A portrait of my daughter every day in 2014

I looked at the clock tonight around 9 and started to remember where I was two years ago at 9pm.

Two years ago I had been at the hospital for 12 hours. It was the exact opposite of everything we had planned. I was full of pitocin and morphine. I wasn’t in a beautiful birth center with a giant tub. It wasn’t relaxing. I was in pain and had absolutely no idea what I was in for. I thought we would get to go home as quickly as the hospital would allow. I didn’t know about this girls special heart. I didn’t know how close I would come to having a C-section.

Sometimes it’s like she knows what’s going on with me. Right around 9 o clock tonight she grabbed the photo album with all of her newborn photos off of the shelf. Her newborn photos aren’t those cute ones with babies wrapped in swaddles and posed with their arms under their sleepy faces. Her newborn photos are poorly lit, involve lots of cords and wires that kept her alive and are to me(and her apparently) perfect. I told her tonight she has another echo in 2 weeks and she pointed to her heart. People she is 2 years old(in a few hours) and knows what a freaking echocardiogram means. Children are amazing. They are perfect and smart and adaptable. And it’s up to us adults not to fuck them up.

Two years ago right now I still had no idea what was in store for me. I thought I loved that child in my stomach trying to make her way out. Ok lets be honest she was trying to stay put, it was doctors and nurses who were trying to get her out. I had no clue what kind of love I was capable of. How different my life would be.

She turns two tomorrow. It sort of boggles my mind. Where the fuck have two years gone? Sorry for all of the profanity, but I just can’t get my head around it. It feels like I’ve known her forever, but like just yesterday that we met. This morning we took her out for an early birthday doughnut breakfast. She ate an entire doughnut. She rules.