Something To Be Grateful For

I've been thinking and planning for Thanksgiving already this weekend. I know most people think about cooking, gratitude lists and traveling to visit family. For me, I think about those things as well but I always have something more to be grateful for. You see I had my first child on Thanksgiving so along with all the food and gratitude lists every year comes her birth story. If I don’t tell it on that day someone else in my family will. It was a big event in our family since she was the first grandchild on both sides.

I guess if you’re going to have a baby on a holiday, Thanksgiving is a good choice. It is definitely a lower stress holiday and everyone was already together for this one so it worked out. My daughter was polite enough on that day to wait until everyone in her family, besides me, had finished dinner and dessert before she arrived. Personally, I would have voted for earlier, much, much earlier but I’m just the mom and that was the beginning of no one listening to me.

I had a parade of visitors on their way to their own holiday celebrations that day. I’m pretty sure I put a few of my twenty-something friends off childbearing for quite a while when they got a ringside seat for labor pains. I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening but curling up in a ball while breathing through your teeth kind of gives the whole thing away.

Hubby was a trooper and was happy to tell me when one of my contractions was “really bad”. Thanks, honey. Got the memo. He was a fabulous coach though and doesn’t hold it against me that I squeezed his hand so hard I left a permanent dent in his finger from his wedding ring. Oops.

When it was all over, I got shuffled off to my room finally at about ten at night. I was starving! I hadn’t eaten in probably thirty hours at this point.  The nurse said she would find me “something” to eat.  She brought stale yellow cake and green jello. That was my Thanksgiving dinner that year. It was worth it. I got something so much better than a Thanksgiving dinner, a beautiful baby and a new life as a mom.  That is something to be grateful for.

SaveSave