Eight is Great!

My little Aiden turned eight years old yesterday. Ah, how I remember his birth. It was my first homebirth, and I was very excited for the experience. Adam and I had taken our classes, purchased our homebirth kit, and were well prepared. It was a Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that year, and I had a short visit with my midwife that afternoon. She felt confident it would be that day.

Contractions began in the late afternoon, and in a flurry of anticipation, I went to the grocery store to get "labor food", stopping to breathe during contractions in the chip aisle, I recall. We ran some errands for Adam's work, and stopped at the video store to get something to watch during the early stages of labor.

Adam, being the workaholic he can sometimes be, decided we could make use of waiting time to stain the back deck he had just built. So we did. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was that I was bent over applying stain and feeling my body prepare to give birth. To say nothing of the fumes. But it got finished. (I remember I painted the trim of our house the day before Lyndsay was born, too...hmmmm....)

Contractions stopped for a few hours, so I bathed the kids and put them to bed, cleaned the kitchen, and threw in some laundry. We sat down to watch "Notting Hill", and thirty minutes into the movie, labor started up again, in full force. We called the midwife, we called Adam's mom who would attend the birth, and we got to work breathing. The baby came just two and a half hours later, in our candlelit bedroom, with our two other children sleeping across the hallway. It was so exhilarating. We named him Aiden Tanner.

Little Aiden was a comfort to me immediately, and he became a source of great strength to me, as he was only 15 months old when his dad and I separated. Taking care of him often kept me from curling up to die. He was my little buddy. When the other two kids attended school for a year in UT, he became my companion in work and fun, tagging along at Mary Kay appointments, and sometimes lunch dates. Now there is scarcely a trace of that sweet baby and little guy. He is a boy, through and through. Tough and tender. Rowdy and affectionate.

Now he is a cub scout, and will be baptized in a month, two very big goals that he's been looking forward to. Now he is a green belt in Tae Kwon Do, is learning cursive, and loves to help me in the kitchen. He is anxious to change diapers, is an incredible organizer, and has the most forgiving soul of any of my children. He will share the very last thing, or the very most cherished thing he owns, and he has an infectious giggle. I sometimes am filled with sadness that he has lived with divorce, having no memory of the love between his parents that gave him life. His reality, of having two families, two homes, is one I cannot really relate too, but I do hope he is made the stronger for his trials.

Eight whole years I've loved this boy. Sweet Aiden. Happy Birthday!