One year.

Please pardon the radio silence for the past 2 1/2 months. In that time, we have bought, begun renovating, and moved into a new house -- our first. Dylan has had plenty of other firsts as well . He has learned to walk, talk, eat solid food with his own hands, and put himself to sleep in his crib. Life has been so jam-packed full of, well, "life", that I haven't had the time or energy to write about it. But today could not go by without recognition. Today, Dylan turns one year old.

When people ask me about Dylan's birth, many times I have stated that is was the worst day of my life. Not because it capped off 4 days and 3 nights of labor, including the 28 hours of REAL labor with no drugs. Not because of the excrutiating pain of transferring to the hospital, or the subsequent confusion when we got there that caused them to pump me full of 3 bags of fluid I couldn't expell, increasing my agony until I was catheterized with no anesthetic because they were afraid my platelets were too low to give me an epidural. Not even because I eventually had to make the heartbreaking decision to have a cesarean.

No, it was the worst day of my life because it was the day that my son was taken away.

He was shown to me for only a minute, held just up to my face, beyond the reach of my arms as I lay splayed open on the operating table. My heart leapt when his face registered hearing my voice for the first time -- he knew who I was! He looked in my eyes with complete amazement and curiosity. There was a flurry of activity, and I understood that Chris was going with him to another room while the midwife stayed with me. And then he was gone. I had just had my baby and he was GONE.

Through the drug-hazed next few hours I would come to understand that Dylan had aspirated meconium and torn holes in his lungs trying to breathe. He would be immediately transferred to another hospital with a NICU that could properly care for him, and that -- thanks to the insistence of my husband -- I would be transferred to the same hospital several hours later. The baby needed to be hooked up to machines to help him breathe and monitor his vital signs, but he was going to be okay. He was finally here, and he was being cared for. We were a family.

The next couple of days, my concerns continued to be softened by heavy narcotics and the joy of my new baby, even if I only got wheeled down to visit him a couple of times a day. By Day 4, I was ready to go home and take my baby with me. But then came Day 5, and then Day 6 ... I couldn't be discharged because I still had a fever, but as long as I was a patient I couldn't visit my baby without a nurse escort, or stay with him in the NICU for more than 2 1/2 hours at a time, because I had to return to my own room for care. I pumped my breasts every 3 hours around the clock and sent it by nurse to the NICU, so that Dylan would have my milk from a bottle instead of formula. I got fluid in my lungs from being in bed so long. Everytime I coughed, the abdominal pain was blinding.

I began to pace my room like a caged animal: visceral, primal. Every cell in my body was crying out that I NEEDED TO BE WITH MY CHILD. Instinct doesn't understand arguments about "the baby needs skilled nursing", or "you just had major abdominal surgery and will faint if you try to walk down the hall". All instinct understands is "My baby is not with me. I am not with my baby. I will kill you if you don't let me go to him. NOW."

They called in a psych consult.

*Apparently*, the nurses thought I might have a touch of the ol' "post-partum depression". Um, YEAH. The social worker they sent up was nice but awkward, though admittedly respectful when I explained that I am a therapist and did, indeed, know about PPD, and that there was nothing wrong with me that wouldn't be fixed when Dylan and I were both home where we belonged. But talking to her did help, if only because somebody was finally listening to me and validating my feelings instead of trying to placate me.

On the morning of Day 8, I finally got my reprieve: I was well enough to go home. I had no plans of actually going home, of course. To me, this meant I could finally spend all day, everyday in the NICU until Dylan was released. Before I could give Chris the good news, he told me better news. Dylan would be home by the end of the week. I cried, shaking, I was so happy. And 3 days later, the day after Thanksgiving, Dylan was at home where he belonged. We were finally at the place I had originally envisioned when I planned my home birth months before. We were at home, all three of us together, as a family.

Looking back on it now, I could write a book about those 15 days. About the respectful distance you keep from other parents in the NICU, secretly thanking God your baby's hospitalization will likely be measured in days, not months. About trying not to cry when people unwittingly leave you phone messages about "how happy you must be now that the baby's here!" About how I still sometimes pine for the chocolate milkshakes you get in hospital room service (I ate them at every meal). I hope I never have a period of time that intense ever again in my life. And caring people ask me now if I'm starting to heal from the experience. And I am. It's no longer an open wound. It's more like a scar, not unlike the one on my abdomen, that still hurts when it gets poked.

And if Dylan's birth was the worst day of my life, it was also the most amazing. It is the pivot point in my personal history, which could rightly be labeled as "B.D." (Before Dylan) and "A.D." (After Dylan). I don't know what the "best" day of my life has been, because everyday since he was born -- including every one in the hospital --has been more vibrant than my life "B.D." Even the days of no sleep, the days of insistent and interminable shrieking, the days of back pain and tendonitis...

When people ask us if having a baby has made us "happier", Chris and I are never quite sure how to answer. Our life is just "deeper" now. The ups and downs continue, but our life has more meaning. It may be cliche, but it's like we weren't alive in the same way before. We look at him, and like all loving parents, we are undone by what we have created. He is wonderful. His birth may not have been the best day of my life, but he is the best thing I have ever done.

Looking at Dylan now, I am so amazed and so overwhelmed with thanks for the robust, exhuberant child he has become. Today I watched him run around the children's museum, exploring every part of every exhibit, more interested in befriending the "big kids" playing beside him than in the museum itself. Completely healthy -- not so much as a cold or sniffle ever in his life thus far -- he is apparently unphased by what we euphemistically refer to often as his "rough start". In another time in history, he might not be here. *I* might not be here. But instead we are a family, living in our first house, living the daily, un-extraordinary drama of washing dishes and washing diapers and waking up at 5 after going to bed by 9. And it's wonderful. Because we're at home. Together. As a family.

Daddy and I love you, Dylan. You are our Dylan, and we love you all the time, everyday, no matter what. Happy First Birthday.