22 de abril

How decadent it is to drink Veuve Cliquot in a regular glass, while I smoke, after I had croquetas (one of the humblest foods in Spanish cuisine). Very decadent, I would say. But I don't care, because today it was my son's second birthday. He spent an hour in the morning just opening presents and experiencing each and every one of them. Slooooowlyyyy. We went to swimming class, but keeping the routine didn't work this time. He would have been much happier if we had let him stay home and play with his new toys, mainly trains. He had his chocolate cake, his broccoli pizza (yes, I have a baby who loooooves broccoli, even more than pizza), and had a pretty good day. We are leaving the big party for Saturday, so everyone can come, and we got to enjoy his day alone with him. It wasn't a good day last year. In a way, his birthday for me is also the anniversary of the hardest day in my life, the day he was born. It wasn't a happy birth. Everything went wrong, I didn't get to give birth, and he got a pneumothorax during the C-section that sent him to t he NICU for eight days. What should have been his first happy hours bonding with mom, were spent in a cold room, surrounded by strangers who didn't even know his name, being cured and at the same time attacked by needles, tubes, breathing devices... It was horrible, we couldn't see him for three hours, and we couldn't touch him for four days. Not the kind of start you expect, not the kind of birth you hear about. Most people don't talk about the bad ones. I wish they had. At least we would have been prepared. Today, he is a healthy, strong and happy baby (well, definitely toddler now), and I'm still healing from the whole experience. But I try to make the best out of what I have. And I try to give him the best I have. So he can forget about that day. Because I'm sure that, in some way, he can remember. And I can't forgive myself for that.