The Best 365 Days of My Life

My little guy has officially made it one trip around the sun. Everyone asks if it is hard to believe that he is already a year old.  I must admit...it definitely feels like a year's worth of events has transpired.

While at times it seems like yesterday that I was trying to train myself to say he was six months old, it seems a lifetime ago that he was a newborn. How far we have come since then! 

I survived the first four weeks of crying every day (me not him), mourning my less-than-perfect birth experience, isolating hour-long nursing episodes 12 times a day, plugged ducts, poop-up-the-back, flying poop, baseball-sized constipated poop, starting (and subsequently ending) every adult conversation talking about poop, and doubting my motherly instincts.

A year later, the birth experience is fading in memory. I have healed and accepted it as the means by which to have my healthy, happy child. A year later, now that I have weaned my son, I look back and am thankful that I had the ability to nurse him. Poop is still poop, but having issues with his constipation even makes me appreciate the up-the-back moments.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, over the course of the year I have come to trust my motherly instincts. Looking at our healthy and happy boy, I can't help but be confident as a mother. What a feeling of peace and fulfillment!

So yes, things are a lot more balanced now than a year ago. I feel more like myself again, rather than a ghost of myself that paces the halls every two hours night and day.  Only now I have a super-cute kid, more love than I ever could have imagined and a lot more to look forward to in the years ahead.

The growth, discovery and love that I have experienced in the last 365 days make them, by far, the most rewarding of my life.

Happy birthday, baby boy!