She's one!!!

Today is Zoe's first birthday. Yesterday we had a big joint birthday party for all the bubs in our mother's group. It was lovely to see everyone again since I've been missing the group since it switched to Wednesday, one of my work days.

I've been reflecting on Zoe's first year and thinking about how lucky, lucky, lucky we are. Below are a few of my thoughts on the highlights and low lights of her first year:

1. The unbelievable feeling of happiness I had as she was handed over to me at the birth. It was so wonderful looking into her face and meeting her for the first time.

2. The incredible euphoria of the first 12 hours after she was born. LH and I just could not stop staring at her in wonder at how perfect she was.

3. The descent into fear and worry as she had a nasogastic feeding tube put in and was admitted to the special care nursery.

4. The incredible sadness and frustration with my breast milk supply and the feeling that my body had let me down again. Little did I know that it was the rogue placenta causing the problems and the anger that no-one thought of this.

5. The wonderful feeling of carrying Zoe over the threshold of our house for the first time, shutting the door and starting the first day of our lives as our little family of three.

6. The never-ending obsession with her weight gain in the first 8 weeks of her life. The professionals never really made me feel ok about it and just escalated the worry.

7. Plumbing the depths of despair when the child health nurse questioned me about how my breasts grew when I hit puberty in an attempt to figure out why my breast milk was such a problem. Sadly, she just succeeded in making me feel like a freak.

8. Walks in the park with Zoe sleeping soundly in the pram and just feeling so happy to be her mother.

9. Our first christmas as a family when Zoe smiled at me for the first time on christmas morning.

10. Zoe reaching each of her milestones - rolling, sitting up and crawling; the endless babble as she tries to say words.

11. Starting solid foods and having her love them and eat everything in sight.

12. Thanking our lucky stars that we got a baby that loves sleeping and trying not to make a big deal of it as the other mothers struggled with sleepless nights.

13. Zoe meeting her english cousins for the first time, who treated her like a princess.

14. Wondering how LH and I managed to breed such a pretty, beautiful little girl. All parents are biased but she really is so gorgeous :-)