Thursday, July 07, 2005

Endless Night

How fitting that I should be woken from a deep and restful sleep about 45 minutes ago (yes, another middle of the night meltdown at work) to know that I'm likely not going to be able to get to sleep again before my morning alarm clock goes off.

Today is, after all, my son's first birthday -- last year at this time, neither Fran nor I were getting any rest. (Okay, she, of course, had it much much worse than I) Fran saw her OB the morning of June 6, 2004 and was told she'd dilated 1 inch - the OB reccomended that she stop going to work. Fran went in to work that morning after her appointment, informed them of this (interestingly enough got the cold shoulder from her boss, like she wasn't expecting it anyway....yeesh, the woman is 9 months pregnant -- maybe it's time to let her go), packed her things and went home, thinking, of course, that she'd now have a few days to rest a bit before having her baby. (Alexander, of course, had other plans).

By the time I got home from work, she was pretty much in labour. I spent a few hours doing my best to keep her comfortable (on par with trying to keep an icecream cone from melting while standing on a black-shingled roof during the recent 35+ hot spell days we've recently had) and get everything ready. We got to the hospital some time between 9 and 10 PM. Getting Fran into the car and from the car into the hospital was like trying to hurry the "old man" character that Tim Conway used to play on the Carol Burnett show.

I'll spare getting into the details, but Fran and I sat on the back deck last night around 10 PM, toasting our son and reminiscing about the hours leading up to our first encounter with him. He was born at about 9:50 AM on July 7th and our lives became more enriched than either of could possibly have imagined.



What an incredible year it's been. I love you, Alexander. Happy First Birthday.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Happy Birthday Alexander!