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What Really Caused Colorado Infant’s Death?

Two-month old Nicholas Johnson didn’t know he’d been left in the hands of a man who would kill him.

We don’t know the details of what happened the day of Feb. 10 in Colorado Springs, the day Nicholas’ mother left him with someone . . . who then left him with someone else.

Twice removed from his mother, Nicholas was at risk. He was someone else’s kid. A crying baby.  Entirely dependent and needy in every way.

We don’t know if his babysitter, George Peters, had fed and changed him. Or rocked him or sang to him. We only know that there was no one there to protect him. There was no one there whose heart beat to the same rhythm.

It is by no mistake that mothers and babies belong together; bonded, at the breast.

Beastfeeding mothers produce hormones that make them want to protect their young and that make them attentive and nurturing. Peters had no such hormones. And he had no business being around a two month-old infant.

What would happen if all mothers let their hormones flow, let the milk flow? What would happen if every new mother said, “Nothing in the world is more important than taking care of my child”? And the world actually listened.

When it came to my babies, I was possessed, blinded by a love I’d never felt before.  I watched as their little fists opened, relaxed in sleep; the first curl of their lips into a smile. Obsessed with having them with me, I carried them everywhere. Nursed them for nourishment, nursed them for comfort. Where I went, my baby went, too.

People say they were reluctant to ask if they could even hold my babies —I was like a mother bear, ready to defend my young.

And it felt perfectly normal.

I feel sorry for Nicholas’ mother and for any mother who loses a child.  The cause of death was “blunt force injury,” news reports said. It should not have happened.

Babies have different needs than adults. They can’t help it. Too bad big people who don’t understand those needs have to be in charge. FFG

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