Happy 5th Birthday Zachary

I'm not quite sure how it's happened, but sometime while my head was turned, Zachary suddenly turned 5. So many mixed emotions accompany today. I'm so happy, yet I'm somewhat sad that I no longer have a baby. I am so proud of Zach and the little boy that he's becoming. He's smart, he's caring, he's sweet, he's funny, he's compassionate - he's my heart, and he's my joy. You always hear mother's say when they're expecting their second child that they don't know how they could possibly have any more love to give - I was no exception. I thought with all of Alex's needs, how could I possibly devote any extra time or love to another child. Oh, but you do! And the love that I have for my children is so intense, yet so different.

When we were going down the mysterious medical diagnosis roads with Alex early in the beginning, Aaron and I had discussed not having any more children because Alex was going to need so much from us. We needed fertility drugs to get pregnant with her, so we figured we really didn't have to worry about it until if and when the day came that we changed our minds. But right at Alex's second birthday, God decided it wasn't going to be up to us and we were scared and elated to find out that we were pregnant. My pregnancy was uneventful (but it was the same with Alex) - I didn't let the doctors run the tests they wanted to rule out any anomalies - they weren't able to diagnosis Alex out of utero, so why should I take any of the chances running them on this baby when it wasn't going to change anything.

Three weeks before my due date we had our routine check-up and the dr. said that the baby was 'big' and breech. She scheduled me the following week for a c-section. We got to the hospital at 6AM to get ready to meet the little guy we still hadn't named. I could feel the baby kicking and knew that he wasn't breech and asked the nurse to do an ultra-sound. She patted my arm, told me I was there for a c-section because my baby was big and breech and there was no way that he had turned. I love my OB and I talked with her...she called the nurse out into the hallway where I can only guess she said something like...mom's a little sensitive...let's just do the ultrasound to appease her. So they roll the ultra-sound cart in, do the ultra-sound and low and behold, the baby isn't breach! They start a pitocin drip and at 4PM, I deliver Zachary Joseph Hayes, naturally (well, with an epidural!). One catch, right after I delivered Zachary the dr. holds up his umbilical cord which had a true knot...

If Zachary hadn't been delivered that day, almost three weeks early, more than likely we would not be celebrating his fifth birthday today. I do not take his birthday's lightly, and I cherish every day that I have with him.

I think if you ask him he will say he had a pretty good birthday! He had a party with his friends at Pump It Up on Saturday, he had a party at school today and we had a party tonight for him with family and a few friends.

Part of the reason I haven't blogged in over a week is that I was working on this video montage of him....it's pictures of him from birth through this morning. I take a million pictures, so it was really hard trying to condense five years into a few minutes.

Happy Birthday my Sweet Boy!