Dear Son

On Monday it will be your 10th birthday.  A decade since you arrived 7 weeks early a scrawny scrap of skin at 4lb 2oz. 

I never experienced labour, I've never had a contraction, you were pulled from me whilst I was asleep. I was so ill I didn't see you for the first few hours of your life. It never stopped my heart opening up to you.  For such a tiny boy you were so strong and long! You still are one of the tallest in your year and will be patting me on the head soon.  You had such a fighting spirit and grew at a great rate of knots. In hospital I used to come down to the Special Care Baby Unit and visit you in the dead of night, holding you, feeding you enjoying the peace. Our time.

At three weeks you came home and my life has never been the same. 

I've experienced the highs of parenting, watching you take your first steps, learn to talk, start school, ride a bike, your first crush.  And the lows. The time you were three and burnt your hand on the iron when I turned my back for a second. 
When you were five and went missing at a Spanish water park for half an hour.  You, my clever boy who found a security guard when you knew you were lost.

Now we're entering a different era. The tweens.  You ask me lots of questions about body changes which I endeavour to answer honestly. I love to make you laugh so when you ask me if you're getting hair under your arms or on your chest; I say I won't check your bum for hair. You're hormonal and shouty and horrible to your little sister.   But I can get past that, when you give me a big cuddle and say you love me. That you've told your friends I'm a brilliant cook (when I'm really not!).  When I see you trying to hide the pride in your face as we're allowing a little more freedom and you can walk home from school on your own.  Inch by inch I'm already letting go. 

In the next ten years you won't be mine. You'll always be my little man, but you may belong to  someone else's heart by then. You wont tell me everything that's happening in your life and I wont be the cleverest person you know. You may have left home, you may even have a child of your own. 

Remember, I love you little man.