amazing fact that what she was carrying inside her was a product of our love. She was the happiest I had ever seen her, and we would sit up for hours at night and watch her belly shift from side to side. Baylen was nonstop from the get-go.

A lot of people tried to prepare me for the birthing process. I kept hearing, “You haven’t seen anything till you see your child born.” And they were right. If you don’t believe in God or if you have any kind of reservations about your faith, watch a baby being born. It’s hard to witness an event like that as anything other than a miracle from God, evidence of his handiwork.

Leading up to the delivery, I was really nervous for Brittany. I wanted everything to go well, but there was only so much I could control. I tried to prepare myself mentally in case something went wrong or they needed to do a C-section. You hear stories about thirty-hour labors and the intensity of the pain. I’d experienced my share of pain on the field, but nothing like this.

My role in the delivery was to be her coach. “Brittany, what do you want me to do? I’ll hold your hand. You can squeeze my hand off if you want. You can punch me in the arm. You can do whatever you want. I’m here to support you and help you any way I can.”

As it turned out, my biggest job during the delivery was to hold one of her legs. I wound up providing the leverage for the final push. Brittany was a champ. She only had to push for an hour, but that was some hard-core pushing. To my surprise, the first words out of her mouth after Baylen popped out were “That wasn’t so bad. Let’s do it again.” He was born seven pounds, seven ounces, at 2:22 p.m. on January 15, 2009—which also happened to be my thirtieth birthday. I don’t think you can write a better script or story for the birth of your first child.

Some people have asked how I would compare the Super Bowl win to the birth of my son, and I’d say the emotions were similar. I was crying as I watched Baylen come into the world, and it was such a special moment to see Brittany hold her firstborn child. Then there was the incredible feeling of holding this tiny baby in my arms for the first time, looking at Brittany and laughing and crying at the same time, saying, “We created this little guy.” It was an amazing experience. The way I saw it, that day in the hospital and that moment on the field in Miami were both dreams come true—all the waiting, all the preparation, and the feeling that God had done all this and worked it out in his own time.

In some ways I think Baylen was the missing link in our lives. I can’t wait to get home at night because I get a chance to read him a story before he goes to sleep and maybe change a diaper or two. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing; I’m just glad I get to be with him. That prospect helps me focus throughout the day and get everything accomplished so I can make it home as soon as possible. In the past, I might have called Brittany and said, “Hey, babe, I’m going to be thirty or forty-five minutes late.” I can’t make that excuse anymore because if I don’t make it home in time, Baylen is already asleep in his bed. This little guy has been part of the process of my becoming more responsible in areas of my life I hadn’t really thought much about before.

I can’t wait to be all-time quarterback for my kids. I’m visualizing the backyard matchups already. And the girl, when she comes along, will be right there in the middle of the game. I’m fairly sure we’ll have a girl at some point because I don’t think Brittany will stop until that happens. She loves having a little boy, but her eyes light up whenever we talk about the possibility of a Brees girl.

If you want to know the truth about the name Baylen, we made it up.

Brittany and I kept the baby name book industry in business for the last five months of her pregnancy. We settled on a list of names for boys and a list for girls and then whittled them each down from there, almost like the baby name playoffs. But from the minute we discovered we were having a boy, we nixed all five of those boys’ names and started over. They just didn’t feel quite right.

Brittany would suggest a name, and I never once said, “Oh, that’s nice. I like that.” Instead, I would say, “No, there was a kid back home named Buford who used to pick on me in second grade. We can’t name him that.” Of course we never seriously considered Buford Brees, but you get the picture. Suddenly, instead of having lots of names in the running, there were no names at all in the baby name playoffs.

We turned to the books again. We bought every baby name book we could find, poring through them and going online to look up every name that’s ever been given to a child on the planet. But no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t find anything we liked. We were settled on the middle name Robert, after my grandfather Robert Ray Akins, the legendary Texas football coach, but we weren’t making any progress on the first name.

It was the fourth quarter in the baby name playoffs, and time was running out. As I recall, two days before Baylen was born, Brittany looked at me, inspired. “What about Baylen?” She didn’t find it in any of the books we’d bought or on any of the Web sites. It just came out of her mouth.

My first reaction was “It sounds like it’s missing a letter. Maybe an r somewhere in there.”

I’d heard of Braylen before and even Daylen, but I’d never met a Baylen. At first all I could think about was a farmer balin’ hay.

“I don’t know.”

“I like it; it’s the one,” she said.

I should have known right then that the playoffs were over. She called everybody she knew, asking, “What do you think about the name Baylen?”

Everybody loved it. And I have to admit, it grew on me. Now when I look at my son, I can’t imagine him as anything but Baylen. As usual, it was a good call on Brittany’s part.

In the 2008 off-season, I started growing out my hair during training camp and continued throughout the season. Because of the way 2007 had gone, I decided to be like Samson—to let my hair get long as we built up our strength to win. It grew. And grew.

I have a picture of my dad holding me when I was a baby, and he had that classic long hair that was in style in the 1970s. The shaggy rock band look. When we discovered Baylen was on his way, I thought, I want my son to be able to look back at old pictures and say the same thing about me that I said about my own dad. Who knows what the trend will be when he’s a teenager.

