He did it. We did it. I did it.

He defied all odds, he pulled through the darkest nights and last week we celebrated one year with a living breathing miracle. I will never understand why it had to be him… I will never be able to explain how hard this season of life was and how lonely it was - how do you begin to explain ECMO to most people? Or watching your child code multiple times in front of you? Watching his oxygen drop lower and lower and lower? the pain of a middle of the night phone call that no parent wants to get. Watching every single nurse and doctor on the floor run to his bedside and ask you to step back … afraid to leave a hospital because you don’t know if it’ll be the last time you see your baby alive. I will never be able to unsee those things when I look at him.

Throughout every single trial, infection, step back… he overcame it all - looking at him today you’d never know if it wasn’t for the scar on his neck and across his abdomen.

Happy first birthday sweet Everett James. You are our world.