10 Months!

Wow. What a week! Caiden is ten months old (as of yesterday)! I can't believe there's only two more months until his birthday! Time really does fly by. In the past week he's nearly mastered sitting on his own (he was a little late on that one- I'm blaming his still top-heavy preemie head), gotten his first top tooth, is cutting three more, and has started rocking and pushing himself forward trying to crawl. Its amazing the amount of progress he's made!

Today Caiden had a regular check up. He weighed in at a whopping 21lbs even! Thats over five times his birth weight, and in the 55th percentile without adjusting for his age. He's 31in tall, in the 98th percentile! He's going to be a very tall man one day!

I'm so excited for June, I've decided to do a nautical theme for his birthday, he has a little baby tie with sailboats on it that I am totally in love with. Since I don't have any close friends with kids, its just going to be a small party for family but I'm sure it'll be great. We can go overboard when he's older. I'm making sugar and dye free smash cupcakes for him. I know its fun to let them destroy brightly colored cake, but I don't want to clean up a sticky blue one year old or try to get a sugar high munchkin to go to sleep. We can enjoy it without all that. I'm a little apprehensive of giving him things like that anyways.


On another note, one of my best friends is pregnant! She's such a wonderful person and deserves her little miracle more than anyone I know. Its really bittersweet for me. I get to watch her go through her pregnancy (granted we live halfway across the country) and have the experience of birthing a healthy full term baby. I can't wait for her to tell me she's gone into labor and see her take home her little one.

Its amazing to see something that once made me the happiest I've ever been, change another person in such a fundamental way. Had I not miscarried in December, I would still (probably) be pregnant right now. I try not to think about it, but I often wish I had a big round baby belly despite the risks to my health. It would have been wonderful to have gone through it together, to have done something differently.

But, I have a wonderful son who proves that we can never take anything for granted. I would rather be here to raise him than die trying to have another child. I was so prepared to have eight more weeks of pregnancy ahead of me that I missed out on a lot of things I wish I hadn't. There is not a single picture of my husband and I together while I was pregnant.

I hear a lot that I should be thankful, that the last weeks of pregnancy are miserable, that I got two extra months with my baby. But it doesn't make it better. Fifty-six hours of labor was miserable, as was 25 days of watching him from a distance. Only seeing him grow lessens the pain I still feel. He's done amazing since birth, and continues to defy doctors expectations of him. He hasn't caught up to babies his age yet, but he will, and he has all the time in the world.

Ten years from now, it won't matter at what age he learned to sit, crawl, walk or talk. What will matter is that he did learn and continues to each and every day. He always has a smile and to him, it doesn't matter that he had a rough start, he won't remember, all that matters is that he's alive and happy.