when it's been a full year.

This year was a leap year so we had one extra day in our trip around the sun without Jacob than we normally would. It also makes today day #365 since his birthday. What a year it has been.This morning, February 8th, 2017, I'm sitting in my living room with the window open, listening to birds chirp. It's going to be 72 degrees today. I think this is God's grace for me.I hate cold weather.Our current house has been a sweet space for us but also a house full of all of the memories of all of the really hard things that have transpired in our lives since we've been married. We moved in just a few weeks before we found out Jacob's diagnosis. We have cried more tears here and ached more deeply and had harder conversations under this roof than we would have imagined upon signing this lease.I remember moving here excited that this is where we'd bring a baby home.The thought feels like a distant and fleeting memory now.I've imagined that twice about this space, actually. And twice have been disappointed by the reality of emptiness and quiet and washed over by grief.I remember distinctly what this day was like last year. We were nervous. It was quiet, much like it is today, with something lingering above us. Almost too surreal to describe. We didn't talk much. How could we? What was there to say?At this point I was four days overdue with an induction scheduled for early the next morning. The plan was for me to go in to the hospital at 4pm, begin some of the early procedures in preparation for induction, and the next morning be induced. And the rest, we wondered about. So many unknowns.I remember doing the normal things. I washed dishes, finished some laundry, cleaned up for our arrival home a few days later. I really wanted to make a cake to eat together as a family at Jacob's upcoming birthday party and I had forgotten to buy the box mix I wanted. Funfetti. It was a need. I texted a friend and asked her if she'd go buy some cake mix for me - and she did. She dropped it by and I baked a cake. And I iced it.We never ate the cake. It was left in the car, assuming someone would get it for us during my what-was-supposed-to-be-long labor. But then he came so fast and we celebrated his life and the cake was waiting for us in the car when we got back in it to go home.There were lots of things in bags that I imagined wanting at the hospital that I forgot about. I honestly don't regret any of them - and I got to do things I wasn't planning on, too. You can only prepare but so much.I had been having contractions for weeks. That blessed prodromal labor. Real contractions that would speed up and be regular for hours only to stop randomly. My body was tired. But I was having none that day and that felt weird, because I was going to have a baby tomorrow, and so I remember being nervous all day about what I would say when I got up to the L&D wing to be buzzed in. "Hi, I'm here to have a baby?" That's all I could imagine blurting out when we found our way there. Who knows which words I actually stumbled through, but the doors opened and two of the nurses we knew greeted us with hugs. And walked us to our room. "Settle in and I'll be back," I remember her saying. JM & I looked at each other... not totally sure what that meant or what to do. I eventually sat on the bed until she came back in to begin getting my vitals and setting me up with my registration.I remember they had set aside a bunch of supplies for me because the plan was that I would begin pumping Jacob's milk to donate to a children's hospital for premies. I had no idea that the milk that my body would begin to produce mere hours later would eventually go to my friend's son in the most beautiful and precious turn of events. My friend didn't know that her son was even going to be her son at that point and he wasn't born yet, either. But that's another story for another time.Our families came and we ate dinner together. My mom made us chicken piccata. They kept telling me it'd be a long day tomorrow and that I'd need to rest up that night. But the medicine did more than it's job and my body took over quickly and at 2:12am he was born.I know I tell the story a lot. But it's the only story of him I have.The most distinct thing I can remember thinking immediately after he was born was that I seriously could not believe it.  I kept saying, I didn't think I could do that. I didn't think that would ever happen. Never in a million years.I surprised myself and even my doula at the sincerity in those remarks. We had prepared for me to hopefully deliver naturally but I had low expectations for myself. If there was anything I had learned to be with Jacob's life it was to be open handed. I went into childbirth with that exact mentality. We'll see what happens, we'll see what I want when I'm in the middle of it, we'll decide then what's best for us.Because honestly the real decisions I felt unsure about and planning for were surrounding whether or not Jacob would survive labor, or birth, or any moments of time afterwards.We didn't even ever have the heartbeat monitor on him ever because we didn't want it to alter how we handled his entry into this world.There were so many decisions we made ahead of time that I never even knew I'd have to decide, much less existed in the world of decisions regarding a child's life.Specific desires if this happened or if that happened. If I had a c-section. If he was stillborn. If he was breathing. If we had lots of time or a little.I remember being devastated that that was my nesting experience.Deciding what we wouldn't do to prolong his life so as to not diminish quality.So when he was born, alive, and when somehow by the grace of God I birthed him naturally, quickly, before I even got the real induction meds, I could not believe it.I wanted to avoid a c-section if possible [I'm not anti - my disclaimer in short is that birth is beautiful birth regardless of how it happens] and I wanted him to be alive.Those were my two prayers.So I think when I delivered without really any medication... and then he was breathing a few minutes after he was born... I was in awe.How kind and generous of God to allow me to deliver my baby alive, and naturally.I thought maybe he'd answer one of those big requests, but I realized quickly that I never thought he'd answer both. He's so generous. Abundant. And that's another conversation for another day.I remember wanting to go through the pain of childbirth with Jacob because the emotional pain was already there and already really heavy.Truly the most intimate of moments with my son.Labor and childbirth changed me.And here I am a year later, on my couch, listening to the birds chirp. So much has changed, and so much is truly a blurry fog, as if the past year was lived out in slow motion. On one hand his birthday came up so quickly and on the other it feels like an eternity since Jacob was born.A year without my son and the same sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach is there. The same one I felt when I walked up the steps through our front doors on February 11th when I came home empty handed. The same feeling I had on August 26th when we found out that he would one day, barring a miracle from God, die within 24 hours of his birth.Some things about loving your children just don't change.I've found that missing the ones who are gone is one of those things.I'm kind of thankful for that, really. Because the ache is a reminder of the depth of my love for him.A few days or weeks after Jacob was born when I was up in the middle of the night pumping, I remember having the startling realization that not only did I love my son. But he loved me back.Perspective.I will always be Jacob's mama. I will always be forever changed by birthing a child. I will always remember how simultaneously vulnerable and strong I felt in the days following Jacob's birth. How empty and full I felt. How devastated and full of joy. Because February 9th, 2016 was truly the most perfect day.There's no real point to my ramblings. Besides that this is it. This is where I am a year later. Tears streaming down my face because the memories are so real. The same emotions that every mama feels when reminiscing that her baby was born just one short year ago. Loaded with lots more pain than I'd ever wish on anyone else. But also full of the hope that God has shown me over the past year and more awake to the stretches and the depths of his grace.Even with the hard and the grief and the pain and the missing him, I know this verse to still be true.The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.Sweet Jacob, it's the last day of your year. I wish you were here with me this morning. You'd really like hearing those birds. I love you, and I miss you. Love, your mom.