At 8:15 Friday morning I sat in my kitchen single-handedly devouring the loaf of Amish friendship bread a friend had brought me.  It had been a rough night, so I felt justified.

My husband was gone for a few days on a business trip and the afternoon before my son had come down with a high fever.  I had been up with him most of the night and, at that moment while I sat in the quiet kitchen, he was finally sleeping.  I felt more dead than alive, and I cringed thinking about how this would be every morning for me again in a few months.  At least, if Baby Girl is anything like my Miles.

Miles.  My son.  The light of my days.  He was a terrible sleeper for the first year and a half of his life.  He never liked to be rocked or swaddled.  Nursing had been a struggle.  The first few months of his life colic had consumed my days, about driving me mad during those long evening hours when I just wished he’d stop crying and sleep.  In short, he turned my world upside down, made me question my competency as a mother, and pushed me to the brink of a nervous breakdown.

But oh how I love him.  My love for him consumes me, filling my heart to bursting.  Yet each day it miraculously grows.

That’s the mystery of motherhood, isn’t it?  Struggling, sacrificing, and aching, but loving in spite of and because of all that?  Never regretting it for one single moment?

Today my baby boy turns two.  I watch him now sitting in his half-put-together birthday present.  He holds up a tiny tractor and says, “Mama, look!”  I feel about to burst.  How can it really have been two years ago that I was holding him for the very first time, with no idea the pain and the trials and the joy that motherhood would bring me?

Happy birthday, my sweet Miles.  Thank you for coming into this world with that first shrill cry and making me a mother.  I’ve never been more thankful for anything.
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