My Benjamin Mark Hatter is officially a year old. Actually, to be absolutely official he's one year old and one day to this very exact minute. Wow. It has been a year that is almost beyond words for me. To think that last year at this time I hadn't even brought my son home from the hospital. He was just this little tiny blob swaddled up in the arms of two very exhausted parents who had no idea what was in store for them...

Last year when I went into the hospital I had spent the previous days planning our traditional Thanksgiving party that we host with friends. I really thought that within 24 hours of coming home from the hospital that I'd be up to hosting a Thanksgiving dinner. Seriously, I thought that! Just FYI, that didn't happen. We did walk over to the party with tiny Ben and stayed for oh, twenty minutes.

When I think back about what I was experiencing last year at this time and in the next few days it makes me want to weep with gratitude that I'm past that place. I didn't know then, yet, that it was postpartum depression, but it's an ugly dark place to be especially around the holidays. I look back and if I let myself get caught up in the emotion of what I missed it will make me cry because all of those lovey-dovey my-baby-is-the-best-thing-ever emotions that parents are supposed to be flooded with, I missed them, completely and totally. For the first several months I loved my baby vicariously through my husband and that had to be good enough for me. It wasn't enough. It was hard and horrible and empty and I hated it. So, when I look back if I just think about those things then I cry because it still hurts and I imagine that those memories will always hurt.

Instead, I try to look back with a broader sense of perspective and what I see then is the hand of God over my life in a very real and protective way. It makes me want to sing the hymn "Great is thy faithfulness", which is something that I sang a lot back then. I can't say that I know why I had to go through that experience, or that I would go through it again, or that I'm grateful for that time in my life, but I CAN say that I wasn't there by myself and that even when I was in the deepest, darkest places of my soul God was there with me. I didn't always see it then so I just sang my hymns and hoped that he was there, and now looking back I can say for sure that he was. So that's good.

I survived postpartum depression with a lot of help from God, my family, a great doctor, wonderful pills, and my dear dear husband. If you want to see how much your family and friends really love you then just go crazy sometime because you'll quickly see who is left standing with you, and in many cases for you. November, December, and January all slipped by me as I struggled mightly with everything. It turns out that being crazy is a full-time job.February was the first month that my craziness started to retreat. Hallelujah. March was even better. We had Ben dedicated with both our families, which was really important to us. I count April as the month that I recovered from craziness. I remember driving out on an errand one day and realizing that I couldn't remember the last time that I had a bad day. It was almost like I just woke up one day and my son was five months old. That's quite a shocker.

The first year of Ben's life did not go as I had planned. I had plans for picture taking events, trips, scrapbooks, dinners with friends, dates with my husband, and lots and lots of things that just fell by the wayside for one reason or another. I didn't have the type of system or mental wherewithall to record the exact time of his first laugh, the temperature on the day that he sat up by himself for the first time, or a million other little firsts that I thought I was going to write down.

I have different memories. I remember my infant son being rocked to sleep by my dad in the afternoon while we watched The Price is Right. I remember Mom bringing me lunch while I rested on the couch and calling her multiple times everyday for probably three months. I remember Laura being here right before Ben turned a month old and seeing his first smile with me. I remember watching my husband look at our son with nothing but love in his eyes despite the fact that he was working thirteen hour days and had to be exhausted. I remember the first outing I went on with my son and without a panic attack. I remember wishing Ben would sleep through the night...oh yeah, we're still waiting for that! I had planned a big extravagent first birthday party and ended up having emergency surgery instead and now I'm not allowed to lift my son, which is just another one of those things you don't plan and don't believe when it's really happening! I remember a lot of things that were not the way I had planned for them to happen, but that's the way they did happen, and I'm learning to accept the imperfections that make my life, my family, myself entirely mine.

And despite having a crazy (sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively) mom, my son is wonderful. He is a year old today. He babbles and shrieks. He says "mama" and "dada" and is very generous with what he says those things too! :) He tries to say "light" and "kitty". He recognizes probably a dozen ASL signs and makes quite a few of his own. He commando-crawled for months and learned how to stand independently before learning to crawl on his hands and knees. He has very sensitive sleep habits, which I'm learning to respect as part of his personality. He laughs when we laugh and knows what sound an elephant makes. He loves animals and is quite the observer. He won't drink from a sippy cup, but drinks from an open cup. He opens and shuts cupboard doors, all of them, and there's no convincing him that some of them aren't for him. Any button in the house is fair game for him to push, more so if we don't him to touch it. He can find his own nose and sometimes his ears. He loves books, pushing cars, and clapping his hands. He amazes me, frustrates me, and makes me laugh everyday.

This first year of my son's life has been probably the craziest year of my own. I have never learned so much in my entire life (though I expect the second year to be full of lessons as well)! I think the most impressive thing about this first year has been watching my son turn from this tiny lump into an active independent personality filled little boy. I'm learning to respect what he teaches me about who he is as well as who I am. We are doing great and are looking forward to this next year!