I said to Brittany, “I’m going to have long hair when he’s born.”

I’m a pretty clean-cut, short hair kind of guy, but by then my hair was almost down to my shoulders. Baylen will always have those pictures to look back on . . . and laugh at.

After experiencing the pain of my parents’ divorce, I was determined to break that cycle for my children. It’s so easy for people to be hurt by their parents and then wind up doing the same to their own kids. My parents didn’t mean to hurt my brother and me, but there’s no way around it: divorce is painful. I wanted to make sure I didn’t repeat the same dynamic for the next generation.

Some people ask, “How can you be so sure? You can never say never, right?”

Here’s what I believe. When I said “I do” to Brittany, I meant it. Nobody is going to tear us apart. As an added motivation, I know what it was like to deal with the impact of divorce, and I never want my child to have to experience growing up in two separate households. So when I put the ring on Brittany’s finger, I said, “For better or for worse, till death do us part.” Period. No matter how bad it could possibly get, I am committed. It’s not about my happiness. It’s not about a feeling. I committed myself to her for the rest of my life, and I promise never to walk away.

Because of that promise, there are certain things my wife and I have promised to each other about the way we interact. For example, when we argue—and we do have disagreements—she knows I will never tell her to shut up. Ever. I will say, “Sweetie, please, could you be quiet for a second? Can I make my point?” That has happened a few times. But I will never tell her to shut up or disrespect her, because we see that as one of the ways people close the lines of communication. Also, I will never call her ugly names or use profanity when we’re arguing. I want her to feel safe to come to me and tell me what’s on her heart so we can grow closer in our relationship. If I shut her down, nothing gets settled, and whatever we were fighting about will just fester and get bigger.

I feel like God has given us each other for a purpose, and if God gives you someone to work with that closely, you need to listen and learn. There’s no excuse for acting in ways that lead to broken hearts or a fracturing of the relationship. I don’t want to push my wife down; I want to see her reach her full potential. I want to enrich her. I want to love her and give myself up for her, just like the Bible commands husbands to do.

Brittany and I have had some difficult times in our marriage—I think everyone does. The adversity can either pull you together or pull you apart. Some of the most trying circumstances we’ve been through together have created a lasting bond that’s growing tighter every day. But it takes work, and it takes commitment. It’s not about being the perfect husband or the perfect wife, because you’re going to fail. I fail all the time. It’s about forgiving each other, listening to each other, learning from each other, and allowing God to cement your relationship through the hard times.

The thing God requires from us in that equation is commitment. If you give yourself an out, eventually you will take that out. If you say, “I promise to stay as long as we both shall love,” then there will come a point where you don’t feel love. I guarantee it. What has to happen, instead, is that when you’re in, you’re all the way in. There’s no backing out. Quitting can’t be an option. If you allow yourself to say, “Well, if it gets bad enough, I’ll leave,” how are you going to know when you’ve reached that point? Brittany and I have vowed to stick it out, no matter what, and will never even consider leaving. My hope is that this kind of commitment will provide Baylen with a strong family and also give him a good role model for his own relationships down the road.

Whose Son Is He?

Our extended families try to see which of us Baylen takes after most. My family will say, “I can’t believe how much he looks like you!” Brittany’s side of the family says, “I can’t believe how much he looks like Brittany.”

There’s no question he has my blue eyes and my ears. But he has her nose and mouth. As he grows, there are times when I’ll look at him at just the right angle or in a photo and it’s scary how much he looks like me. Then the other day we saw a picture of Brittany as a kid, and if you took away her long, blonde hair, they would be identical.

Brittany thinks he has my personality because he is all over the place. He’s a ball of nonstop energy who can’t sit still, and that’s very much the way I am. He loves being outside and being around people. He likes constant stimulation and wants to be part of whatever’s going on. It’s no wonder he loved it when I held him up after the Super Bowl with all the confetti coming down, the lights glaring, the fireworks flashing, and the people celebrating. He didn’t know what was going on, but he loved being in the middle of the action. When he’s older, I’ll be able to explain to him exactly what he was part of that night.

I do worry sometimes about the expectations he might feel being the son of an NFL quarterback. I saw that pressure in my little brother as we were growing up. Since we’re so close in age, he had to follow in my footsteps as we went to high school. People asked why he wasn’t a quarterback like I was. I don’t want that to happen with my son. I would love to give him every opportunity to do whatever he wants in life. If he wants to play sports, we’ll give him that chance. If he wants to be an artist or fly airplanes or build houses—I don’t care. Whatever talents he’s given by God, that’s what I want him to do because I know that’s what will make him most fulfilled and happy—following the path that was set out for him.

Baylen was the best thing that happened to me in 2009. But there was also a tremendous loss that year, a few weeks before the 2009 season began. It’s one of those things that’s difficult to talk about, but there’s no way to truly understand my story without that piece. As I looked into the stands after the Super Bowl win and picked out many of my family, friends, and mentors who have been instrumental over the years, there was one face missing.