Christmas is such a mixed bag of emotions for my husband and I these past three years. Christmas 2009 we were hopefully anticipating the safe arrival of little miss Evangeline one short month later. Christmas 2010 we got to celebrate our first Christmas as parent’s to a living baby and do all the fun thing’s parent’s do with their little one’s this time of the year. This year is turning out to be the best Christmas ever; with Evangeline being two she is a blast and very excited about everything Christmas around her. That being said; Christmas will forever have a tinge of sadness to it for us. Christmas eve 2007 changed how we view Christmas forever. Christmas eve, after all, is my first babies birthday.

I can’t begin to fathom that I would be preparing to both celebrate Christmas AND my son’s fourth birthday. I ‘litterally’ can’t fathom it cause he was my first try at being a mom. I have no idea what life with a four year would be like. Every year that passes makes him seem less and less real to me.

Did I really have a baby on Christmas Eve? You bet I did. Although his face, his hair, his features escape me like a fleeting dream; his labor and delivery never, ever will. I was in so much pain, so afraid and desperately sad to know that it all was for nothing….that even though I was experiencing birth for the first time, I would not get to experience parenthood as a result. Instead I got to deliver a 7lbs 8oz little boy who would never take a breath, then plan his funeral.

My life has been so blessed with his sister’s arrival. She is solely responsible for making Christmas a happy time of the year again. However, there will always be a tinge of sadness in our Christmas as we visit the cemetery to leave a Christmas ornament for Evan’s birth day.

I can’t help but wonder what he is doing now, and if he knows how happy we are to have his little sister to spoil this Christmas.