My daughter turned 20 today. It’s a bit unbelievable to me. It seems like just days ago that she was born. A miracle baby, born at 28 weeks. Three months early and weighing only 2 pounds. It was a shock, her birth. There was nothing that prepared me for it or gave me a clue. But there she was, laying in an incubator 20 years ago, not quite fully grown. It was a hard two and a half months that she was in the hospital, waiting to get to five pounds so we could take her home. I went every day to read to her from Babar books, talking to her and watching the numbers on her monitor jump around. I wanted so much to hold her immediately and be her mom, but it was a week after she was born that I got to hold her for just a few minutes on Mother’s Day. Then I had to wait and be a spectator for a while. It was a beautiful, painful, maturing experience watching her grow outside of me. And we were all so incredibly lucky. Babies born that early oftentimes have lingering issues of some sort. The most my daughter had was glasses when she was younger, since the eyes are one of the last things to form in utero. And today she is a beautiful, intelligent, giving and talented person. Someone I am so blessed to have in my life and call my daughter. You would never know that she was born premature and had to fight so hard just to be alive. I’m immensely thankful today for her and for the way her birth changed me and made me a stronger mother.