Oh Charlie, tomorrow you will turn nine. How can that be? I’m not old enough to have a nine-year-old child, am I? Did I miss something? You mean my twenties are already gone? But . . . where did they go? My thirties are half over? GASP.

Okay. It’s fine. I’m breathing again. I feel the air moving in and out of my lungs and that has to mean I’m breathing. I feel the kitchen chair beneath me. I hear the dishwasher making its wet assault behind me. I smell the puppy at my feet. I see your lacrosse cleats on the floor and your picture on the counter and I recall the warmth of your forehead against mine as we snuggled in your bed an hour ago and . . . I know it’s true. It really is just as I thought. Tomorrow, you will turn nine. Oh Charlie. How can that be?

I cannot recall a moment in my life when I didn’t want to be your mother. I remember every detail of the moment I discovered I was pregnant with you. I can picture the room I was in, the clothes I was wearing, the things surrounding me. It was the first time I ever fell to my knees to thank God. Tears streamed down my face. Tears of joy and anticipation and gratitude and an immediate love I didn’t even know was possible.

I had plans to meet your dad for dinner, so I pulled myself together and headed out the door with a newfound fear of being behind the wheel of an automobile. I was carrying a baby and suddenly, every act of living took on new meaning. I made a quick stop on my way to the restaurant for my first purchase as a pregnant woman. I bought a blue and white bib that said, “I love my Daddy,” all the while formulating plans in my mind about how to tell my husband we were going to be parents.

I made it through our dinner together without a word about my discovery – I couldn’t share such special news in a crowded restaurant. My hands shook and my stomach fluttered with nervous energy the entire meal, and every bite I took had a purpose never before understood. I was no longer eating salmon and spinach because I enjoyed it. I was eating it to nourish the child within.

Once home, I asked your daddy to sit outside with me on our back patio. I watched his expression transform from confusion to curiosity as I handed him the baby bib. When his eyes met mine, I answered his silent question with a simple nod.

Yes, our prayers have been answered. Yes, our dreams are coming true. Yes, we are going to have a baby.

Statistics claim 75% of women experience nausea during pregnancy. Leave it to me to stick with the majority. My first trimester involved a great deal of time spent on the couch, in a horizontal position, in my robe. It also involved some highly questionable food choices. Some days, all I could eat were Pringles. Other days, I could stomach only watermelon. There were days of chicken broth, vegetable soup, tomatoes, tater tots, saltines, and plain pasta. My doctor claimed my all day morning sickness would go away in my second trimester. It didn’t. He told me to continue eating whatever I could handle and not worry too much. I worried anyway.

When I wasn’t eating or worrying, I was reading. And by reading I actually mean I was devouring any and all information I could possibly find on pregnancy. I knew exactly when your fingernails began to grow in my womb. I knew how much weight you were supposed to be gaining each week of every month of all three trimesters. I also knew very early on that you were a boy. I didn’t tell a soul, but I was positive our first-born was going to be a son.

On the morning of our twenty-week ultrasound, I wore a blue shirt in honor of the baby boy I believed was growing inside of me. I lied on my back, gripping your daddy’s hand, wondering why no one had told me how much concern you can have for someone you’ve never even met. And when that nurse (her name was Mary) turned the computer screen towards me and I saw your precious profile in a grainy black and white image forever etched in my mind, I fell madly in love with everything about you. Instantly, I memorized the upturn of your nose and the fullness of your lips and the curve of your forehead. You were always my baby, but at that moment, you became my heart. You became my son. You became our Charlie.

We decorated your room, painting the walls just the right shade of blue. Your father spent hours refinishing a piece of furniture to use as your changing table. We attended childbirth classes and baby showers. I washed tiny pieces of clothing and hung them according to size in your closet. We put together all sorts of strange looking, brightly colored equipment guaranteed to carry, bounce, swing and soothe. We picked out birth announcements and visited pediatricians and scoured consumer reports for the safest car seats on the market. Your daddy put your crib together . . . twice. On his first attempt, he assembled it outside your room. Turns out cribs don’t fit through doors.

And then, on a cold night in the middle of February, my water broke and the pain came and we rushed to the hospital and the doctor said it was time and at the perfect moment . . . at the exact moment God planned for you to entire our lives . . . you arrived.

Oh Charlie. You came crashing into our world with the softest of cries and the chubbiest of arms and the sweetest, most mesmerizing face on the entire planet. And our existence instantly became an incredible journey we could never have imagined. The journey that takes a human heart and links it to another in a way that is so complete, so certain and true, it can only be described as a forever purpose of love.

It has been an amazing journey; one filled with all the things we expected; laughter, anticipation, learning, surprise, hope, joy, pride, fear, concern, disappointment, sorrow, prayer. But most of all, it has been a forever purpose of love. Loving our child with everything we have and with all that we are. Loving him in every moment, in every circumstance, in the very best ways we know how.

Oh Charlie. I love you so much. I will love you forever. I will love you no matter what. And I’m glad you’re turning nine tomorrow. Because that means I have had three-thousand two-hundred and eighty-five days with the most wonderful boy I’ve ever known.

I pray for thousands more.