1.01.2011

Out with the old in with the new!  2010 was a year of ups and downs, tears and laughter, joys and sorrows, births and deaths and just plain craziness.  I started the new year in Florida celebrating my 1 year anniversary and I was pregnant with my first child, James. I knew that 2010 would bring so many memories yet it was one of the hardest years of my life.  I could blog about so much but I am going to blog about the one thing that affected me the most in 2010:  my son James.  I was so excited about the birth of my first child.  The child I prayed about for over 30 years.  I had a dream about how I would become a mom and how my sweet baby would enter the world in 2010.  In May, my sweet baby James was born but not in the way that I had always pictured.  I went into labor in the early morning but since I wasn't really sure if it was truly labor, I moved from the bedroom to the living room where I started counting the minutes between each contraction.  I did not wake my husband up because I knew he needed his sleep plus there wasn't much he could do.  I heard his alarm go off for getting up for work.  I was in the middle of a contraction so I had to text him that I was in the living room in labor.  He was so confused that I had to go back in the bedroom once the contraction went away to tell him about what was going.  We headed to the doctor at 10am, told I wasn't in true labor, stood up from the table, my water broke, told I was in labor and checked into the hospital.  So many things went wrong during the birth of my son.  He was stuck at the top of the birth canal, I had to push and push through horrible labor pains to get him "unstuck", finally given an epidural at 3pm, pushed more and more, finally got him unstuck, we both ended up in distress, he was delivered using forceps and he was born after 6:45pm.  My first thoughts were "he is so tiny" (we had been told he would be close to 10 pds but he was only 7 pds 11 oz) and "why isn't he breathing".  About 2 seconds later it hit me that I am a mom.  I am James mom.  My life will never be the same.  Following his birth, he was fine but I was not.  His physical birth brought on 7 months of heartache, love, joy, tears, and pain.  From May 2010 until December 2010 I have struggled to be the person I have always been, to the mom I always wanted to be and to be a Godly wife.  I sometimes feel as though I have failed at all three.  I will focus on being the mom I have always wanted to be.  I came home in so much pain that I could not walk.  I could not walk to pick up my son when he cried.  When I wanted to hold him I had to ask for someone to bring him to me.  I couldn't get up and fix his bottles because of the pain.  I couldn't change his clothes in his room because it took me 5 minutes to walk more than 15 steps.  I had to sleep sitting up on a couch for over a week instead of in bed.  I feel like I missed out on the first two weeks of his life because I didn't get to do the mommy things.  I felt like a failure because I couldn't do the basic things that a mom is supposed to do.  I still deal with feelings of anger and sorrow over how I became a mom.  Over the next few months, I was diagnosed with having gall stones so I had my gall bladder removed, I had to have surgery for an umbilical hernia, I haven't exercised since 2009 due to restrictions, diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of the trauma to my body (not a mental type of PTSD but my body is going through PTSD) and I have not been my normal joyous self.  Despite the awful health year, there is one thing that I did right with my sweet baby boy.  I have ensured that he knows his mom loves him.  I hug and kiss him everyday and I tell him that I love him.  I have taken the time to find the "firsts" and remember them (rolling over, eating baby food for the first time, his first ear infection, his first nanny, his first child care teachers, sitting up, trying to crawl, his sweet baby feet peeking out from under the covers when he is sleeping, his laughs, his temper tantrums and so much more).  He will turn 8 months in 5 days and the time has gone by so fast.  I never imagined that I could love someone as much as I love him and I would lay my life down for him.  As for 2011, I am praying for good health, continuing to learn how to be a good mom and being the Godly wife that I am supposed to be.  I also don't plan to make any resolutions for the new year (I could make a resolution to blog more) because I don't know what the year will hold and my only expectations are that it will be another year of ups and downs, tears and laughter, joys and sorrows, births and deaths and just plain craziness.