One

It's the middle of the night, and I can't sleep, and it just occurred to me that exactly one year ago from this very minute I was sitting in my apartment, wide awake, both willing dawn to arrive and praying it wouldn't. Tomorrow, or rather today, is Annika's birthday.

Because of the complications of Lily's birth, I had to schedule Annika's birth two weeks before my actual due date. It seems so long ago now, but there were choices, and I agonized over them. Did I want to have the C-section before Labor Day? The arduous, anxious pregnancy would be over sooner, but the hospital staff would all be at the beach. I decided to wait until after the holiday weekend. The night before I was to go into the hospital I couldn't sleep at all. I sat on the reclining chair reading for a while, then just sat. Although the apartment was full--my family was here--it was quiet and still.

I remember being grateful that the feeling afraid was about to end, one way or another, because all along I'd known that the surgery could be dangerous for me, and I remember trying, desperately, to imagine Annika. Of course, I couldn't do it. All I could envision was a baby Lily, the baby Lily had been, with a feature or two tweaked, but I could no more imagine an entirely different baby, her own person, than I could make myself fall asleep. I pushed open the door to Lily's room. She was sound asleep. I tried to imagine how her life was going to change, and mine, and I couldn't do that either. All I could imagine was the two of us, going on as we had, with a prop baby off to one side, as though we'd just happened to pop Baby Ann, Lily's largest doll, into my handbag.

In the morning I was exhausted. Fueled by adrenaline, we got ourselves to the hospital. There was a lot of lying around on gurneys, shots, explanations of what was going to happen. It was cold; I was cold, pretty much at every stage of the process. And I steeled myself to remain alert. Lily's birth had been an excruciating, terrifying blur; this was cold and clinical, yes, but I'd be damned if I wasn't going to be fully present.

When the doctor held the baby up over the sheet so I could see her, I tried to focus but only got a fragmented view: her skin looked much darker than I'd expected, I saw brown hair, squinted eyes, tiny squared-off feet. Annika, I thought. She didn't look like her ultrasound picture. She didn't looked like Lily. She looked like herself.

It is the ultimate cliche to note that it's astonishing what can happen in a year. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I will not have to go to the hospital in the morning. But I will have to get up at 6:30 to give breakfast to my one-year-old girl. I think tonight, now, I may just be able to sleep.