Brittany Cartwright is a fairly new mom and she’s in the thick of an emotional journey. The Vanderpump Rules alum gave birth to a bouncing baby boy named Cruz in April 2021 with husband Jax Taylor. And like many new mothers, Brit is going through some challenging times.
Look, we can’t all come out of the womb with the natural gift of enthralling monologues about life like Jax. While Cruz is hitting most of his benchmarks, he’s had a bit of a delay in the speech area. Brittany shared some of her experiences thus far in dealing with the hiccups life throws a mom’s way on an episode of her podcast with Jax, When Reality Hits.
Cruzing right along
Jax might not get the hero edit, but I will say this, the man made an incredibly adorable child with his wife. Not for nothing, Jax seems to really have leaned into his Daddy role and is clearly obsessed with his son. Brittany has always spoken of her desire to be a mom and her dream came true when Cruz entered the chat.
But with great parenting comes peaks and valleys and one of the valleys might be Cruz’s delayed speech. We really don’t hear enough about the challenges because people are too focused on having the perfect life. Brittany is going a different direction and sharing her concerns. “For me, I absolutely love being a mom. I have always known that I want to be a mom,” Brittany began. “It’s literally the best thing that ever happened to me,” she added.
“The hardest part” has been maneuvering around Cruz’s issues with talking. “We are very lucky that he is happy and healthy. He is so smart, so strong and the happiest little boy. We are so lucky and so blessed with that, because I know that there’s so many issues and harder things people have to deal with and my heart goes out to them,” she added.
The worry is always there …
No matter what may or may not be wrong with your kid, the worry is awful. It’s great to see Brittany and Jax taking a proactive and positive approach to Cruz’s therapy. Kids sometimes have a way of scaring the living hell out of you when they’re little, only to grow up seemingly with no trace of previous worries.
While she was chatting about Cruz, Brittany became emotional. He’s currently unable to say certain words, but they’re dealing with it. “But for us personally, dealing with the speech therapy has been the toughest because I really want him to be able to talk to me and tell me what he wants and his feelings,” she continued. “We are just not there yet and I can’t wait until the day he looks at me and says, ‘I love you.’ Oh, my God, I’m going to cry.”
Cruz has already come a long way. “You just want things to be so perfect for your kids and I think that it’s just hard whenever you can’t fix something right away. But he is amazing and he is doing so good with his speech therapy,” she explained.
“He is starting school in January. We are excited for him to be around all the other kids and in a teacher setting. It is going to be amazing for him as well.” Who’s gonna tell her once he gets around other kids he’s probably going to start talking a mile a minute? Children are so resilient and they always find a way.
Cruz Control
Brit first spoke of Cruz’s delay on her podcast back in September. “It’s been hard for us to talk about because we know we don’t want people judging our family or anything like that. But I do want to talk about Cruz because we have had so many comments and questions about if Cruz is talking yet,” she said.
“Cruz does talk. He does say certain words that he has, but he has a bit of a speech delay so we have started him in speech therapy and he is doing absolutely amazing,” Brit noted.
I get it. That’s scary stuff and it’s also scary when you think something might hurt your child. I predict Cruz will master his practice patterns and soon Brittany might fondly reflect on those times when he didn’t know every single word in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. Just wait until he gets those car keys, honey.
TELL US – WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU OFFER BRITTANY? HAVE YOU HAD A SIMILAR EXPERIENCE WITH SPEECH DELAYS?
