6 Years ago today, on Friday 7 May 2004, I became a mother.  I was SO nervous,  I had never been in hospital before, never had any sort of anaesthetic or had any type of operation.  The thought was terrifying, here I was signing in and agreeing to let them cut me open and remove my baby.  And if the thought of being awake while having major surgery wasn’t terrifying enough, there was the additional worry of being a mom – a SINGLE mom!  How was I going to cope?  How would I know what to do?  My Dr’s partner was his brother.  While waiting outside of the theatre for them to prepare for me he comes walking up all relaxed and asks me if I’m nervous.  Hell yeah of course I’m nervous!!  He laughs and says “don’t worry I saw a program on National Geographic about how to do a caesarean, I’m sure I can remember most of it”.  Thanks dude, now I’m ready to get up and run a mile – sexy open back hospital gown and catheter in tow!!

At 08h40 on that Friday morning, my little gremlin was born, weighing in at a healthy 3,7kg and 54cm long.  Much to my relief his apgar was 10/10.  Not bad considering he was delivered 3 weeks before my due date.  My first thought when I saw him was “oh my goodness, the poor kid is all squashed and ugly”.  Needless to say it only took about 5 minutes of holding my little bundle to fall madly in love and think that he was the most gorgeous baby ever born.

We had overcome major obstacles to get to this point.  His twin left us earlier in my pregnancy and he threatened to do the same on countless occasions.  This resulted in bi-monthly visits to the Dr to ensure that he was healthy & hanging in there.  Now we were a team, just him and me.  It was a miracle that he was there in the first place – proving that modern science isn’t an exact science and just sometimes God has other plans.

That Sunday, 9 May 2004 I celebrated my first Mother’s Day.  My dearest, bestest friend of over 20 years, Sandy,  gave me a book wishing me a Happy Mothers Day from my boy.  The hospital staff also went out of their way to make me feel special.

And now here we are, 6 years later and we have overcome many obstacles in our journey thus far. As it happens I am not the most perfect mother on earth – I do lose it sometimes, but my boy loves me anyway.  He is a joy and a blessing I never thought I would have.  I have had to make some very difficult and unpopular choices along the way, but I would do it all again to be where we are today.

Happy Birthday my wonderful, kind, loving, insightful, forgiving and most precious son.  I am so incredibly proud of you and all you have achieved so far.  I pray that God will continue to bless you with every blessing available and that He will enable me to be the mother that you so richly deserve.  I love you baby boy, with all my heart.

My little gremlin was 30 minutes old in this photo

My Angel's 1st Birthday. He grabbed the tail of the aeroplane and ate it

His 2nd Birthday was celebrated with Thomas the Tank Engine

His 3rd Birthday - he is still crazy about ribs

Happy 4th Birthday - my effort at home made from scratch cupcakes

For his 5th Birthday he wanted to make his own pizza

Tonight we are celebrating a “dinosaur” birthday at Spur.  I will post photos of this sometime over the weekend.