1 year anniversary/birthday

Dec. 9th 7pm:
I bathed F, as is part of the new prescribed bedtime routing given by the dermatologist, and got her dressed for bed, read her a story and laid her down.  I did not cry, and tried not to think about what the following day would mean.  I actually just put my baby down and covered her up, played with her hair like I always do and said her prayers for her, walked away and closed the door.
Dec 9th 10:30pm:
F woke up crying, it was a different sort of cry, I don't know how to describe it.  It was as if she had suddenly remembered something that made her sad and she just needed a little cry.  It wasn't like a nightmare cry, or a hunger cry, or even a 'I don't want to sleep' cry... it is amazing as a mom you can tell these things.
I went to her room and held her, and suddenly it dawned on me that at this time last year I was laying in a hospital bed and being forced to labor.  I was having my membranes stripped every hour, and how very soon it would be the moment I heard they would break my water, and how disrespected I would feel. 
I remembered that and thought 'I wonder if F knows that this is the anniversary of what was probably her first and most scarey moment'.  Probably not, but it also gave me a good chance to separate my experience during F's birth, and her actual birthday. 
I'm so grateful to God that she was born at 2:47am, and not pm. If the moment had been during a time that I'm normally awake I know I would count the minutes down to the time and think about it all day long.  But now I feel like dec. 9th will be the day that if i need to I can relate to my painful experience, and dec 10th can be the joy of my daughter and her arrival.
 I promised in my heart to let her have her day, and now that I have discovered I can mourn on one day (because honestly I still need that) and be joyful on the next, I feel much more capable of celebrating F's birthday.
I laid her back in her bed and brushed her hair with my fingers and left the room closing the door behind me.
P had rented Water for Elephants and we watched that until bedtime for us.  I felt like I still had so much to do but needed the break so MADE myself sit and watch the movie.  Although the ethics of the movie were questionable it was a good story, and I enjoyed it.
We went to bed and I started to think about it again... in fact laying on my left side I had such severe pain in my stomach that I couldn't avoid the thought of the scar and how it got there.  I turned to my back and the pain was almost completely gone... I have a somewhat irritable bowel and have been under a lot of stress causing gas so you can understand that it wasn't the memory that caused the pain, but I do occasionally still feel the pain of the cut.
After a little chat with P about the pain and what it was caused by (he believes I'm pregnant due to a planning problem, but we have time before we'd know the answer to that and honestly I'm not really thinking I am, we have too many planing problems lately!) we went to sleep. 
Dec 10th 5:30am: I woke up early, posted on facebook that I was proud to be the mama of a one year old, and then began to clean the rest of my house and prepare the snacks for F's party.
Everything turned out great, but for whatever reason most people didn't show up until at least an hour late!  I planned the party for the time period when F would be most willing to deal with it, she really doesn't handle stress well and has never attended a party like this, especially one with her at the center of attention.  So I didn't know if she would be ok, and didn't want her to cry through it.  She did great, but the party was scheduled for 2-4pm and actually happened from 3-5.  I do wish that so many people had not come so late, but I understand each of the reasons people had.
I got raving reviews on my cake, almost everyone liked it, and a chef who was in attendance even commented about how good the fondant was!  Yay for marshmallows!
F got some really neat books, and of all of them I've only read one before.  I'm super excited.  One of the books is called Mr. Seahorse, and I'm super thrilled about it.  I told one questioning parent that the only thing I could honestly say F was 'into' was her seahorse that she sleeps with, but that i doubted that there was any books with seahorses, and they managed to find one!  Some of the other books included the collection of 'if you give a mouse a cookie', three different bear baby bear type books, 'snoozers', and some picture books.  It was a successful party!
F thought everyone was nuts when they started singing happy birthday to her. And when we gave her the cake she wasn't hungry so she refused to try it, but was VERY interested in playing with it.  Of course F doesn't play and make a mess, she picks it up whole (since it had fondant it was pretty easy) and then picks at it with her finger and thumb pinching little pieces and moving them across the tray of her high chair.
Overall a great birthday!
Dec. 10th 7:00pm bathed and dressed for bed, I read her one of her new story books and cuddled my baby awhile before laying her in her bed calling her a big girl and playing with her hair while saying her prayers and closing the door. 
At the request of my dear husband I made some popcorn and he put on a movie that he really got for himself, as he knows I wont watch R-rated films.  I did sit in the livingroom awhile eating some popcorn but not watching the movie until something horrible happened.  The screen showed this baby floating gently in it's mother's womb, and suddenly a sword was thrust into the womb, it did not hit the baby but obviously hurt the mother.  We were in the center of a war scene, a woman dressed in armor carrying a sword of her own is fighting another, a man who had just given her a fatal wound.  She climbs to the top of a broken wagon and holds her stomach, she is helpless, and her husband sees her there and though fighting someone himself quickly defeats the man in front of him and rushes to his wife.  He brushes her hair back and tells her she will be ok, whether in words or looks I'm not sure as I couldn't focus my attention on anything but the action playing in front of me.  She tells him that she wishes to see her baby before she dies.  She takes a knife from her side and gives it to her husband and he looks as if he wont do it, but then because it is either her life or both her's and the babies, he cuts her open.  I stop watching and wrap my arms around my knees, P pauses the movie, we both know what is happening in my head, that woman just felt her body being cut open without anethesia, just like I did (except that hers was for different reasons and she had asked for it to be done to her, and she knew she would die.... blah blah... you know what I mean)  I was feeling the pain.  P had no way of knowing that the movie would have a scene like that, and I don't blame him, but for a moment I was mad at him for bringing something so heartless into my home and causing me pain.  I went to my room, he asked if I was ok and I did a shocking good job of saying I was fine.  He believed me.  I was in my room maybe 1 minute before I realized I had nothing to do, could hear everything from his movie and would likely spend the rest of the evening before drifting off to sleep thinking of that horrid scene and the pain I knew so well that the woman experienced while delivering her child. 
So I came back out to the livingroom and amused myself with a game of freecell on the computer and my e-mail until his movie was done.  I've never done such a good job not watching a movie!  And amazingly I did a great job not feeling pained by the memory of my daughter's birth. My therapist would be so proud!