The Wait Is Over

My son is a year old tomorrow.

I never thought I'd say that in my life.  I never thought this day would come.  After so many years of heartache and a wait that seemed like forever, I looked in on my napping child a moment ago and my heart swelled.  He made it a full year.  We haven't had to say goodbye to him like we did to the sibling before him.  One whole year has passed...it seemed like a blink of the eye.

Thinking back to a year ago today, I remember what I was doing.  I was on maternity leave after having strong contractions for two weeks.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I was in labor for two weeks.  The contractions would be consistent for five to eight hours, then taper off for four hours only to come back for another five.  I wasn't able to sleep longer than four hours between the contractions and the urge to pee.  My whole body hurt.  I was not having a good time.

Finally we were at the finish line of the pregnancy.  I was going to be induced the next day because my blood pressure was too high and I had protein in my urine.  I was thankful to God and to my OB to finally see this little person who was moving around inside me for so long.  Nate and I went out for our last date as a twosome and I insisted we buy milk because we were out and I was not going to come home with a baby and not have milk in my house.  Coco was being picked up and taken to a friend's house while we were at the hospital.  Everything was set.

Then my water broke on the night of February 22, 2011.  And my nice night of relaxation before giving birth was destroyed.

I was admitted to the hospital even after I asked the nurses to let me go home because I was coming back the next morning for my scheduled induction.  I was given pitocin and an internal monitor, which effectively strapped me to the bed to writhe in pain until I had been given enough fluids to stabilize my blood pressure for the epidural.

The epidural was supposed to take 20 minutes.  It took an hour.  Longest hour of my life.

Then blessed pain relief and sleep finally at 4am.  Two hours of sleep and some cherry jello later, I was uncomfortable again.  By 8am I was pushing.  At 9:01 am, my son burst into the world.  And life was never going to be the same again.

Since then, he has started smiling and laughing, crawling and cruising.  He points to what he wants and tries to take food off my plate.  He went from breastfeeding to eating baby food to now picking up chunks of chicken breast and shoving them in his mouth.  He grew from just under 9 pounds to 22 pounds.  He knows who his Mommy and Daddy is and will look for us when someone asks "where's Mommy?" or "where's Daddy?".

The wait was finally over.  And it was worth every single tear, every single prayer, and every single crack to my heart to get to this point right now.

Hopefully we'll get to do it all over again later this year.  Hopefully baby #2 won't make us wait another 5 years.  But if that's what it takes, I'm okay with that.  I have my little boy and he's precious and completely enough.