The day this all started...

Three years ago, almost to the day, I headed to the hospital, thinking I was in labor. They sent me home. A few hours later I came back, and within 7 minutes Sadie entered the world. Then we got the news - she was gravely ill and would require open heart surgery as soon as she could be stabilized.

Before that time I would have never dreamed of blogging and sharing my personal life with the world. Hell, I hadn't even considered that my child could potentially have a heart defect. I didn't know how one second could change your life forever.

Since then I've written about the joys and horrors, the stress and the recovery our family faced in those crucial first months... chronicling hearts torn open and put back together, both figuratively and literally. Then it grew beyond that, to include the hopes and fears for my daughters, then updates for long-distance family and friends to finally, what it is or isn't today - a journal I turn to to release small bits of my brain to the world.

This time of year brings back so many bittersweet memories - the agony of watching Sadie being taken away, not knowing if she made it to UVA alive, the joy of the first moment I hold her, almost a month later. More than anything, my heart sings a song of celebration that overrides those sad memories, though they still persist in the background. Because more than anything, tomorrow is a day of joy over how far Sadie has come and the miracle of her survival.